What can I do with the free ms apps that I can't already do with my similar iOS apps, PNK, from apple?
I think this is the key question as to the value proposition of 99$/yr.
I am sure that document compatibility is near 100% when using the native apps. Everything renders as it should and that is very important for many people.
People also like to think that Office for iPad costs 99$/year. This is only true if you don't care about what this subscription really offers:
- 5 licenses to install Office for Mac/PC
- Access to the latest Office version for PC and Mac
- 60 Sky minutes per month
- 20GB additional space on OneDrive
- Office for iPad in edit mode
When evaluating if this subscription is valuable for you, I think you should consider all of the above items. Of course, someone could just not be interested in this subscription, and then, in this case 99$/year are a lot of money just for Office editing on the iPad. Only if you value most of the items in the subscription, then it's worth it.
For me it was an easy choice. I cancelled Dropbox (which costed me 8$/year), and for that money I got an Office Home Premium subscription. It offers me so much more than Dropbox alone.
Of course I would prefer to use DropBox instead of OneDrive, but as long as it works ok, then I have no problem with it.
Additionally I use OneNote for my notes, I just love its user interface and the note layout options, even if it lacks in features compared to the Windows version..
All in all, I believe that the value proposition of Microsoft is a very good one. Just try to put things into perspective.