Microsoft Office, and Another 'Death of' Article

"Headlines Predict Death of MS-Office"
John C. Dvorak, Office Suites, Productivity, Software, Product Guides, PCMag.com (September 7, 2011)

"I don't know if you've noticed, but Microsoft Office is pretty tired. All of its elements are old and boring. PowerPoint, except for the addition of a few templates, has never fulfilled its promise. Microsoft never seriously jazzed it up and a PowerPoint presentation from a decade ago barely differs from a PowerPoint presentation made today.

"The rest of the suite elements are just as bad, if not worse. The two Microsoft Word breakthroughs were Spell Check and Grammar Check. Both could use improvement, but Microsoft just sits back. If you think about it, what could it do?

"I'm guessing with the right creative team, many innovations could be considered, tested, and implemented. But Microsoft is the master of coasting while riding a winner. Unfortunately, the copycat suites have mostly caught up in both power and functionality...."

Okay. So far, this sounds like the same op-ed piece the Lemming keeps running into: [desktops/blogging/whatever] are dead because [spiffy new fad] will soon [revolutionize everything].

That sort of article isn't quite 'boiler plate,' but it's close. ("Boiler plate?" That's clerical talk for documents where the wording is always the same, except for stuff like names and numbers.)

Mr. Dvorak seems to have a bit more on the ball than the usual 'death of' writer. Take this, for instance, about Microsoft needing to abandon Windows:

"...It's like Maytag saying that it could not make money forever with washing machines.

"I heard this from everyone. The notion was apparently floated at some conference and taken as gospel by the parrots in the business. At about this time, a similar notion arose, which sent the message to Intel that the microprocessor market was dying; the company would need to invest in technologies like Wi-Fi. Intel spent far too much effort working on Wi-Fi and Wi-Max after everyone 'knew' that the company would flatline if it persisted with microprocessors...."

It's like the fellow said:

"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so." (attr. humorists Mark Twain,¹¹ Artemus Ward, Kin Hubbard, and Will Rogers; inventor Charles Kettering; pianist Eubie Blake; baseball player Yogi Berra (once, by Al Gore))

Vaguely-related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: The Continuing 'Death' of Blogging, Hula Hoops, and Getting a Grip"
  (August 28, 2011)
• "Milly Dowler, News of the World, and Old-School Journalism in the Information Age"
  (July 7, 2011)
• "Phone Hacks, Privacy, Pie-Throwing, and a Ranting Lemming"
  (July 19, 2011)
• "Blogging is Dead! Long Live Blogging!"
  (December 16, 2010)
• "Mammoth Ivory, Movie Star, Big Assumption"
  (August 7, 2010)