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Microsoft Introduces Unified Office App for iOS and Android

I loved the old Office Mobile app on iPhone and hated it when they unbundled it and forced users to use massive, separate apps.

Good move. Although I bet they’ll unbundle it again within the next three years.
 
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I wish Microsoft had continued a Windows mobile OS. As far as I’m aware it failed because the hardware sucked? Apple needs competition and Google/Android isn’t competition for me.
 
simonmet said:
I wish Microsoft had continued a Windows mobile OS. As far as I’m aware it failed because the hardware sucked? Apple needs competition and Google/Android isn’t competition for me.
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I hear you.

But it did not fail because the hardware sucked. The hardware was actually very good. Most people who used it liked it very much except they complained about the lack of apps in the MS store.

It mainly failed because MS could not get enough developers and companies to develop apps for Windows mobile OS. It was a kind of vicious circle: Developers/companies didn't develop apps because the market share was too small and Windows mobile OS did not get enough market share because there were not enough apps developed for it.

MS simply came too late to the game. Android and iOS already were too big.
 
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I don't think this is great. Basically the iTunes-ification of Office. More convenient to install and launch, but less UI space (which is even more precious on mobile) for individual apps. Gotta cram everything in there.

Honestly, Excel on iPhone already felt cramped to me. This is only gonna make it worse?

simonmet said:
I wish Microsoft had continued a Windows mobile OS. As far as I’m aware it failed because the hardware sucked? Apple needs competition and Google/Android isn’t competition for me.
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The hardware was OK (some Lumia stuff was pretty neat, really).

But writing apps for three or more mobile platforms is a hard case to make, unfortunately.
 
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MS is making some pretty nice iOS apps lately. The Outlook app is only adding features every few weeks and making the buggy broke iOS Mail app look like a toy now that isnt fixed months later still somehow.

This does look nice and is working well already for a beta.
 
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markaceto said:
There's an extra "for" in there (and some other smaller offenses).
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The original remark was about an error in the first line. The 'for' there is perfectly in place. So it must have been about the word 'programme'.
I don't see any other "for's" in the rest of the text by the way.
 
krazyleb said:
seems like this is only optimized for iphone? On the ipad i get the phone version of the app.
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“The new Office app is currently only avaliable for phones, but it will be extended to tablets in the future”

Article Reader Man, away!
[automerge]1572883006[/automerge]
AndyMacAndMic said:
I here you 😉.

But it did not fail because the hardware sucked. The hardware was actually very good. Most people who used it liked it very much except they complained about the lack of apps in the MS store.

It mainly failed because MS could not get enough developers and companies to develop apps for Windows mobile OS. It was a kind of vicious circle: Developers/companies didn't develop apps because the market share was too small and Windows mobile OS did not get enough market share because there were not enough apps developed for it.

MS simply came too late to the game. Android and iOS already were to big.
Click to expand...
Bill Gates said his biggest mistake ever was not getting into the mobile space early enough.
 
While my company is an Office 365 subscriber Outlook is pretty much the only MS mobile app that I use for my job. I have been impressed from day 1 of this app's release and it continues to improve. Kudos to MS for a "just works" experience, at least for me. My one request with this new bundled app: don't screw up Outlook.
 
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TallGuyGT said:
I use (and like a lot) Office 365 on the Mac. But aside from Outlook, do people really use Office on their phones? The only time I ever use them is to open attachments for viewing. Can't see getting any Office work done on a phone sized screen. I'm sure people do or they wouldn't make them, just not me.
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Opening attachments is most common for me too, but I also keep a few small Excel sheets to keep track of some things on the go.

One thing that works amazingly well and that I'd like to do more often is doing Powerpoint presentations from an iPhone or iPad via Airplay, but unfortunately not many offices have Apple TVs connected to the big screens (even though it's perfect for enterprise environments with P2P Airplay). Apple should really release an Airplay client for Windows laptops to make it more universal.
 
How does this work with the future iPad version and iOS Multitasking, though? What if I want to split screen between a Word document and an Excel document?

iOS needs some kind of intra-app multitasking soon.
 
Dustman said:
Soooo Microsoft Works is making a comeback?
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😂
If only. MS Works is more functional than the current Office for iOS/Android. MS Office for mobile is fine for VIEWING docs, but not so good for creating and editing docs with any kind of complexity beyond something like Google Docs.

I use the Online version of Office when I need to work with Office documents on my chromebook (rather than the Android version). When I find the need to work on Office docs on my iOS devices, I'll try to use the online version and if that doesn't work, I'll wait until I'm at my iMac or MBA and use the macOS version of Office.
 
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guidod said:
How does this work with the future iPad version and iOS Multitasking, though? What if I want to split screen between a Word document and an Excel document?

iOS needs some kind of intra-app multitasking soon.
Click to expand...

iPadOS 13 offers exactly that.
 
TallGuyGT said:
I use (and like a lot) Office 365 on the Mac. But aside from Outlook, do people really use Office on their phones? The only time I ever use them is to open attachments for viewing. Can't see getting any Office work done on a phone sized screen. I'm sure people do or they wouldn't make them, just not me.
Click to expand...

A common use case is to plug it into a projector and use Powerpoint to give presentations.
 
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Does this new app mean we can delete the individual MS apps from our devices? I currently have Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
 
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So while Apple has been chastised for everything in iTunes, which it’s broken up, Microsoft is going in the other direction, at least for now, with its mobile app.
 
The current version of Office 365 is barely usable for me on an iPad. The Mac OS X version of 365 is an operational subset of the Windows version and barely acceptable for my need. I keep a VM with Windows Excel for my needs. This "update" may have some utility for low end users that comprise the bulk of their market. For me, I'd prefer Microsoft spend some effort on bringing the Mac OS X system up to parity.
 
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lmcrael said:
Great idea, just downloaded it on my iPad Pro and its not optimized for the iPad :(

Will def download if they make an iPad version.
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From the linked page in the first sentence:

The app is currently available only on phones, although we will bring this experience to tablets as well.
 
ajfahey said:
The current version of Office 365 is barely usable for me on an iPad. The Mac OS X version of 365 is an operational subset of the Windows version and barely acceptable for my need. I keep a VM with Windows Excel for my needs. This "update" may have some utility for low end users that comprise the bulk of their market. For me, I'd prefer Microsoft spend some effort on bringing the Mac OS X system up to parity.
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Agree. Excel on iPhone is cute and surprisingly useful for a pocket size app, bit less useful on iPad, and the Mac version remains ridiculously far behind Windows. It just sucks. Pivot table/chart support is still very basic, data query / model management is crappy, PowerBI is... nowhere to be seen. And RAM and processor management are still ridiculous. An i3 Windows laptop remains quicker than an iMac pro at manipulating large or complex Excel spreadsheets.
My work offers a choice between a Macbook Pro and a HP Elitebook and although I wish I had a Macbook, I can't fathom having to deal with Excel for Mac, and use the Elitebook instead (they are also cheap and unbreakable, which is nice).
 
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