Microsoft Launching Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iPad Today

[Rogifan]

Buzz phrases of the day from Nadella: "innovation vectors" and "developer surface area". Any idea what either of those mean?

 

[jimsowden]

Save for silverlight (which now has major issues) my gear will remain firmly Microsoft free.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Also, why all the hate behind software rental? Is it just a visceral hatred without looking at the pros and cons? When I looked at 365, the cost involved was an order of magnitude below what I would have had to pay outright - it was a no-brainer.

Exactly.

Plus... Office people have it easy. What is it... $100 a year? Pssshhh...

I pay $50 a month for Adobe Creative Cloud!

But I use it every day and make money from it. So it's really not an issue.

 

[kwokaaron]

Omg... this is like Adobe Creative Cloud all over again. Hopefully Office for Mac doesn't head in that direction as well...

 

[garylapointe]

It costs me HOW MUCH to edit a document?!?

All three apps will be free downloads and will include viewing and presenting capabilities free of charge. Users wishing to edit or create documents with the apps will need an Office 365 subscription.

That's going to cause a LOT of bad reviews (and complaints here). Why?

1. "Hey, this app won't let me edit!"
2. Many people aren't going to even know/understand what Office 365 is!
3. Then they're going to figure out the price.

And this is even what most rumors expected them to do...

Gary

 

[CrazyNurse]

So sad for MS

MS reminds me of IBM in the 90s.

They cannot anticipate or adjust to new markets with any kind of urgency.

XBox is the only thing remotely cool about them anymore.

 

[D.T.]

Hahaha, I flipped on the live press conference stream and the first thing I heard was: “...that magical intersection between software and the cloud ...”

Magical.

I’d love to be able to simply score these apps for iOS for an outright price. I’m on MSO ’11, works great, don’t need to update, don’t want a recurring fee, just want to pay and be done with it.

 

[joeshmo2010]

Since I already have an Office 365 sub, I'm hoping for it to be included.

Just so people understand, there's absolutely no difference between a purchased copy of Office and the Office 365 offering - it's just a payment difference. The only difference is that you download 365 instead of installing from disc, and you pay monthly.

I'm no fan of Office or Microsoft by any means, but there are too many clients using Office and Outlook to ignore them. Many of the "competitive" tools aren't very good either.

We'll see how this works out.

But after a certain period of time then wouldn't you be paying more than the outright cost? The outright is $140. So then after 14 months of 365 you'd just be paying more. Unless it's different?

 

[smithrh]

The ONLY problem I have with software rental is this. I create a couple hundred files in a proprietary format. If the company dissolves or stops producing this software for whatever reason, I'm stuck with hundreds of files I can no longer access. If I own a copy of the software, I can at least cut and paste out of the document format...

I see.

How likely is that occurring in this particular case?

Are there not dozens if not hundreds of applications that will read MS Office file now?

I get your point, and with other SW developers, I'd be right there with you. Clearly this situation is different.

 

[MRU]

Is this confirmed somewhere?

I am hoping this is the case...

Also, why all the hate behind software rental? Is it just a visceral hatred without looking at the pros and cons? When I looked at 365, the cost involved was an order of magnitude below what I would have had to pay outright - it was a no-brainer.

Yep... This is the case.

 

[numlock]

This looks fantastic. It looks like Microsoft really put effort into making a great UX for iOS 7.

maybe they can be contracted to do the next ios

 

[flux73]

MR should start a poll to see how many iPad owners plan on subscribing to Office. I'm curious as to how much interest there is.

 

[544263]

Just so people understand, there's absolutely no difference between a purchased copy of Office and the Office 365 offering - it's just a payment difference. The only difference is that you download 365 instead of installing from disc, and you pay monthly.

Let me guess, you are living in a rented house? It's so much cheaper than buying one. right?

 

[HenryDJP]

Arrogant! Even though the suite will be available shortly on the App Store, they didn't even go over the pricing structure. They said nothing about a subscription or anything. Well I'm sure it will sell to many but not to me.

 

[smithrh]

But after a certain period of time then wouldn't you be paying more than the outright cost? The outright is $140. So then after 14 months of 365 you'd just be paying more. Unless it's different?

Where did you get $140?

To buy it legitimately for my business, it would be much much more than that.

Key word here: legitimately, which is how we operate.

 

[WallToWallMacs]

And most of us are still waiting for Office 2014 for Mac - I'd be more than happy to sign up for a subscription if I knew that Microsoft was supporting OS X for the long term but given the lack of any communication I can't help but fear that maybe Microsoft is killing off Microsoft Office for Mac.

Where did you get $140?

To buy it legitimately for my business, it would be much much more than that.

Key word here: legitimately, which is how we operate.

He is probably thinking of:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store...65-Small-Business-Premium/productID.273508300

Which is $150 per year.

 

[smithrh]

Let me guess, you are living in a rented house? It's so much cheaper than buying one. right?

OK, I'll mark you down as not having done the financial analysis for buying Office vs. Office 365.

 

[garylapointe]

DropBox?

Where is this going to let me open (and save) documents to and from? If it's just Microsoft's cloud (or even the iCloud) it's not even going to be that great for reading documents....

Gary

 

[Kariya]

Only Enterprise/Corporates will buy this. For everyone else it'll still be iWork.

 

[jbachandouris]

Subscription? No thanks.

The school laptop has Office for free and school is the only reason I would deviate from iWork.

 

[rosujin]

Too little, (far) to late. Leave it to Micro$soft to screw up their own product by forcing customers into a subscription model.

They have grossly overestimated their relevance in the portable space:
- Word has been decidedly replaced by Pages and Quip.
- Powerpoint is a joke compared to Keynote. (not to mention SlideShark and Haiku Deck.)
- Excel is, by far, Microsoft's best consumer product. But who wants to build a giant pivot table and create complex formulas on a tablet or an smart phone!?

I'd pay as much as $10/per app just to have MS Office compatibility on the go. There is no way I will subscribe to this crap!

 

[Yelmurc]

It will launch to thunderous crickets.

 

[sputnikv]

i'm not fond of subscription services, though i do get 5 licenses of office, mac and pc along with 20GB of onecloud storage and 60 minutes of skype calls per month for $99 a year. the subscription isn't worth it if you just wish to use office on the ipad, though together it's not as terrible as i initially thought. for those willing to actually pay for software, $99 a year for all of the office products, each 7 products selling for $109 individually, plus the little extras is a pretty decent deal. you also get all future revisions/releases of the office suite.

if you're a student you can get a 4-year subscription for $79.99, the entire office suite for $20 a year

 

[danielsutton]

Good alternative.

I replaced Office apps with iWork in 2011. Mobile Pages and Numbers apps are great.

And iWork integrates with ICloud and the rest of the Apple ecosystem, something that Office 365 does not do. I agree with you, Office for iPad is too little, too late.

 

[Ezhik]

Time to check it out. Would be much nicer to use the same set of apps on all my devices, since I seem to be mostly in Microsoft's ecosystem and all.