Microsoft "hasn't ruled out" bringing Office to the Mac App Store

This 30% figure is bandied about all the time as if Apple were the only retailer expecting to take a cut of the product sold. What percentage of each copy of Office 2011 sold by MacMall is returned to MS? I'm guessing Apple isn't the only retailer expecting remuneration for their efforts to sell somebody else's product...

Always amazed at how many people think 30% is a lot for distribution, payment processing and hosting lifetime updates.

I am certain it is not much more than Microsoft already pays digital river, and they do not host updates or allow re-downloads after 30 days...

This seems more likely that Microsoft is looking into a version of Office for iOS, more evident with OneNote for iOS already released.

Microsoft Office for Mac OS X will likely continue to be a retail box product.

No doubt Microsoft will spend a year developing their own crappy App Store copy. Then after that utterly flops they'll finally come crawling back to Apple to host their outdated bloatware. A better question for 2011 is, do you use Word as a word processor because it's the best or because it's ubiquitous. Personally I use Pages for 99.9% of the writing I do, and then just check to make sure exported DOCs open properly in Word. Other than that it's irrelevant...

AutoCAD is the name of a product, the company's name is AutoDesk, and apparently, they've already put one of their software for sell at Mac App Store and it's called Sketchbook Pro

I have a question, i have office 2008 on my mac already, if I install the trial version does it overwrite 2008, or do you have both? My exroomate shared the family pack with me so i dont have access to the disc anymore. I would really hate to screw myself over just for a stupid trial. Thanx in advance.
-Al

quote:
"Microsoft's Amanda Lefebvre told AllThingsD that putting Office on the Mac App Store is "something we are looking at... It's something we haven't ruled out. We just have to see how that relates to our business." "

As pointe by 9to5mac,
"Of course they are looking at it. They are also “looking at” bringing Office to the iPhone circa 2009."

quote:
"If that is worth the 30 percent trade-off, then we might see Office in the Mac App Store."

One must also take in consideration that Microsoft is paying (itself) for hosting and bandwith, and a lot more for physical packages.
So, the 30% could be less than 30%.

quote:
"Another issue is that Microsoft has made their licensing for Office 2011 more restrictive than 2008 whereas the Mac App Store gives users much more generous freedom to install apps on all of their Macs."

But, and this is my own speculation, althoug the restrictions are higher in Microsoft's sale, it is possible to copy the installer file and install in zillions of machines, while in Apple's implementation there would be only the allowed.
Also, the [automatic] update mechanism could be a very worthwhile.

Do y'all seriously think Microsoft, Adobe, or AutoCAD pays less than 30% to sell a boxed copy at Best Buy or store.apple.com?

I would love the to also allow purchase of individual pieces of Office... I really want Outlook, but not worth $290

The only way that Apple can make the Mac App Store the sole source to put an app on a Mac would be for Apple to forbid users from running compilers.

If Apple did this, who would there be to develop new applications for the Mac platform or for iOS?

Apple can prevent users from putting their own third party apps on iOS devices because these apps are not developed on the iOS platform.