Microsoft's Czech Unit Reportedly Confirms Office for iOS Coming in March 2013 [Updated]

Office on iOS would certainly be a killer app, but I doubt Microsoft would want to detract from the attractiveness of their own tablet platform.

However, whether they sell office on iOS or on Windows 8 RT, they're still making money, so in the end MS might just wind up being content not dominating the tablet hardware/OS market. (I hope they trounce the hell out of those ghastly Android tablets though)

There is no better solution.

iWork is a joke, and was left in the dust. It lacks so much functionality and support compared to Office.

gregwyattjr said:

I wonder how Office will fair against iWork. I can't imagine Microsoft building a better suite for iOS than Apple.

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It depends. iWork has a limited functionality, while it offers a good cross-device compatibility as long as you use iWork on these devices. It just doesn't work too well with MS Office, which makes it a bit hard to work with iWork on your iOS device while using MS Office on your Mac. If Microsoft manages to release an iOS version that works really well with the MS Office suite, it must be quite successful.

ChrisTX said:

I thought Symbian was either dead or a discontinued platform? Not sure why Microsoft would bother developing for it.

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I was thinking the exact same thing.

Take your time Microsoft. IOS has only been around for 5+ years

This is long over due... I do not look forward to seeing the price tag on it though...

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locust76 said:

However, whether they sell office on iOS or on Windows 8 RT, they're still making money, so in the end MS might just wind up being content not dominating the tablet hardware/OS market. (I hope they trounce the hell out of those ghastly Android tablets though)

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There is so much potential for it though... In terms of profit, especially from iPad users. I would love to be able to type papers and manipulate excel documents from my iPad.

I'm going out on a limb here to say - yes, it is coming... sorta.

I'm guessing we won't see a standalone Office app. I expect what we'll see is a front-end client to something that has to run on a Windows box somewhere. That would be similar to how WinRT is going to "run" a number of apps (although, interestingly, there is supposed to be a native Office for WinRT).

Yes, that will make it much less useful - but Microsoft has repeatedly demonstrated it's all about protecting Windows, even if you end up shooting yourself in the foot.

Sounds like they're pretty confident in their Windows RT tablets.

Want300 said:

This is long over due... I do not look forward to seeing the price tag on it though...

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There is so much potential for it though... In terms of profit, especially from iPad users. I would love to be able to type papers and manipulate excel documents from my iPad.

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There is a ton of potential and I agree, it would be awesome to have Office across all my iDevices. It just might be a somewhat touchy subject with the Surface coming out this month though.

But then again, we're so used to these big companies creating insulated ecosystems, maybe MS wants to throw a curveball by introducing their own tablet + OS and at the same time blow everybody out of the water with cross-platform releases of mobile Office?

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Giuly said:

Sounds like they're pretty confident in their Windows RT tablets.

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When my wife's laptop dies, I'm going to replace it with a Windows RT tablet. She doesn't need an i5 with 4 GB of RAM to check her email.

I hope it has that black and white icon. That would be hilarious.

edk99 said:

Take your time Microsoft. IOS has only been around for 5+ years

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Yea but who is going to be working on a tiny screen without a keyboard.

BornAgainMac said:

Office on Windows 8 tablets will probably be much better. Don't believe me, look what happened with Office on the Mac.

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Sigh.

It's too bad. Such a feature-rich product that runs like a piece of crap on OS X.

Good Strategy

Bringing office to iOS is a great strategy considering they're probably going to make more money from that than their upcoming doomed "Surface" tablet. The Windows phone has been a big failure (although I wish it was Apple's #2 competitor instead of Android but oh well) and their tablet is way too late to the game to make a big difference. Has Microsoft even said when they're going to start selling the device? Or how much it's going to cost? For all of the complaints about Apple being "secretive" at least when they hold a media event they tell you when you can buy the product they're announcing (and how much it is).

Dwalls90 said:

There is no better solution.

iWork is a joke, and was left in the dust. It lacks so much functionality and support compared to Office.

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Unfortunately, you are right. There is no better solution, but Microsoft Office, as a whole, is a subpar piece of software.

Not sure how I feel about this one. I mean I did want it when I first got my iPad, but Pages seems to be doing just fine for me now (especially with iCloud!)

My gut tells me the app/apps will be...

FREE

Want to create/save? Office 365 subscription required.

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nrose101 said:

Not sure how I feel about this one. I mean I did want it when I first got my iPad, but Pages seems to be doing just fine for me now (especially with iCloud!)

