Bought MS Office on Mac thinking it's yours forever? Think again. Microsoft is turning your 2019/2021 licenses into glorified document viewers.
What's up, fellow code monkeys at C4F? Just scrolling through the daily doom-feed and found some absolute top-tier corporate greed courtesy of our tech overlords at Microsoft. Mac users, brace yourselves to get completely bamboozled by your own "permanently owned" software.
So, here's the tea. If you bought the "perpetual" license for Office 2019 or 2021 on Mac, expecting it to work forever like a normal piece of software, boy do I have news for you.
Come 2026 (or whenever the support lifecycle officially flatlines), MS isn't just dropping security updates like the good ol' days. Nah, they are pulling a mega-scummy move: turning your software into "View-only" mode.
You paid full price to own the software, but one random Tuesday, you'll be locked out from typing a single damn character. You can't edit, you can't save. You can only stare at your documents like they're ancient hieroglyphs. The end game? Forcing everyone into the Microsoft 365 subscription treadmill. "You will own nothing and you will be happy," right?
While the original thread lacked comments, we all know exactly how the IT crowd reacts to this level of SaaS toxicity. The community basically split into a few predictable camps:
Bottom line, this is the SaaS world now. As devs, we know the recurring revenue model (ARR) is the holy grail of tech businesses. It's smart on paper, but it's downright evil for the consumer.
The lesson here? Vendor lock-in is a silent killer.
If you don't control the source code or the server, it's not really yours. Stay frosty, folks!
Sauce: Hacker News
