Microsoft Office on iPad Spotted, Coming Soon to App Store

[Chupa Chupa]

Gives respect? you mean trying to cash in. I am sure its easier to get money from those Rich Apple users as opposed to the poor Android users, logical move.

Given office if available on PC/Mac this move is kinda logical.

Wrong forum if you want to play the class warfare card. Where are you getting your demographic info that Android users have less money than iOS users? Last I checked the cell and data rates for phones using either OS were pretty much identical. In some cases Android phones are subsidized well below iPhones, in some cases not. But regardless we are talking a few hundred bucks. Is that really your dividing line b/t rich and poor?

 

[Blomkvist]

Wow, this is huge for Apple. My wife works for GE Healthcare and in the past two months she has gotten a GE-supplied iPhone 4S and an iPad2. Their teams are using 3rd-party apps to create and edit documents on the iPad that are MS compatible formats...but getting Office on the iPad will be a big step forward for all of GE and other corporate entities to go the tablet route.

I only wish my company would consider supplementing hardware with Apple products.

 

[yaredna]

Hoping that that word will allow to redline / revision track.

While working with law firms, the usability to use my iPad for any serious redlining documents has been limiting the appeal of my iPad as a serious tool. I love my iPads (i have 2), but the redlining - revision tracking of word documents will be HUGE!

BTW, Pages doesn't allow for redlining - revision tracking, nor any other tool I tried to date. The only alternative has been to use Citrix and log-on to our server as a dumb terminal (limit the appeal since the user interface is Windows 2008, not really adapted for a touch screen).

Very hopeful this is real !

 

[Omniver]

But will it support iOS Data Protection?

We already don't allow Pages since Apple appears not to use their own encryption API in the iOS app; unless Microsoft uses the Data Protection API, we will likely not allow this either.

For those who don't know, if your app does not use the Data Protection API, all of the data in that app is entirely recoverable if your device is stolen, no passcode necessary. Mail is the only native iOS app that I know about that uses Apple's own API. https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4175 Crazy.

 

[M-O]

smart move. they are finally acting like the software company they are.

 

[maflynn]

Looking forward to this, I use office over iWork and having something that I can easily work on with my iPad will be huge for me.

 

[iTeleport]

Straight away I can see the interface is ugly. Yucky colours and strange proportions of elements.

 

[r.j.s]

The question is, will it be better than the other office suites, and what will it cost ... I won't pay $80 for Office on my iPad.

 

[WiiDSmoker]

Straight away I can see the interface is ugly. Yucky colours and strange proportions of elements.

Get this crap out of here

 

[dgree03]

This is huge! I would welcome this software fully, so long as it isn't a "lite" version

iWork will never full adopted in the corporate world in its current form because

1. It can't be installed on Windows
2. Lack of collaboration tools

 

[anthonymoody]

What a massive "DUH" Microsoft, late to the party as always. This was inevitable, and I've been saying it for eons (see my signature...)

And for you remaining naysayers, I guess all I can say is...seriously? Get out of your myopic local world (i.e. what you carry in your bag and have on your desk to do your thing) and accept the fact that yours is not the average use case. For most people, most of the time, an iPad is more than enough to accomplish what they need (and often does those things better than does a desktop or laptop).

I'm talking 9x% of the people, 9x% of the time. And those numbers are rapidly (if asymptotically) approaching 100.

The only remaining thing I use my iMac for is basically as a local storage/syncing hub. But that too will fade into the dustbin of history as iPad storage capacity inexorably grows, and cloud storage gets cheaper and more reliable as average broadband speed also increases.

To me the big question about Office is whether MSFT will allow cloud storage to iCloud in addition to skydrive (which is inevitable).

 

[ChazUK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.2; en-gb; Galaxy Nexus Build/ICL53F) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) CrMo/16.0.912.75 Mobile Safari/535.7)

I'm rather impressed with how Microsoft are offering more and more services on other platforms now (XBL content, Skydrive, OneNote Mobile).

It may be because they are struggling in the smartphone/tablet arena but it may be a working strategy if people are locked into even more Microsoft powered products.

This news should please a lot of people in the corporate environment with iPads .

 

[whiteboytrash]

Hoping that that word will allow to redline / revision track.

While working with law firms, the usability to use my iPad for any serious redlining documents has been limiting the appeal of my iPad as a serious tool. I love my iPads (i have 2), but the redlining - revision tracking of word documents will be HUGE!

BTW, Pages doesn't allow for redlining - revision tracking, nor any other tool I tried to date. The only alternative has been to use Citrix and log-on to our server as a dumb terminal (limit the appeal since the user interface is Windows 2008, not really adapted for a touch screen).

Very hopeful this is real !

Agree 1000%.

I would have thought for the legal profession that an app that could redline would be easy made. I do contract reviews and I scream out for such a app. The interface lends itself well to such a process.

I sit in meetings with 20 or so people each with 200+ pages of printed paper to go through the redline process. If each one of us had a iPad we could share the updates instantly. Along with being much quick to release the new version of the schedules.

 

[rdowns]

Very surprising, if true. Office for iPad will put a big hurt on adoption of Windows 8 tablets. I assumed they would use Office as an exclusive on Windows before offering it up on competing platforms.

 

[kas23]

Yes, this is huge. I use Word or PP on a daily basis.

Some may say that Pages/keynote are better, but my job requires 100% compatibility. I can't afford surprises when I try to open a pages or keynote presentation using Office, which is ubiquitous.

