cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/48806122
A license verification certificate expires and when it expires, Microsoft Office for Mac assumes it’s unlicensed even if it has been fully paid for.
So, any idiot who paid for Office 2019 for Mac “perpetual” will lose access to it next month.
The same will happen with Office 2021 and Office 2024 in the future.
Pirates are unaffected, only who paid for the product gets punished
Good job 👍🏻
Somewhat loaded headline
It can sometimes be annoying when news communities require posts to use an article’s original headline, but it definitely makes sense at times.
Like this time
You think so? I only see an acurate representation oft reality
While people are piling on Microsoft, I have had issues with older software needing workarounds for certificates. Especially on the Mac OsX.
How is this anything other than a basic security cert issue?
Rossman posted a video a while ago about how Microsoft updated their site without noting they updated it to gaslight their customers into thinking it’s always said that.
There’s a reason these companies are trying to kill the archive sites, it lets people call them on their bullshit.
Edit: YouTube source
Not surprised in the least. It’s all about maintaining incoming cash flow.
They cancelled my Win11 (from purchased Win10 eligible upgrade) key earlier this year when I replaced a failed motherboard.
Happy to be free of their ecosystem. Should have jumped free long ago.
OOP’s comment on the original post that the cross-poster should have shared:
Disclaimer: I wrote “idiot” to describe someone who paid for the product not because they’re actually idiots, but it’s because Microsoft is treating them like that: their official solution on the website is “simply subscribe to the latest and greatest or buy a new “perpetual” license to office 2024 to continue using what you paid for”
I’m not sure I’m cool with calling people ‘idiots’ in this scenario. We don’t blame the victims of con men when they’re stolen from, and this is the same thing, just on a bigger scale.
That said, here is the obligatory linking to LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/
It’s free and a better choice.
We need to quit focusing on stuff like this. If somebody calls you a fucking idiot so fucking what?
And we do blame the victims constantly. The people that blame the victims do nothing but fucking win.
i read it as sarcasm, i would write it like that, especially if i was one of them
I read it as someone kinda being a dick, but it’s the Internet. Meaning isn’t always well-conveyed electronically. That’s why we have the sarcasm tag.
Had you gone as far as the article you would have seen the disclaimer that makes it clear it’s sarcasm.
I did.
The title of the article is ‘Microsoft is disabling Office 2019 for Mac next month’, which makes it pretty clear that the editorializing of the title here on Lemmy was intended to be a bit dickish, at least to me.
If I am wrong, cool, but it’s not because I didn’t look at the article.
They mean that when it was originally posted on the db0 Lemmy piracy community, there was a disclaimer to say it was sarcasm
Well, maybe they should have clicked through to the article.
/s
Not even worth pirating when there are better open source alternatives.
I pirate Arch, btw
I plunder booty.
Victim blaming is definitely how you win people to your side… Dumbass
Seem to have worked for this fucking shitty ass president. And his shitty ass fucking party. And I’ll be honest it seems to work for every major corporation.
The victim blaming definitely works, Just ask anybody who was raped.
Disabled or pirated are not the only options:
Since the OP specifies Mac users, as a Mac user, I find iWork perfectly serviceable. I think it’s a bit controversial with its “Ribbon” on the right rather than the top, though it kind of makes sense. I don’t love iWork (Writer, Numbers, and Keynote), but they are good and they come with Macs (or at the very least are free in the App Store).
I have tried LibreOffice recently, and I didn’t care for it. But I am glad that such a robust free office suite is available on Windows. I believe some Linux distros ship with it, too. If I didn’t have iWork, I’d probably just use LibreOffice. It’s not terrible, I just have a better choice.
a robust free office suite
The few times I tried using LibreOffice, it’s anything but robust. Very bad UX, and even worse, it frequently crashes and fails to recover, resulting in data loss. And I’ve only been using Linux for more than 10 years now.
The Apple office apps are still free, but they do have an add-on subscription too now.
It’s been quite a while since I used iWork, but iWork is different than office. In some ways it’s a better product - the layout and formatting in Pages is worlds ahead of Word. It’s not a clone of the Office suite, which works to its advantage.
