Office Suites: Office must, iCloud nice, Google worries me *Will be updated*

Office Suites

1. Microsoft Office suite, including SharePoint 2013 storage and web view/edit - using daily
2. Apple iCloud Office suite - using sporadically
3. Google Office suite - almost never
4. Sharepoint Lists - never again
5. OpenOffice - not used since ages (since I got my free MS office for MAC)

Background

On daily basis I have to work with some form of Office Suite and yes the only one that I must use is Microsoft Office.

For more than 20 years I fight with the office suites and they still cannot do what I want them to do for me. Store data centrally and use whatever component that handles my requirement best and put all together in a publishing form. Done.

Have you ever tried to do a table in Word, OneNote, Excel and in a SharePoint List and tried to modify it in each program and reimport or link the object?

Daily catastrophe.

If they only would finally come to the year 2015 in terms of what's going around you. But they don't and so in 2015 I only get Office 2016 which will finally allow multiple people working on Excel and not only in SharePoint view. (Ever tried working with 10 people in the Excel web view and a single person changes the filter? Or freeze panes, anyone?)

Some Office Suite details

MS Office 2013 and Sharepoint 2013 are hard to beat, but Sharepoint was still kind a basic and you would need a lot of customization for it to get working as it should.

Biggest problem for me today is that you cannot have multiple lists based on an .xlsx Sheet that multiple people can edit.

Rant Again: Something that I think is a must and I cannot wait any longer that someone finally does central data with modular functionality (almost a daily complaint of mine (Apple almost got it right for some, i.e. allow the same data be accessed by many applications or extensions, that is the killer feature but not completely implemented))

Apple Office Suite is nice and good looking but hard for me to achieve most of the common tasks. And keynote is really bad when it comes to powerpoint file viewing/editing.

Google Office Suite has improved since they have offline usage and implemented a lot of features, but even harder to work with today.

Open Office has not improved that dramatically as it should and still crashes too many times. Not as good as MS Office.

Update 2015-09-25

Purchased an Office 365 Home Subscription for $55, but I paid with my supermarket points!

I did use Office 2011 on Mac and Office 2013 on Windows, but I really am interested in Office 2016 for both and my PC.

Cloud Storage: 1TB nothing less, best offers of today. Will be updated.

Cloud Storage

Purchase status: None

Best offers 1TB (yearly price) - deals found on the internet

$ 25 Microsoft Office 365 Personal
$ 55 Microsoft Office 365 Home (actually 5 TB because 5 users with each 1TB), but it does not count.
($ 60 Amazon) seems not to work with my account comes in at $ 400.
$ 100 Dropbox
$ 100 Copy.com
$ 120 Google
$ 120 iCloud (2015-09-18)

What are my preferred Vendors

Apple iCloud
Google Drive

I have to use both as I use multiple products of each company. Apple I only would consider because of the Photos Library. But I learned how to live without it. I use Google Photos free cloud storage of unlimited photos and videos if I need access on the road.

Runner up: Microsoft OneDrive.  In the last few months they gain momentum. Office Mix, Snip, OneNote. Free, as in you pay for storage, for the best office suite for me.


Why I would need it

Photos and Videos - 500 GB Photos library, photos and videos, increasing growth
Books - 10 GB PDFs and ePubs
Documents - 10 GB of Documents (.docx, .xlsx., .pptx, .mm, .pdf)
Presentations - 10 GB of Presentations (Cisco Live, Microsoft TechEd, Citrix, VmWare ....)
Music - 10 GB of iTunes Library
(2 TB of movies and videos) today not considered cloud material, although Google Photos once did upload them all! And stored them at no cost!

What you get

Microsoft seems to be the coming back. Surface Pro 3, currently the best affordable all in one Computer (touch, pen, software). Office is still mandatory and the 2013 and 2016 are getting better all the time. OneNote will rule them all, if Microsoft keeps up the feature updates. Evernote will be gone. (Apple is not really committed to improve Notes drastically).

My current view is that you get the cheapest storage (not performance or availability considered) and then you get for free the full Office Suite with automatic updates and if you are like me and don't really have mobile subscription that covers all my telephony expenses then the Skype minutes look also very promising (although I'm a big time user on FaceTime audio). But I will always end up using my 500GB high speed unlimited Internet by day 10 of the month or so, and the Internet calls are not fun anymore afterwards. So Skype does not really count and I still despise the ring tone and the software in general.


Comments

iCloud, the price will go down to $120 per year, but as of today I still only see the $240 option.

For me it is still to expensive. The price point to go for it would be around $60 per year but only if Photo Library sync is included.

Today's workaround

Photos and Videos

reasons to use cloud: Immediately sync photos of devices, have access anywhere (web or clients)

• fully cloud enabled using the following: Google Photos
• mainly taken with iPhones
• synced for free to PhotoStream
• on an iMac synced to Google Photos for free

Books

reasons to use cloud: quickly check some facts or re-read some parts in books, get a new book on the go

• partially cloud enabled using iCloud drive and Gdrive.
• books must be DRM free (or Adobe ID), never Kindle, rarely iBooks
• books should be PDF or ePub
• manage all books with Calibre ((except Adobe ID), but would prefer iBooks on steroids)
• keep Calibre library partially on cloud drive, or partially on Gdrive (would prefer to have all)
• use Calibre server to access books in house (could use VPN to Home to connect but currently not in use)
• import books from iCloud drive or Gdrive into iBooks then delete individually again.