 

[hvfsl]

MS has ALWAYS been a software company first. Their best software in the industry is Microsoft Office. Not only is MS Office a standard, many in the business world believe its a must-have with no alternative (see this too). The last thing MS wants is for folks to think they can "get things done" without Microsoft Office. The absence of Microsoft Office on iPad and iPhone has started to make folks think they can do without Office. I believe that this is why we saw OneNote come to iOS last year Given Microsoft's support of the Mac with Office, I would not be surprised for iPad support as well (in fact I hope for it too).

I don't think you will see a version of Office for Android tablets anytime soon, if ever. But Office on the iPad can also be used as a way to get folks accustomed to the Metro interface to possibly influence the purchase of their next phone as well.

I would definitely buy this app if it opened MS Office without losing information. It still bugs me that I can create documents in Keynote and Pages for Mac and find the files cannot be opened as-is on the iPad.

I suspect the lack of an Android version at this point has a lot to do with how easy it is to pirate stuff on the platform. Google will probably need to do more to stop it, if MS are to ever release it for Android.

 

[Avatar74]

lol

as a scientist, I really can't see much use for this.

the price point of an iPad is still too high (at 50% of a MBA).

data entry will still be a §!"#€% negating mainstream adoption.

I work for a software company. Most of our managers have iPads and Macbook Pros.

In science/engineering/medicine I can see all kinds of potential field applications, diagnostics, etc. but it would typically be in industries that: a) have the capital to spend on more expensive hardware, b) have a need for a better-integrated user experience. As a senior analyst for the company, I could use this a lot because there are things I do with Excel that, much to my chagrin, simply aren't possible in Numbers... and it would be great to pull them up directly on my iPad instead of using Splashtop to remote to my workstation (very clunky).

The original statement, not seeing much use for it, is kind of a moot point. Apple will never be the Ford of consumer electronics, nor should they desire to be. They do very well in the markets/demographics they serve.

 

[GKThursday]

How much do you think it's gonna cost? I hope not over $50.

I would guess free for an ad supported starter version (limited functionality as well) just like on the desktop. Then $9.99 for each app as an in-app purchase.

 

[jbouklas]

This doesn't really make sense to me. The primary reason that Microsoft is including the traditional Windows desktop for Windows 8 on ARM is to accomodate Office. MS added touch features to the next version of office, which shares the bulk of its UI with Office 2010. If MS had a Metro version of Office that was anywhere near up to snuff with the desktop version, then why bother with the traditional desktop for ARM in the first place? (The traditional desktop on ARM will only run Office and IE, and IE will run without plugins, making it no better than the Metro version of IE.)

This seems weird to me. If this is real, then MS will have two versions of office for Windows 8- the traditional desktop version, and a Metro version?

 

[VenusianSky]

To me the big question about Office is whether MSFT will allow cloud storage to iCloud in addition to skydrive (which is inevitable).

I wouldn't be surprised if both are supported considering iCloud is partially hosted on Microsoft Azure systems, along with SkyDrive.

 

[Rafterman]

A lot of enthusiasm for iPad Office I see. And I hope its deserved because I would get this as well. But the truth is, we have no idea how deep these apps are. Are they closer to the desktop versions in features or are they simplistic 1.0 versions or (most likely) somewhere in between?

 

[till213]

So there are really around 20 nerds and geeks that actually TYPE on their iPad! Tssss...!

 

[NAG]

As a scientist I use it all the time for reading papers.

It does suck for any kind of scientific work involving spreadsheets or actually any sort of experimental data. The apps aren't there and the CPU is slow.

As far as Office, honestly it won't have much competition from iWork for iOS. The current version is a complete joke. Only Keynote is usable. Pages is barely more than a text editor (the app's major strength was layout and the iOS version cannot do layout beyond soccer newsletter level). Numbers is a complete joke on iOS. It is slows down so fast (this is ignoring lack of functions).

iWork needs an update for iOS badly (and one for OS X wouldn't be bad either...I actually use the OS X versions over Office).

So there are really around 20 nerds and geeks that actually TYPE on their iPad! Tssss...!

Let me guess, you use the latest version of Microsoft Office Word so you can use the Webdings font and make funny jokes in Comic Sans.

 

[rjohnstone]

no one wants to pay for anything on Android. Rampant piracy is one of the reasons why "Angry Birds" is only offered in a free, ad based version. iOS users are more willing to pay for stuff. I guess MS figures that they may actually make some money (not much, because this is actually for product line support). Also, MS hates Google if you haven't already heard.

Source for the "rampant piracy" remark or are you pulling that out of the air like your Angry Bird's full versions only for iOS users remark?

The original, Seasons and Rio paid versions can be purchased on Amazon's Appstore.
Amazon probably offered Rovio a better cut if they made the paid versions exclusive to their store. Just a hunch, but it does make sense.

MS hates Google so much that they released Lync 2010 in Dec. and OneNote for Android on Feb. 7th.
Office will follow.

I suspect the lack of an Android version at this point has a lot to do with how easy it is to pirate stuff on the platform. Google will probably need to do more to stop it, if MS are to ever release it for Android.

MS, or any developer for that matter can easily stop a pirated app in Android.
There's this nice little security feature that so many noob devs fail to implement. Lock the app to the users Market account or their device ID.
The good paid apps in Android are either tied to your Google account and or your phones IMEI number.
They will not run if there is no match.

 

[BornAgainMac]

I want "Age of Empires" next. My favorite PC game from Microsoft.