Is iWork compatible with Office files though? That’s going to be the sticking point for people who had been using it and lost access…
Yes, it opens the files and can work with them. However to save them back to the original filetype, you need to export
^ This. Easy to get, easy to install, works like a charm and the license is “perpetual” you won’t need bother with it ever again.
The last Mac I put this on was determined not to let me change doc files to open with it no matter what I did. It would change it for individual files only, but not the file type. Maybe because it was m1 or something.
classic Micro$lop
Victim-blaming is the real stupidity here. Microsoft harasses its customers (again) and now the customers are the idiots?
This is the same type of propaganda Nvidia is trying to push. Jensen Huang saying “people should have planned better, the rising prices of hardware was imminent” is the exact same tactic of being the cause of the problem and still putting the blame of everyone else.
imo it was sarcasm
Well, you’re not wrong, but who the heck buys a “perpetual” license for a Microsoft product unless it’s for a company? And especially why pay for stupid boost water office if you could have libre for free?
If it’s not stupidity then at least ignorance. Doesn’t mean Microsoft is an arse for doing that.
who the heck buys a “perpetual” license for a Microsoft product
Office used to always be a perpetual license, so nearly average person that needed an office suite bought one.
Doesn’t change my point. Why pay for it? Either just use it for free or get libreoffice. If I pay a thing from a corpo like MS, behavior like that is totally to be expected. Why even be surprised?
Idk what reason youd have to buy that and its honestly irrelevant. Just because a company is known for being shit doesnt mean we should just accept it and start calling people stupid when they get fucked over.
“Oh you decided to get treatment from USA Medicality Corp. Inc. and they killed you and your entire family. Damn youre such an idiot theyve been killing families for years!” is a bad take if you ask me. The company should be held liable for their actions.
I never paid for a single Microsoft product.
I get your point but why is ignorance to be accepted but corpo behavior isn’t? I mean sure, fuck MS for that, but who is really surprised by a US-company enshittifying their already bad crap? Can only be people who don’t really know what they’re doing there. Which is ignorance.
Your example kinda lacks in the regard that everyone needs insurance but noone needs Microsoft office. Otherwise same point (assuming there’d be a good free healthcare alternative): if you died because you’re ignorant to the things that matter in this world, and you refused to educate or inform yourself beforehand… Well?
If I leave my front door wide open, I can’t be surprised when someone comes in and robs me blind. Just because I don’t know burglaries exist.
Not sure why they’re idiots, trying to go the non-sub option is smart, doesn’t vote for subs. Microsoft is the asshole here.
Not sure why OP is sitting here tanking these hits, but I don’t think OP meant to call people who bought perpetual licenses to Office idiots. I think they’re saying that Microsoft thinks they’re idiots. Still, OP should have clarified that or at least answered at least one person who asked.
Because it’s a repost.
If you go to the original, OP actually has the top comment explaining exactly that: “idiots” refers to MS treating their customers as such, not a judgement by OP.
Idiots?
I’m not one of them, but what makes them idiots? Seems kind of uncalled for.
It just wouldn’t be a lemmy post without a smug sense of superiority.
Agreed. I don’t know if this is the term for it, but I’ve been thinking of all this as “signaling disrespect,” a deliberate attempt to make people think of their peers as lesser, as other.
I feel like either people have been conditioned to do this online all the time for some reason, or maybe there’s some directed attack against civility. I don’t know. But I refuse to let myself be affected by it. I won’t hate people.
I suppose you’re right, in certain communities.
That’s what I’m thinking
I bought the win version, because I have a five year old win 10 computer I’m using until win 10 is no longer supported, and I can’t get office for free anymore.
When win 10 is no longer supported, that’s a Linux computer.
Would I be an idiot, if they cancelled support for mine? I guess so. I’m waiting for some edgelord to tell me I am, probably accompanied by y0u sH00d jUsT g0 LinUx n0w
Yeah, no rush.
Come on over to the Linux side when it suits you. You’re welcome to the family when you’re ready and that computer is ready. 🤟
Certainly will be, this is definitely the last windows I’m running. Cheers.
It was my sons school computer and it’s running education which for win 10 I have been happy with. One son has ditched win 11 and is running Bazzite now. The other is wound back to win 10 I think, but he’ll move
I’m in the process of deciding which distro to move on; I manage my sons NDIS so that’s front and centre; security of federal government records and claims.
