Microsoft Office for iOS Said to Launch in Early 2013, Offer Only Basic Functionality

This is good news, honestly. I'm all for third party apps doing this job, and other apps doing the job of Office apps in parallel. But the reality for so many people in business is a standardization on MS Office, for better or worse. It's a good plan to support your format on the most popular mobile platform if you plan on retaining any sort of dominance in a 5 to 10 year game plan.

Pages to Word 2010 Experience is quite good!

Glassed Silver said:

Yea, but they all suck.

Glassed Silver:mac

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My experience shows me seamless back and forth from Pages to Word 2010 on my PC via Box.net. I'm not a the heaviest Word processor, but I frequently develop Court documents and letters without one single problem in compatibility.

My experience with Pages doesn't suck at all. I expected far less compatibility and more problems and instead, I've found none.

A few of the partners at our firm (and we have picky ones) use their iPad for word processing the same way. We don't do much work with Numbers or Keynote, but haven't had as much need for those types of document development on the iPad.

I too believe that MS should make as great a product as they can. Unfortunately, it's all about making money and doing the basic functionality with a subscription will problem bring them in quite a bit of cash. If it doesn't, they'll have rethink their strategy. I hope they have time to do all that.

And they will still charge $150 for it

Are you really all that surprised ?

Microsoft are not going to give potential Office users with a tablet a reason to choose IOS or Android over a Windows RT or Pro device.

Windows RT needs all the push it can get right now, and Office RT is a convincing argument in that push.

y so long?

and i want microsoft onenote for mac!

1080p said:

So... Microsoft is going to kick 30% to Apple for subscriptions to the Office 365 service? Isn't part of the T&C of the AppStore?

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This would only happen if subscription was linked to inside the App. If it is not mentioned or linked in the App itself then it will not get the Apple tax. It will just piss off everyone who try's to use it.

I see all the 1 start ranting now...

"Sux, can't use at all."

"What's with the login M$, this is broken"

"Doesn't take by Microsoft ID, broken"

"To eveyone who's bitching about not being able log in, this requires a yearly subscription to Office 365. M$ crappy website. 1 star for a crippled subscription piece junk. I'm going back to Pages/Keynote/Numbers."

And so on.

Everything on iOS IS "only basic functionality" so what else is new.

I'm not surprised.. Surface coming out with the full office ended my expectations for office for Android and iOS. Why would they bother making something that diminishes the #1 selling point for their own tablet OS?

They'd rather sell 1 Tablet with OS and Office, together with the many apps the user will buy as well as other content through their online store, than just 1 copy of office for iOS.

I'm sure they will make it clumsy, hard to use, have limited features. And they're Microsoft, they're good at botching things .

MacRumors said:

According to the report, Office Mobile for iOS and Android will launch in early 2013 but will not offer anything close a true Office experience, with the editing functionality it does offer coming through an Office 365 subscription.

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Office 365 subscription starts at $4/month, which includes hosted email that I don't need at all. I sincerely hope Microsoft will offer cheaper plan ($10/year) without email.

All this time in development for a glorified file viewer? Seems pointless. I'd be first in line to buy something more substantial, but then Microsoft now has it's own tablet to worry about.

Thanks, MS. I'll stick with iWork. Day after day, MS Office is becoming less relevant. Be careful, Mr. Balmer... that's your bread and butter there. You're forcing people to find other solutions rather than buying yours.

Limited native support is still better than any of the options still out there. Switching back and forth via Pages is not a reasonable alternative for me. I'll be picking this up--not being able to work with Word and PPT files is the only thing keeping me from going 100% iPad

BoxOfSnoo said:

Um, no. It's like Office (Pro) but rented for a year, on 5 machines. It's not that bad a deal, actually.

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You are both right. Office 365 is 2 products.

One is the traditional software that is installed on microcomputers. The other is a web browser based suite. Both are subscription only.

Skydrive has the same web apps for free. They supposedly work on iOS, but Word keeps crashing Safari on my 1st gen iPad.

Overview -> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/what-is-office365.aspx
Plan details and rates -> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/compare-plans.aspx

Kaibelf said:

That's all I needed to hear. Time to download Pages and such. MS, I'm done.

