Really enjoyed this interview. Hope you do, too!
Great episode! Microsoft people that don’t use Windows laptops isn’t super new to me (I remember a conference talk by one of the developers of the Chakra engine using a MacBook), but it’s great to have someone in the show that knows a lot about both sides and can talk about pros and cons.
It’s not just true for Microsoft. I attended a Google customer conference last year and half-jokingly apologized for my MacBook Pro and iPhone. The Googlers shrugged it off. Many of them were using Apple gear themselves.
Good episode!
My company is standardized on the Microsoft stack so I use it quite a bit. As a tech journalist, I am essentially a professional researcher, and I use Microsoft Word for note-taking. We use O365 for email and calendaring, and Teams for discussion and document-sharing. We’re transiting from Skype for Business to Teams for IM.
I grumbled when I was required to stop using Apple Mail. But now I have no complaints. Except for two with regard to email:
I really wish I could link to an individual message in Outlook for Mac, as I can with Apple Mail. That wouldmake it much easier to use OmniFocus, or any other third-party task manager. And linking to email is useful for storing research, too.
Also: The Mail app on the iPhone has a capability where you can set it to send an alert when a reply comes in to a particular message thread. Back when I used the Mail app on the iPhone, I used that capability all the time when I was, well, waiting for a reply to a particular email thread. I’d love it if the Outlook app on the iPhone could do that.
I am sharing these requests in the hopes that Christina Warren is reading this and can whisper in the correct ears!
I thought @MacSparky’s observation that as companies that primarily make their money selling hardware, software, and services directly to customers Apple and Microsoft are more similar to each other than to primarily advertising-based companies like Google and Facebook was pretty insightful.
Really enjoyed this episode — a great interview, to be sure!
I also like the comparison of Apple/Microsoft as compared to companies that don’t make their money primarily from software/hardware.
I’ve been trying to keep an eye on Microsoft for a while now, and I continue to be impressed. While my work machine runs Windows and I don’t love it, at least some of that can be blamed on the enterprise management of the computer/software. But I’ve really enjoyed watching Microsoft build out their really nice hardware!
But what I’ve really enjoyed is Microsoft’s software on Mac and iOS. I jumped into Office 365 immediately once they released the Office suite on iPad, although I had been using Office for a while on Mac, too. I just recently switched my cloud storage to OneDrive (1TB comes with my Office 365 subscription) and it has been great! It really stepped in for Dropbox without issue and saved me about $100/yr! I may have to give Outlook another try, though!
Enjoyed the episode and your interview with Ms Warren, and appreciated your spending some time for those in the “windows at work, Apple at home” world. I would concur that Office 365 for Mac/iOS has improved quite a bit in recent years. Given my work is pure Excel/Word/PowerPoint, it is simply easier to stick with the Office for Apple versions at home. Only complaint is that Excel for iPad is still not usable for anything beyond the most basic of spreadsheet work, but on Mac, I really can’t tell the difference anymore (vs Windows).
I also use a Surfaced Pro 4 laptop/tablet for work. The touch screen is helpful at times…but the toggling between “tablet” and “laptop” mode I find clunky. The trackpad isn’t anywhere near as nice as Apple’s Magic Trackpad. When I dock it and use as a desktop with Logitech keyboard and mouse, I find it pretty usable for work stuff.
David, you went easy on Christina Warren regarding Office on MacOS (I appreciate she may not have been accountable!)
You should have asked when support for tabs would come. iWork has had them since they were available (September 2016 I think) and they are one of the best productivity features of MacOS.
Likewise, versions. So useful being able to copy and paste from the page/slide you were editing and completely messed up an hour earlier.
And speed. Just clicking around Excel is maddeningly slow, from cell to cell, ribbon to ribbon, copy to paste and simply opening files. And I still have to hunt for things because they move depending on the size of my window.
Another good show, nonetheless! Thank you.
I really enjoyed this episode. Christina was a great guest, and as someone who uses a PC at work (and Office 365 daily) it is exciting to hear the insights she has to offer. Her job also sounds unique, challenging, and fun.
As an aside, my wife has a Surface Tablet for work and she has brought it home a few times, it’s quite nice!
There was a nice shout out to this episode by Michael Hyatt in his latest podcast episode. It would be great to have him back on the show sometime!
Late to the party, but this was a great episode. Loved the conversation.