undefined

points

[-]

The biggest moat with applications like MS Office is compatibility. Sharing a slide deck or spreadsheet with others is a simple decision, you know they have it or have software that can read/write it.

I don't get the need to have Anthropic build their custom versions of MS Office apps, I can tell Claude to generate a word doc from a wiki page and it does a pretty damn good job. Anthropic's statistical median level of software that they had Claude create isn't going to replace Office apps to the point where companies cancel/stop renewing their MS Office subscriptions/licenses.

The other element is trust. Do end users trust their data in Anthropic's systems? A lot of people get creeped out when they search for content from one device in their household and then nearly instantaneously they start seeing ads from other devices on the same topic. How creepy will AI get if it starts consuming all your docs, spreadsheets, personal finance info, emails, etc.?

by abirch46 minutes ago|

prev|

[-]

End-user software is going to be under a lot of pressure. If you're Microsoft, Apple, or Google: you can easily copy products or integrate ideas into their platform. I see companies like Adobe, Salesforce, and Oracle having to downsize significantly to stay profitable. Having said that, my in-laws still pay for an AOL email so I don't think their cashflow is going to zero soon.

by mxschumacher36 minutes ago|

parent|

[-]

Adobe seems to be in a tough spot, because so much of the lock-in is client side, I think Salesforce is fairly well protected, it's just so impossibly difficult to remove once a company has fully adopted it. Similar to the staying power of the ERPs of Oracle and SAP.

by numlock8625 minutes ago|

parent|

[-]

It's the same really. There have always been alternatives that can work with Adobe's various file formats. Even more aren't going to change much, at least for their enterprise key customers. This is not only the case for Adobe, but many others as well, e.g. MS office is still a thing these days, and so are things like 3Ds Max or Maya, albeit having many compatible cheaper or even free alternatives. It's not so much about features, pricing or even stability. It's about customer support. Do I want to ask an LLM and test my luck or write a GitHub issue and cross my fingers that someone will read it within the next weeks? No, I will pick up my phone or write a mail and get a response within hours if not minutes.

by tonyedgecombe7 minutes ago|

parent|

[-]

[delayed]

by brazukadev9 minutes ago|

parent|

prev|

[-]

> If you're Microsoft, Apple, or Google: you can easily copy products or integrate ideas into their platform

This argument doesn't hold water. Google tried like no one else to have a chat app and it failed miserably more than a handful of times. Same for social networks.

by grahamlee32 minutes ago|

prev|

[-]

now imagine that said customer/competitors have been uploading/generating their source code, problem reports, marketing collateral, and other IP _to the LLM company_ for the last few years.