100 points henriquenunez 40 minutes ago 37 comments

TutleCpt 27 minutes ago | parent

I also hate Microsoft.

hosel 20 minutes ago | parent

What they did to windows is criminal. I honestly cannot believe the state of windows 11. I will never work a job again where I have to use windows.

vondur 26 minutes ago | parent

It looks like your license only allows for the web version, so your university probably isn't spending that much for it. You'd get the same message on Windows too.

nrub 15 minutes ago | parent

I think this overlooks the full picture. It's not about the this one pin prick relating to their license. It's that working with Microsoft in any capacity is filled with paper cuts like this, annoyances, bad design, and overt errors. Every single day.

They're a User hostile company and they make a buck by doing just enough to convince non-experts to keep their enterprise licenses.

internet101010 10 minutes ago | parent

Windows 11 has been out for like 6 years and they still haven't fixed a major File Explorer bug: after a few minutes of File Explorer being open the menu bar for the old File Explorer pops up underneath the new thing that replace the menu bar; none of the buttons on this weird artifact from the past work. It's just there. Re-open File Explorer and it goes away, until a few minutes later and it re-appears.

Not as noticeable on light mode but a constant distracting reminder about how much Microslop sucks on dark mode.

bibstha 15 minutes ago | parent

Silly that the error message doesn't convey that, right? I recently got added to a company's Teams account as a guest. I do a bit of software contract work and have used Slack with no issue until now, this is what Teams show me:

- Client says they added me already, but I have no email with an invite. Turns out I didn't have an account that had previously joined Teams with a personal account.

- But even after I created a teams account, due to the order of events (added to corp account as guest, then created a teams account), I still don't have access and need to be readded.

- I can't upload images on groups because I don't have OneDrive access, WTF?

- I cannot download transcripts of meetings I join because I don't have permission.

How bad can a software be? Really?

bunderbunder 12 minutes ago | parent

I'm not so sure about that. For a while now I've worked at companies where PC users could use desktop Office but Mac users had to use the Web version. I think that Office for Mac might actually be a largely separate codebase - there are also significant feature differences between it and the PC version.

Also, just quickly poking through their various enterprise plans (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/mic...), I found several that offered Web & Windows but not Mac, and none that only allowed editing on Web like you describe.

Handy-Man 24 minutes ago | parent

It seems your plan wouldn't even allow editing on Windows. Your university seems to be just paying for web versions.

jadar 24 minutes ago | parent

First, doesn't Microsoft give away M365 for free to educational institutions? (Perhaps that's only US institutions, though.) Second, isn't this how they bill their accounts — Business Basic doesn't get desktop apps and you need to pay more to use desktop apps? Third, did the OP try to open their document in LibreOffice? I think there's a legitimate criticism of the move from one-time lifetime purchases to the SaaS economy, but Microsoft isn't the only one who deserves criticism for this.

saulpw 22 minutes ago | parent

Perhaps Microsoft is the biggest one though? (Who could possibly be bigger?)

jadar 20 minutes ago | parent

Perhaps Google would be bigger? They don't even have desktop app offerings and the consumer versions are subsidized with your advertising data. They certainly weren't the first to introduce the pattern. I feel like Adobe was one of the first big providers to move from lifetime licenses to subscriptions.

jimbobimbo 23 minutes ago | parent

Alternative headline: my university had bought a (cheaper?) plan which doesn't tick all necessary boxes.

Grombobulous 13 minutes ago | parent

This is a good time to point out that Microsoft’s tiers and pricing for Microsoft 365 is completely insane as far as the overwhelming number of different ways to fundamentally buy the exact same software.

I realize they’re trying to sell a productivity suite to basically every business on earth and that the complexity might at some point be necessary, but still…could be simpler.

yndoendo 22 minutes ago | parent

You have to pay me to use Microsoft products and services.

The user experience gets worse with each passing year. A good product designer would see numerous flaws with in five minutes of using their office suite.

johnsmith1840 11 minutes ago | parent

I recently was building out on azure and oh boy, the joy of microsoft products.

Their troubleshoot support tool must be the same team that makes it on local windows troubleshooter because literally every single time you use it, it spins for 10min then says it can't fix anything.

pelagicAustral 22 minutes ago | parent

Skill issue, this is why I mainline a macbook pro, a windows shitbox laptop and my kubuntu katana mega riced XPS. Yeah, I also walk about with a live cd.

humungus 16 minutes ago | parent

based

harmlessblu 21 minutes ago | parent

I've seen this and I think it's actually a bug. I have mac computers at work and occasionally this will crop up and typically signing out and back in resolves the issue.

bjt12345 13 minutes ago | parent

I think one of the more insane things Microsoft have done is their product management of MS Visio.

It became so insanely expensive my work started making us apply for 3 month licenses until we gave up and found something else.

About 15 years ago my Industry was using MS Visio for every diagram.

But they updated the GUI entirely and nobody could be bothered with the new format.

Now people use DrawIO and MS Visio is forgotten.

kown7 10 minutes ago | parent

I don't know what you're doing and I feel all of your Visio pain, but have you tried typst?

miamicholo 13 minutes ago | parent

Outlook is the new Lotus Notes

flowerlad 9 minutes ago | parent

Outlook for Windows used to be great in the 90s and early 2000s. Since then all they have done is added new bugs. And the latest version is HTML/JavaScript in a WebView, no longer native Windows.

mrdatawolf 11 minutes ago | parent

An Apple user complaining about this? Oh that is rich!

I don't condone or like this kind of thing from MS. We all know though who MS copies...

You support the company that perfected it. So pot meet kettle.

jbubimon 4 minutes ago | parent

Except Apple’s products tend to be at the very least good. The baseline for Microsoft products, however, is unusable.

legitster 9 minutes ago | parent

This is more about the Office 365 admin configuration settings than about Microsoft's products themselves.

"Why do people still buy Microsoft?" Because admins can make weird configuration settings.

Scharkenberg 6 minutes ago | parent

Henrique should take it up to his university. When I was a student, mine used to provide me with an account that could use desktop apps on Windows and Mac. Educational institutions get very cheap license bundles compared to enterprises btw.

(Also funny that he says we should not use proprietary software, but ignores his own usage of macOS.)

adamredwoods 5 minutes ago | parent

Is this loosely in regards to the US Cloud Act? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AUpASjLV0E

Don't forget: https://www.libreoffice.org/