Microsoft to snatch Visio app away from iOS users this summer Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away. As we wrote, the enterprise software giant this week surprised Mac users by making its Outlook for Mac app free to use. Users can download the app from the Apple App Store and get to work on their email account – Outlook, iCloud, Google, whatever – without needing a Microsoft 365 …
Thanks, Microsoft, you've just made things easier for me. I have two Visio Pro licences, one on my main PC and the other on my laptop, but occasionally have to look at diagrams on my iPhone. My work is switching everyone to Macs, and I wondered how to keep Visio. Now I realise I neither want to nor need to if it's yet another product that I paid for that I now need to pay for again via a subscription.
Just grab Omnigraffle from the Omni Group.
The Pro version can also read and write Visio so you get a better UI, and there is an iOS version (it even works on an iPhone, although I have no idea who would want that).
Been using it for years (basically from when Microsoft got its paws on Visio and destroyed its previous rather good usability). No need to immediately part with your money: the Mac version can run in trial mode for two weeks.
The Mac version comes in a pay monthly and pay once model, iOS sadly only with a subscription.
No, they're not paying me - it's just stuff that works. Bonus feature is that it is also able to make Visio diagrams look MUCH better, but best hide that or people on Visio may get jealous :).
Whatever. "Looking at diagrams on my iPhone" is not being removed, and does not require a license. It doesn't even require an active internet connection.
There is something to complain about in the announcement if you want: you must have a (free) MS account, which you must connect to once a month. And you must have the files in your "one drive" folder on your device (although not necessarily actually present in the cloud). That's enough to complain about without having to make stuff up.
No, that's the main problem with Microsoft en Windows: as soon as something good appears, they buy it or steal the concept and then butcher the UI into oblivion. Visio worked exactly because it was simple, but MS pretty much destroyed its functionality when its "experts" got their hands on it and stuffed it with rubbish that only someone who doesn't actually use it for Real Work would deem important :(.
> MS pretty much destroyed its functionality
And took all the "difficult" stuff out of the manual, even though it got a lot thicker.
I also recall their guys telling me that I could move from my Visio Corps branded copy to the next MS branded release at the lower upgrade price and promising that it would be kosher - only for the upgrade installer to demand the serial number from the original CD. But pre-MS Visio didn't *have* a s/n on the CD or on the box. I still have that upgrade CD sitting around here somewhere, as a testament to my naivety (both Visio and the upgrade were personal copies, quite pricey for an individual at the time).
I know Omnigraffle can be automated but due to the need to support this across MacOS as well as iOS I think there's only one direct language for it (Javascript) but there are even weblink integrations which would allow you to grab data straight off sites complete with credential support for authentication.
As for Inkscape, it appears scripting is indeed possible via an extension. Looks interesting.
” the integration with services like OneDrive and SharePoint will break”
Looking at what Abhinav Chatterjee has published, the added functionality more correctly sits in the Onedrive File Explorer and not in the viewer app, as it would be beneficial to all accesses to the Onedrive file store regardless of application being used.
Or is this just another example of MS breaking links with the past just to force 365 subscription take up…
Or is this just another example of MS breaking links with the past just to force 365 subscription take up…
It couldn't possibly be. Sadly, Visio became pretty much the industry standard in telecomms. It used to be easy to just download a copy of Visio Viewer to check a diagram on a device that didn't have a Visio licence on it. But that's too easy. So now there'll be network engineers working on faults that might want to check a diagram. But can't because the fault is the Internet is down. Or Microsoft is down.
Yey! Progress!
But despite some of it's.. quirks, it had some nice features. Like you could create models of optical devices that were modular, then add in attributes for Tx/Rx optics, fibre characteristics and it made it quick and easy to run through link budgets and designs. Or just click on a router and it'd show you config details from the last time the diagram was updated. It always amazed me that so many allegdly tech-savvy telecomms businesses insisted every 'network' had a diagram. Cloud, lines, router icons. Box ticked! Then insist that those diagrams be manually updated, even when by automated change request systems that network engineers had no access to. No problem, we'll add an email notification so you can copy & paste from Outlook into your Visio diagram. Once you've figured out how to shuffle everything around so any new data fits, and wrestled with MS's pseudo-integrated font & style matching. Obviously it makes sense for an IPv6 address to be written in WingDings on your network diagram.
Rant over. Despite Visio having had the ability to add metadata, and even pull it from networks for years, I've yet to find a telecomms company that actually does this. Got close a few times, but kinda gave up after sending many diagrams to clients. Then hearing them ask 'Where are the IP addresses?".. Just click on the router..
