Microsoft Office for iOS and Android Arriving in November?

[faroZ06]

Agreed! I've been using iWork exclusively since 2005 and haven't had any issues integrating my workflow and documents into an all Office world. Sure, I have to take that extra step to export as a PDF or Word Doc when I want to share, but the I get apps that outperform Office in areas that I need.



I would alway say that it depends on the user's need. Office does in fact have far more professional features than iWork depending on the app, but there are a ton on nuances that Pages and Numbers have.

For instance, I could NEVER get Word to recognize bleeds, bleed areas, correct AP style hyphenations, alpha channels, etc. The iWork suite is fantastic if you plan on using a lot of media in your documents.

Now, as a disclaimer, I may not be the brightest mind when it comes to using media in Office. It was just a crap load easier to do in iWork.

I just like how iWork is more stable. It never crashes on me, but Office has crashed plenty of times. And Office always wants to install some stupid update. It also doesn't play nice with the serial codes sometimes and locks up for no reason.

But Excel is waaay better than Numbers (at least Numbers '08 vs Excel '04) in terms of features. Excel is the only Office application I use because Numbers lacks so many features that it's pathetic. Word is not bad and has a lot of features, but it's unstable. Powerpoint is just bad. Keynote is very impressive, and Pages is quite good.

And on an iPad, iWork will integrate well with iCloud and whatever else Apple decides to do. OK why is this text grey?

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MS never bought Excel, it was DOS they bought the rights to. Excel is a successor to Multiplan- Microsoft's original spreadsheet program.

According to my dad (who is an expert on these things), they bought Office (but it was called something else) from a very small company. I haven't found anything online about this, but it's hard to search for it because the company is supposedly tiny, and I don't know what it was originally called. My dad could be remembering incorrectly, so I don't know.

 

[heisetax]

Excel is IMHO one of the most important breakthrough in human productivity in the last decades. It is a totally amazing piece of software.

If i only had 1 program to use Excel would be that program. For 27 years now I have had a say ing that if it is worth doing do it w ith Excel.

 

[heisetax]

iWork for iOS is priced at $9.99 each, and there is no bundle pricing. And the Mac versions are now $19.99 each from the Mac App Store.

But for over 3.5 year old software it is overpriced for the Mac. Numbers has pot entail. But it will take until the 4th or 5th version before it is ready for anything close to prime time. The lack of any real improvements let alone a new version to me Numbers I is just something meant. For the iOS & not the Mac. Pages has had 4 versions so it can do a little more. My wife uses Pages fo all of our birth day cards. Letters are usually done with Word. Power Point was made for Steve Jobs so it is. The best of the group. But 3.5years with no updat es tells me to stay away.

Since Excel has come out on the Mac in 1985 there has been no program to come anywhere close to it. Maybe that is why Apple has stopped the development of Numbers for the Mac. 2 versions in a year or so & then no new versions in over 3.5 years now. This means no purchase of iWork for iOS.

We can use some good spreadsheets & word processing on.the iOS platform. Let it be MS Office.

 

[ReanimationN]

According to my dad (who is an expert on these things), they bought Office (but it was called something else) from a very small company. I haven't found anything online about this, but it's hard to search for it because the company is supposedly tiny, and I don't know what it was originally called. My dad could be remembering incorrectly, so I don't know.

They didn't buy Office- that's why MS was in demand as a software developer in the early days of PCs (I'm using that as a generic blanket term for all personal computers, i.e. Apple computers included), they made what people wanted- office software (and operating systems, interpretors etc etc). Out of today's Office suite, the only program that MS bought (that I'm aware of, I'm open to corrections) was PowerPoint, way back in '87. That could be what your dad was thinking of. Although PowerPoint basically got rewritten and became a completely different program beginning with Powerpoint '95, and then again with VBA in PowerPoint '97.

 

[faroZ06]

They didn't buy Office- that's why MS was in demand as a software developer in the early days of PCs (I'm using that as a generic blanket term for all personal computers, i.e. Apple computers included), they made what people wanted- office software (and operating systems, interpretors etc etc). Out of today's Office suite, the only program that MS bought (that I'm aware of, I'm open to corrections) was PowerPoint, way back in '87. That could be what your dad was thinking of. Although PowerPoint basically got rewritten and became a completely different program beginning with Powerpoint '95, and then again with VBA in PowerPoint '97.

He said they also bought Excel (or what it used to be called). I don't know, I can't find any proof online.

But even if MS bought those things, I credit them for programming them. Obviously, it took a lot to get up to Excel 2004 (their best version). I actually think Powerpoint is lame, and Word is pretty good in some ways but somewhat unstable if you are unlucky. I LOVE Excel 2004 though.

 

[smoledman]

Who needs it - iWork is light year ahead.

 

[e-coli]

PowerPoint is a standard in most business environments, and a great tool for getting its work done, unless the user puts in his/hers slideshow a plethora of transitions and special effects like a 16-year old high school cheerleader does.

Oh really? Try to make a 16 x 9 presentation.

Or make a presentation a specific size. Nope. Can't do it.