[quantumwannabe]

They haven't really added anything to Office since 2013, the last pre-subscription version. There were massive changes between Office 98 and 2013, including entirely new programs like OneNote. They just found a way to get their customers to rebuy the same product every year.

Same thing happened with Adobe and CS6; feature development slowed to a crawl after the change to a subscription.

[dabockster]

> the last pre-subscription version

Heads up that you can still buy perpetual licenses to Office either directly from Microsoft or through other sellers throughout the internet.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

[tombert]

They're routinely cheap on Groupon as well, often under $30.https://www.groupon.com/deals/world-office-standard-2024

Not that I want to encourage people to keep using Microsoft products.

[tombert]

About three years ago, I had a Macbook and I wanted to play with Flash/Animate again.

I went to Adobe's website, and couldn't find a non-subscription version to just buy, so I actually contacted customer support about it, and they said "nope, you have to pay for a subscription".

I could have of course sailed the high seas, but I opted to just buy a copy of Toonboom Harmony, which is fairly different than Flash but close enough and still offers perpetual licenses (and shockingly works pretty well with Wine/Proton on Linux).

[JBits]

People still appear to use Flash these days by downloading an old version and getting a license key from Reddit/YouTube/etc.

[KapKap66]

Are you sure it still offers perpetual licenses? Because I just checked the Toonboom site and didn't see any.

Maybe you got in before they enshittified too :)?

[actuallyalys]

The pace has probably slowed down, but problem isn't so much that they're not adding anything, it's that the additions are either somewhat niche (e.g., new Excel formulas), don't work as well as they should (e.g., syncing), or are confusing (e.g., the new Outlook that lives alongside "classic" Outlook).

[wqaatwt]

Multiple people being able to edit the same file simultaneously with no or minimal issues is pretty bug, though…

[awesan]

It generally doesn't work though. There are usually huge delays to the point of it being unusable.

[JBits]

Can confirm as someone who was using pre-subscription Office to write/read files while everyone else at work was using the 365 version. Now that I'm using 365 too, I do however appreciate the ability to do shared live editing in the office programs.

[kryogen1c]

> 2013, the last pre-subscription version

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

I found this using my secret inside IT knowledge: searched "buy office perpetual" on the internet.

I know microsoft is the evil soulless megacorp on HN, but the least you could do is attack them for true things instead of totally made up, has-never-ever-been-true things.

[TiredOfLife]

There have been huge changes and improvements in Excel

[dsp_person]

now I wanna try running office 2013 in wine

running a VM just for occasional office use is annoying to deal with

edit: activation is probs the main issue