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Agreed. As a lifetime Mac user (at home, stuck with Windows/Office at work) I love how I can create a document on my Mac, save it to iCloud, and pull it up/edit on my iPhone/iPad. Though the iOS versions are not (yet?) as full featured as the desktop versions.

Paul. Paul. Paul.

Universal language support

I hope that spelling support will be included globally.

Fairthrope said:

You just won't get a bigger bang for buck in software industry than Eastern Europe. Maybe that's where the project has been delegated to.

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I'm not questioning where MS is doing the development . . . it's how they handle the PR. Just odd that a worldwide product, and one probably initially aimed at US users, is being "announced" through some oddball Czech publication.

Dwalls90 said:

There is no better solution.

iWork is a joke, and was left in the dust. It lacks so much functionality and support compared to Office.

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I worked in IT for 20 years and used the Microsoft products all during that time. For most of what the average person, as well as the average office worker, will ever need to do iWork is great. Not every piece of software should be able to do everything under the sun, that's bloatware, and MS is great at producing software like that. Office is overkill and unnecessary for the majority of people who use it, plus the interface is pants!

...Mac OS, Android, iOS and Symbian,"

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What a waste of resources. Symbian, really? Is this a typo? I know Symbian once had respectable marketshare but at the rate most people update their smartphones, not many Symbian users will be left in 2013.

Also, didn't Microsoft say they will just update Office for OS X, not release a new version for 2013:

According to The Verge, the explanation is simple: Microsoft currently has no plans to release Office 2013 for Mac. ”We haven’t announced the next release of Office for Mac,” a Microsoft spokesperson told the site. Microsoft does reportedly have plans to bring new SkyDrive cloud storage features to Office 2011 for Mac in a future update.

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http://www.bgr.com/2012/07/18/microsoft-office-2013-mac-plans/

i'm quite happy with Pages/Numbers/Keynotes, but happy for those who were finally looking forward to MS Office.

Le Big Mac said:

I'm not questioning where MS is doing the development . . . it's how they handle the PR. Just odd that a worldwide product, and one probably initially aimed at US users, is being "announced" through some oddball Czech publication.

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Oh, that. Sorry.

And for why the Czech them did the announcement, my guess is that they though Redmond office has too many things on the plate and they don't want to wait in line for the announcement.

If they really have the product and can put the word out as fast as the head office can, then by all means.

WilliamLondon said:

I worked in IT for 20 years and used the Microsoft products all during that time. For most of what the average person, as well as the average office worker, will ever need to do iWork is great. Not every piece of software should be able to do everything under the sun, that's bloatware, and MS is great at producing software like that. Office is overkill and unnecessary for the majority of people who use it, plus the interface is pants!

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Idk about you or your company, but I can't do half the things with pages that I can with word, ect.

Office isn't amazing, but it's best

Microsoft Office for iPad was one of the apps I was most excited about earlier this year. However, after seeing Office for Windows 8 in touch mode in several videos (e.g.: the video by Ross Miller from The Verge and the video by Ed Bott from ZDNet), my excitement has dwindled. It seems to me that rather than giving folks the "best of both worlds" with Windows 8 that they are doing the worst of both worlds. I have no confidence that an iOS version of Office would be any more touch-friendly than the desktop-mode versions we see in Windows RT demonstrations. Microsoft's idea of "touch mode" is making the icons bigger and putting more space in between them. However, there is so much more that can be done with an app when you know it is being used for a touch input. Microsoft's problem is that Windows 8 is designed to support both touch and mouse input and because of that, neither is optimized.

I fully believe that Microsoft Office for iOS would sell better than Windows 8 RT, but I also believe it will be a huge disappointment. This is coming from a guy who was willing to spend upwards of $100 on an iOS Office suite just six months ago.

I feel I am now consigned to choosing between a nice touch interface via iWork with limited functionality or tons of functionality and a cruddy interface to use it. Keynote is the only good iWork app on iPad, Pages is okay and Numbers is downright annoying. The worst thing about iWork/iCloud syncing is opening a document and having the iOS version tell you it is going to dumb-down your document and asking you if you want to work in a copy. I had this happen with a simple book I was writing in Pages -- the book had nothing but paragraphs and words (nothing fancy). iWork for iOS is still great for "on the go", but I wanted to be great as a "primary platform" and I want it to be completely document-compatible with its Mac counterparts via iCloud document syncing.