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Building upon a series of reports about Microsoft's apparent efforts to bring its Office productivity suite to iOS, The Verge last month shared a few screenshots and noted that the suite would be offered in early 2013 as a set of free apps with viewing abilities that could be upgraded with basic editing tools through a Microsoft 360 subscription. Microsoft has, however, been rather cryptic in its public comments on the Office for iOS project, leaving a number of questions about just what the company's plans are.

As noted by Mac4ever, references to several Office for iOS applications have begun creeping into Microsoft's support site, albeit as product tags that appear to have been applied improperly to support articles.

One example is a document addressing custom numeric formats in Excel. On the support site for the United States, the document is listed as applying to Excel 2013, while on the French support site it is incorrectly listed as applying to Excel for iPad. Searches for similar phrases throughout Microsoft's support site yield a number of other references, including "Excel for iPad", "PowerPoint for iPad", and "Office Mobile for iPhone".

office_mobile_microsoft_support.jpg
While the appearance of these new product tags doesn't offer any additional information on Microsoft's plans, it does seem to confirm the products' existence and that the company is working toward building out support site infrastructure for them ahead of their debut.

Article Link: Microsoft Leaks References to 'Office Mobile for iPhone', 'Excel for iPad' and 'PowerPoint for iPad'
 

Dwalls90

macrumors 603
Feb 5, 2009
5,426
4,391
I don't like Apple's iWork, and I completely use Apple software wherever possible. It's nice that it hooks into iCloud though.

Being an Office user on both OS X and Windows, this could be a great development. But I see it being both very expensive, and it will probably lack functionality.
 

Black Magic

macrumors 68030
Sep 30, 2012
2,787
1,492
Subscription based to edit? I'll pass. Is Office really needed these days?

The greedy monster that is Microsoft rises from the depths of the sea. Tokyo is that way!
 

gpat

macrumors 68000
Mar 1, 2011
1,864
4,975
Italy
In these occasions, I think that there is someone purposely leaking the rumor, then picking up a bag of pop corn and enjoying the news and comments.

Yes, I'm talking to you.
 

herocero

macrumors regular
Jan 23, 2003
148
127
down on the upside
yes this will be huge for iOS in general.

Yet I can't help but feel there would be a LOT of great word processor/spreadsheet/presentation applications (on all platforms) if there was better open document support that people and businesses actually use. Word compatibility in Pages was never that great for complex documents (headers, footers, TOC, etc.), Excel will never be replaced because of all those business critical VBA scripts. it's the worst kind of vendor lock in. rant over, thanks for listening.
 

AppleScruff1

macrumors G4
Feb 10, 2011
10,026
2,949
Hopefully Apple can do a good job job with their own office suite. Just like they did with maps. :eek:
 

Allenbf

macrumors 6502
Jul 7, 2012
351
0
Elsewhere, USA
Subscription based to edit? I'll pass. Is Office really needed these days?

The greedy monster that is Microsoft rises from the depths of the sea. Tokyo is that way!


My daughter has to have MS Office for school. She wants a laptop but I'm not willing to pay for it, if MS can release a decent version for iOS, I'll buy it and she can use it on her iPad. The $$ for the app will no doubt be cheaper than a laptop.
 

ChristianVirtual

macrumors 601
May 10, 2010
4,122
282
日本
If it really render all the PPT files equally to desktop and keeps my beloved Pivot Table on iPad I would even pay a subscription... Because the the iPad could replace my laptop/desktop.
Today those two file types are the most used in enterprise with no real good alternative.
But: I fear Office/PPT/Excel will be quite reduced in functionality down to uselessness.
 
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barkomatic

macrumors 601
Aug 8, 2008
4,517
2,809
Manhattan
If the subscription bit it true, I'll also take a pass. I'd rather pay $20 outright for Word on iOS with full functionality than have to pay yet another monthly fee.
 

Westside guy

macrumors 603
Oct 15, 2003
6,333
4,152
The soggy side of the Pacific NW
Too bad their badly gimped versions that require a subscription

Home users probably aren't the target demographic here - and a lot of offices will already be fully tied into Office 365. If collaboration with other users is supported, this will probably relegate iWork into a niche role (more than it already is, anyway).

I'd love it if we could use iWork for this sort of thing, but Apple's cloud-based collaboration tools simply do not exist. Synching between devices is nice; but sharing with other users is a bigger deal. Having to "share" by sending documents via email to other people is a throwback to 1995 - hopefully Apple plans on remedying that soon. Heck, even tying directly into Dropbox would work... but that's not going to happen.
 

smulji

macrumors 68030
Feb 21, 2011
2,814
2,653
Subscription based to edit? I'll pass. Is Office really needed these days?

The greedy monster that is Microsoft rises from the depths of the sea. Tokyo is that way!

One billion Office users worldwide will say it's definitely needed - especially among enteprise / business users and college users, where document compatibility is extremely important. Besides, other than Keynote, Pages & Numbers don't hold a candle to Word & Excel - especially Excel.
 

a.gomez

macrumors 6502a
Oct 10, 2008
924
726
great - because the garbage coming out of the marketing departments was not bad enough when they were on actual computers. Can not wait to see what they make on their little toys.
 
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