Unless you have a specific use case in mind, or have a particular distribution that interests you, I can wholeheartedly recommend Fedora (GNOME or KDE version, either is good). I’ve not had any issues with it for a few years (I think I had some trouble with it in 2022, but nothing since then).
Thank you, not exactly no, just stable and secure.
I don’t game on it, just book keeping and I do a bit of correspondence. But yeah I need security because the federal government require me to keep records and I make claims through their portal. That’s particularly important now that what I’ve been doing for the last five years will soon become federal law.
The other thing is I’m not fond of allowing the American tech giants access to those parts of my records. Fortunately excel isn’t required for it. At this time the only American tech involved with it is MS.
I suppose they call them idiots because they trusted microslop’s “eternal” definition and even paid for it when there are FOSS alternatives?
A: gets scammed by company
B: You’re so stupid, you should have known that company was going to scam you.
As if Microsoft was founded just yesterday and wasn’t scamming everyone at everything for like decades, right?
They don’t have a history of undoing perpetual licenses though. I mean, I know people who still use a licensed copy of office 2000
Now they have. The point is, if you trust that company for whatever reason, it’s your problem. What makes you believe they’re to be trusted? That they changed? There’s nothing that indicates that, yet people keep not just using their
unprofessionalincompetent code glued stack, they pay money for it.Oftentimes it’s not a choice. Microsoft office is a de facto standard in many professional contexts.
I personally avoid using Microsoft products whenever I can but that doesn’t mean everybody has that luxury.And I cannot blame anyone buying a perpetual licence when the alternative is a subscription.
And those customers shouldn’t have been dressed like that!
I’m not defending this action from Microsoft, but for most people, they buy a Microsoft product and then happily use it for years, none the wiser to any of Microsoft’s other nonsense happening in the background.
Coming from a background where software is usually pirated and not paid for (which I don’t support now), it’s a special kind of weird to pay for that shite. I mean, who could have guessed? Me personally, I have no empathy for those. Go buy the next license from Microsoft, I guess. Till they screw you again.
If you pay for something, pay for quality. I understand people who buy Apple stuff, it’s not even overpriced when you consider all the factors. Windows people are fooling themselves, and it’s really fun to watch. ‘Idiots’ is the right word in my book. So I vibe with the title, it’s more correct than the Verge’s one.
Not saying that I agree with the title, just explaining what I think was the reason.
Although one could say that trusting microslop to keep their word after what we’ve seen them do in the last years is… foolish to say the least.
They probably still came out ahead with 7 years of use without paying subscriptions to Microsoft.
Still not what they paid for though. 😐
I’m not one of them, but what makes them idiots? Seems kind of uncalled for.
It’s obviously a play on the common phrase that the honest guy ends up being the idiot. Not because the honest guy is stupid but because the honesty ends up backfiring. It’s used all the time in video game DRM contexts.
It was obviously not obvious to me, but okay. I’ll take your word for it. 🙃
Anyone who pays to install software from a spyware company is incredibly naive to say the least
Must be like the vast majority of everyone alive that uses some kind of tech these days, then. 🤷♂️ I just felt like the title is over the top a little bit. If it had been in a comment it would’ve made me react less for some reason. 😄
I get it. You’re absolutely right it doesn’t make them idiots. Even I’m being hyperbolic to an extent. The real issue is much bigger and doesn’t stop at Microsoft. I get why people feel so powerless and end up going along with the status quo. Really, the fact that we’ve allowed it is more of a reflection on our collective Idiocracy.
It’s only morning here but I feel like this comment is the best interaction online I’m gonna have today.
Great response. And not because you agree with me but because it was even way more insightful than what I said.
Have a good one, friend. 🫶
I’d argue trying to avoid yet another subscription by paying upfront was an honest and good faith strategy. The problem was assuming Microsoft also acts in good faith, and wouldn’t just take the money and run like they have just 7 years in.
Honestly for things like this, I would struggle to be convinced that these folks aren’t entirely within their right to take back what they already bought in good faith by pirating it.
Microsoft constantly punishes any idiot who ever bought anything from them.