Music

reasons to use cloud: Family of 6 (more than 10 devices) that all want their Music everywhere

• fully cloud enabled using Google Music.
• Store all music on family iMac using the family account. 
• Use Google Music uploader to sync all content to family account on Google Music.
• When to many devices registered try to clear all and start over or use a 2nd account for some members of the family, duplicating music. (manually, clear with Google worked last time, let's hope not to many device changes and that my younger family members don't need access)

All music service seem to neglect on purpose a family of 6 or more that have many devices, at least 15 devices from iPod, iPod touch, Samsung, iPhones from 4S to 6. All the legacy phones are gone, everyone has a smartphone for better or worse. Then one computer for each and multiple for some.

Documents and Presentations

reasons to use cloud: access from everywhere to anything

• no workaround implemented. Some on OneDrive, some on iCloud Drive, some on Gdrive, some linked in OneNote to their original place on the internet.
• OneNote is dangerous, could be a game changer, especially the clippy (Clip to OneNote Full page or article)

Movies

same reasons as always.

Google Photos could become an alternative, by mistake I set the wrong folder to upload and I had x number of full length movies in the cloud not counting against storage limitations of Gdrive. Not sure why or what happened. Removed them all, but might reconsider when going on holiday or so.

Purchase history

$48 200 GB iCloud, but I cancelled it after only 5 months

Update history

2015-09-11 online list
2015-09-19 Apple reduced prices


Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_services


http://www.cnet.com/how-to/onedrive-dropbox-google-drive-and-box-which-cloud-storage-service-is-right-for-you/

My personal Top 5 Apple PAIN point list (will be continuously updated)

Top 5

• iBooks, PDF and ePub sync (other programs are not a real alternative)
• Sync issues with iBooks/iTunes/iCloud passwords and bookmarks (many times lost data)

Full List

iCloud

• Password and bookmark sync does not show if the data is outdated and too many times changes are overwritten, no way to solve these conflicts

Finder

• Tabs help but the interface needs an overhaul.
• File copying, do not try to transfer all files at once!

Apple Maps -> still cannot use and definitely do not trust (Google Maps and Here, but both are also not really trustworthy)




Apple MacBook/MacBookAir

• Touch
• Better window management, expose is not good enough
• Allow for browser tabs to be moved though and selected with CMD+TAB

iPhone, iPad

• iBooks, 
• Big images of books
• sync my PDFs and books through iCloud drive
• manage large collection of PDFs, automatic tagging, multi-level folders
• edit PDFs, 
• let other programs access the PDFs, 
• actually all other parts are accessible through iCloud but not ePub and PDFs

iPad

Apple Rant #25b - Apple got it all wrong, yes?

Many things Apple just presented seem to be great and another round of big achievements, but honestly they miss out where we should be moving.

Office on iPad Pro, what a ... nice thing. Nobody really solved the input UI of the future and office just looks plain 2015ish. Actually it looks more like what in 2003 a table PC was capable of (oh my I forgot that brand I used to play around with).

No one has solved the issue, not even Windows 10 Tablet mode. The different applications do not really make us fast and fluid, efficient finger and pen users.

The iPad pro will need to be tested, but the software is already lacking. Yes, some specific applications are extremely tuned but the overall daily live usage is not given. 

Having spent years using tablet PCs and iPads, I think the greatest invention of all is the surface 3 pro kickstand. If I need a button on the pen that automatically opens onenote, yes, definitely. 

I do not believe that the notes app will do the trick. Onenote is currently the app to go. Windows Journal being long a zombie. No real improvements for the last few years.

Again I really despise having to hold my iPad and the official cover that you can fold, is really not good.

Surface Pro 3 kickstand glued to an iPad Pro and you got me. Maybe something for logitech?

Apple TV new tvOS, oh my I hate it already that I have to move from box to box. Why not fluid movements and free moving around instead of going cursor like up and down? Logitech had created a mouse that I could swing around many years ago.

Also if you got a phone why would I need to add a very expensive 32GB storage Apple TV? I could live with a 30$ dongle that needs my iPhone as it's engine and I could hook in other players as well, no?

The real challenge that Apple should address is iBooks!

I still cannot edit PDFs, cannot open them in another application, organize in many levels of folders ....

Same goes for unified data storage, i.e. all data is there, the applications just present it to you, i.e. you start typing and the word processing engine shows it to you, but why not let the mind map application show it to you visually different, each application can enrich the data but all applications work on the same data? They add their own meta data, but the applications that don't understand it just display what they can and even allow to modify for what they were built for. Such as a syntax editor display the text in pure text. open it in html editor with full css and other styles, then open it in mind map to quickly navigate and then use powerpoint outline mode to move around add some pictures, videos etc. then continue working with it with movie maker, then over to some visio, then modify in corel draw ....