Virtualized Microsoft Office for Mac
Microsoft should stop developing Office for Mac and instead ship Office for Windows running on a Virtualized Windows environment on OSX.
Microsoft Office for mac is a paradox for Microsoft:
- Microsoft can't risk losing the income from Office for Mac - It's 10% of Office sales.
- Office for mac makes it easier for PC owners to switch to Mac.
- Microsoft makes money from office, regardless of whether the person is using OSX or Windows.
- Its cross platform support means 2X the cost of development
- Making sure it works consistently between OSX and Windows increases the cost substantially
- Features in Office Mac lag that of Office Windows.
- Feature adoption slows because of the lack of cross platform support - especially in enterprises.
So what should Microsoft do? Microsoft needs to get back into Virtualization.
At the same time that the Mac has risen in popularity, so has Virtualization technology. Virtualization allows you to run a different Operating System inside your primary Operating System. This way you can run Windows in OSX with very little performance loss. VMWare and Parallels are just two of many companies competing in this space. Unfortunately, Microsoft pulled its Virtual PC product for Mac several years ago.
Instead of developing a separate product called Office: Mac, Microsoft should develop one version of Office. The Mac version would simply be Office for Windows running in a virtualized environment of windows.
The benefits?
- single development cycle
- consistent user experience
- additional revenue from selling the virtualization environment as a standalone product
- Office for Mac would mysteriously runs a little slower than the Windows counterpart (because of the virtualization shim).
- The best side-effect? How do you speed up Office for mac - Use Windows.
Paying for Public Transit Without Tickets, Tariffs, and Taxes
Is there another way to pay for public transit? Could we even make it free?
There are three ways that most municipalities pay for public transit:
- Tickets - where each rider pays per trip
- Tariffs - where the people who don't use public transit pay a fee (see London, UK)
- Taxes - where everyone pays a portion whether you use the system or not
Unfortunately, public transit has a very inflexible cost structure:
- huge setup cost (sometimes >$20 million per km)
- large fixed cost - the buses and subways run on a schedule, regardless of ridership
- very low variable cost - a very small incremental cost for fuel per rider
This means that whether people use the system or not, the municipality has to pay the bills -including labour, fuel, and maintenance. Therefore, the public transit system needs to be efficient and valuable to attract the maximum number of riders.
This leads me to wonder: Are there other ways to pay for public transit other than Tickets, Tariffs and Taxes?
For example. While people pay for tickets to go to the movies, the revenue hardly flows to the movie theater - it goes straight to the producers. Instead movie theaters make their money on the value-ad, on the popcorn and soda sales.
Further, could you give away public transit for free and make money via another revenue stream? (Much like advertising to Google's free search).
These are just questions for now with no real answers. Some possible answers could include:
- targeted or focused advertising (such as forcing people to watch tv commercials)
- up-selling for cellphone or wifi coverage during the trip
- selling comfort or convenience on longer trips (such as padded chairs, etc)
- integrated restaurant ordering systems so your table is ready for you when you get to the restaurant or your pizza is waiting at your door by the time you get home
This is just the tip of the iceburg. What other ways can public transit be funded - without asking riders to pay more for each trip?
More to come.
Ideas. And lots of them. They're locked away in my head. Soon, these Ideas about life, business, technology and society will find a home here.
No filler. No Bull. Just Ideas.
Take 'em. Use 'em. Make them you're own. These Ideas are for everyone. Open to the public domain.
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