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lol of course they will do this cause the7 dont want ios to kill off their own surface device over MS office..lol

bigjnyc said:

I'm surprised Apple is not placing a call to Microsoft to try and work out something a little better for iOS devices..... Having a close to fully functioning Office Suite on the ipad and iPhone could really push these devices into the enterprise stratosphere, and give Apple a huge boost. But perhaps they dont really care that much about it, and instead believe numbers and pages can some day be relevant in the business world.

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MS is the one moving to a subscription model (for all variants of Office) in the future. Why in the world would they work with Apple when that is going to be a huge financial boon because of all the people that think Office apps are the only ones that "do word, excel, and powerpoint".

I work for the geeksquad and the vast majority of clients don't know about things like LibreOffice, they think any word processing is a "word" document.

Apple should just pull the iWork apps out of the kiddie corner and develop some serious support for the xml based office standard file standards such as docx, pptx and xlsx with some great editing features and we can forget about office.

Most Mac people only use Office because of file compatibility and limited functionality of iWork in some respects (especially Numbers).

Pages gaining change tracking and commenting features on iOS would be great. How many apps have any sort of change tracking functionality on iOS? I can think of one but that is it (one of those third party Office suites). The Google docs website does too but you'd have to hate yourself to use that (errors constantly and very slow).

Microsoft Money Bite

Why bother with Office for iOS? Docs to Go already does more than what MS is offering, as does Quickoffice. Plus Pages, Numbers and Keynote from Apple. Simply Don't need it, certainly if a subscription is required.

Been waiting for Office on iOS.

jc1350 said:

You are both right. Office 365 is 2 products.

One is the traditional software that is installed on microcomputers. The other is a web browser based suite. Both are subscription only.

Skydrive has the same web apps for free. They supposedly work on iOS, but Word keeps crashing Safari on my 1st gen iPad.

Overview -> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/what-is-office365.aspx
Plan details and rates -> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/compare-plans.aspx

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Those links are a little confusing. Here's what I understand:

1) Office 365 is currently pretty much just like Google Docs + mail. A few other higher-end cloud services too.

2) With 2013, they are going to have a (new?) subscription for $99/yr that includes the web apps but also the actual native versions of Office Pro, which includes Access and Outlook. (PC) You can install on up to 5 machines.

3) Office Mac has not been announced yet, those that subscribe to Office 365 including Office 2013 as above will have licenses for Office 2011 on their Macs.

4) Boxed single-user copies of Office 2013 are still going to be available, but the price will be going up, to push a better revenue stream of the subscription model.

only basic stuff ?

Figures..... But maybe it will get better with a "full version"

It can be done.....

Office 2013 Previews nice too in Windows.

Skydrive all the way....

Rudy69 said:

Took this long to offer "basic functionality"? Why bother then? There's already applications that can open Office documents.

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And edit, and markup. I will keep DocumentsToGo as it is great little program for ms documents etc.

xraydoc said:

All this time in development for a glorified file viewer? Seems pointless. I'd be first in line to buy something more substantial, but then Microsoft now has it's own tablet to worry about.

Thanks, MS. I'll stick with iWork. Day after day, MS Office is becoming less relevant. Be careful, Mr. Balmer... that's your bread and butter there. You're forcing people to find other solutions rather than buying yours.

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Under what basis is Office becoming less relevant? I think it's pretty obvious that its as popular as it's ever been.

It can work if MS allow companies their own private storage for documents. Public clouds for enterprise don't work with all the legal constraints and regulations. Waiting for more details but not big hope.

Any funny: Apple get 30% of MS office subscription; now that's cool.

BoxOfSnoo said:

Please explain.

I have Office2 but found it a little buggy. Is Pages not stable, or is it just the interface you don't like?

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Main pain: no customizable templates ... For business work needed ... And copy&paste don't count

Rudy69 said:

Took this long to offer "basic functionality"? Why bother then? There's already applications that can open Office documents.

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exactly what I was thinking.

What is the cost of this...free?

Dollar short & a day late again...

Keeping up with expectations.