I think the demise of the user guide and reference manuals has done much to hide functionality. With Visio it always irritated me that stencil libraries always tended to undocumented, so Cisco et al thanks for the stencils but beyond basic “PowerPoint”presentation usage little real value.
...so Cisco et al thanks for the stencils but beyond basic “PowerPoint”presentation usage little real value.
Yep, those were what gave me the idea. Looking through the stencils, realising you could actually slot cards into chassis and create proper as-builts. Then that Visio supported VB or VB script. Then figuring out how to combine those two features to create an ability to automate diagram production. Then discovering there's a ton of stuff about VB online, but not much about how to use that inside Visio, or integrate it with other Telecomms essential OSS like Excel so it could generate stuff from spreadsheets, and even export to a spreadsheet.
Probably would be easier if I were a decent programmer, but I kludged something together in the end. But that became another of those reasons why I'm glad I'm semi-retired. Every VPN must have a diagram. The pre-sales function must populate and maintain the diagram. Configuration and address assignments is a provisioning activity, and pre-sales in telcos generally don't have access to internal address assignments to avoid assigning dupe addresses. The generic cloud in a VPN must show the 'routing table', yet the routing table is generated by the routers, which you don't want everyone having access to. You can, however query the routing table, and you already have a config backup system (well, sometimes they did) that exports configs to text files.
So those telcos seemed to think it was a really good use of resources to have a lot of manual processes to generate something that rarely got used, or could be trusted. But ISO says we must have a process for everything, and the process says diagram! And people wonder why a lot of ISPs and Telcos went bust..
You went a lot further than I did, I saw the potential, but as it was a very minor part of my work never encountered it sufficiently to warrant getting to grips with it. Another place where Visio with added “fizz” would be of benefit is in rack cabinet configuration and maintenance.
Another place where Visio with added “fizz” would be of benefit is in rack cabinet configuration and maintenance.
Tried that, but had fun with scaling objects to neatly fit in racks. Instead went with a simpler approach, like a generalised rack build. Then got small digital cameras for field engineers and had taking before and after photos of the racks they're working on every visit. Was easier to just add comments in paintbrush. Was sometimes fun with more secure datacentres that didn't want photos or recording devices in the halls. Or as technology marched on, could take good pics with a mobile phone, but more places banned mobile phones than cameras.
Those policies also kinda got fun. No phone, so no ability to contact the NOC. Except we're the phone company. Just add a VoIP port to the management switch and a TA so the field engineer had a hotline to the NOC. Took a bit of datamining to demonstrate how the ability for FE's to run voice or video calls from the rack was a lot more resource efficient than expecting them to leave the rack, trudge to wherever the phone was permitted, and trudge back again. Especially as the parts needed were typically <$50, so a pretty good deal compared to an FE's time cost, or SLA penalties.
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Additionally with App Store controlled apps, there are limitations on reinstall, which seem to be increasingly used.
Just had this frustration with an app I installed during lockdown on one iPad, decided I needed it on another (same user account) and discovered it was now region locked and thus inaccessible to me. I suppose it could have been worse and had the now region locked app quietly removed from my device…
Word on an iPad is so cut down it's almost verging on infringing the (UK) Trade Descriptions Act. Loads of stuff is missing, it should really be branded a Lite/Essentials version that maybe, ooh, they could give away? I bought one of those lovely (and, gosh, expensive) keyboards for an iPad thinking I could use it instead of my Mac on the road. But obviously whoever cut the iPad version of Word decided otherwise, and clearly doesn't think us serfs caught in M$ net have the right to actually want to use Word on iOS.
Worked for several companies which had a free, view only, printing enabled version of their main product. Everyone hated it because it was a lot of work for no return. Even the users hated it because it was invariably buggy and never had the same functionality of the main product (duh!). I know you can argue that it 'increases the reach of the product' etc but, back in the real world, that is never the case. There are *always* options to export the data in a commonly accepted format eg pdf, csv, jpg, png etc
> Everyone hated it because it was a lot of work
Huh? You make it sound like the viewer was a treated as a completely separate program, rather than just the normal product with the edit and/or save functions simply switched off by a few #ifdef lines (or a swap for a different ui module in the Makefile or ... you get the idea).
That is certainly the way the way we did it for the shrinkwrap products.
Or even ship the reader as the exact same executable with the edit/save disabled until you bought a licence key (or pointed it a licence server).
One product had lot of third party libs which we weren't allowed to ship as part of a free product due to licensing restrictions. All the products were hugely complicated with lots of interdependencies, APIs and plugins.
However you restrict the functionality, you have immediately doubled your dev+test+installation+documentation+support+etc load for no return. It's simpler and cleaner to have some export ability to a common format.
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