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A comment on The Apple Store (2004).

Re:The Apple Store (2004) by simonh on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @04:38AM (#21068898)
I wonder to what extent open source desktop applications have affected the commercial market. 20-ish years ago a lot of people were predicting OpenOffice, and other OSS apps would take over the world (running on desktop Linux). That didn't happen, but I wonder if that's the case because they pushed down the price of consumer shrink-wrap* apps? Or was it just increased competition between the commercial apps?

* It's been a long time since I've used that term.

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Re:The Apple Store (2004) by lotsofpulp on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @05:47AM (#21069197)
It’s because most people don’t want to spend their time learning how to install, troubleshoot, and organize their computers.

Shifting everything online and through the browser makes it very easy for the user, all they have to worry about is an internet connection and having enough RAM. They don’t have to worry about compatible devices, just open a website or app on macOS, iOS, Windows, Android, it all works. Clearly the value of this convenience is extremely high.

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Re:The Apple Store (2004) by diffeomorphism on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @05:41AM (#21069176)
> Or was it just increased competition between the commercial apps?

What commercial office apps are there? There is MS Office and ...? Google docs maybe counts, but is more in competition with the feature-reduced office365 stuff.

Same question for Adobe products.

I am seeing much more of a monoculture than competition.

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Re:The Apple Store (2004) by dagw on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @05:05AM (#21069027)
On the Office front at least I suspect that Google Docs did more to push down prices than OpenOffice ever did
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Re:The Apple Store (2004) by chenzhekl on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @10:30AM (#21071111)
For me, it's merely because the Office is easier to use than the OpenOffice. Companies behind commercial software can put more resource into their products to get them more polished, while open source projects can only depend on volunteer developers.
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