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Microsoft Office for iPad to Launch on March 27

Bill Killer said:
Pages and Numbers are seriously underpowered, and Keynote has little compatibility with Power Point.
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Have you ever used them? Because they're not.

And why would it need to be compatible with PowerPoint in the first place? If you're going to say that you want to be able to play it on a PC for work or something, iCloud.com.
 
Michael Goff said:
My point was that Office will be successful enough on the iPad to warrant the resources, that 365 is likely to gain quite a few more subs because of this move.
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It will get some subs on the iPad yes. The big question is how many. I'm not willing to say quite a few as yet. I'm in a wait and see what the numbers are like mood. Not against you, I just can't see this being as huge as MS want it to be. But I could be wrong.
 
subscription = deal killer

The subscription requirement takes this from a moderately interesting development to a completely uninteresting one. I buy software, Redmond, I don't rent software.

If you're going for a consumer base, the first thing to learn is that consumers don't rent software.
 
AstronomyiPhone said:
Have you ever used them? Because they're not.

And why would it need to be compatible with PowerPoint in the first place? If you're going to say that you want to be able to play it on a PC for work or something, iCloud.com.
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It needs to be compatible because Powerpoint is the most common Program for Presentations, and especially in universities it is often required to hand in a powerpoint document, not even mentioning collaboration with other group members who don't have a Mac. (And don't mention iCloud.com, it is underwhelming and people don't want to learn new software for one project).

Further on, I had some pretty fancy Excel files this year, which would be simply impossible to realise with iWorks (currently).
And the fact that our teacher only distributes them in excel format.

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tubular said:
The subscription requirement takes this from a moderately interesting development to a completely uninteresting one. I buy software, Redmond, I don't rent software.

If you're going for a consumer base, the first thing to learn is that consumers don't rent software.
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You sure about that?
It works pretty well with Music and Movies
 
tubular said:
The subscription requirement takes this from a moderately interesting development to a completely uninteresting one. I buy software, Redmond, I don't rent software.

If you're going for a consumer base, the first thing to learn is that consumers don't rent software.
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I prefer to buy too, but Saas is here to stay. It is shaking the enterprise world (just ask Oracle how salesforce had their lunch) and is shaking the consumer world too.

Welcome to the future, where your device is a mere consumption device, and your data lives in the cloud, your software comes as subscription service, and your privacy is flushed down the drain :D
 
wikiverse said:
As a former fcp user let me just say, if you rely on apple for your business software, you're gonna have a bad time.
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Since my business rely on Apple products, my bad time (and down time) has been reduced by 70% in comparison when we were relying on Microsoft products...

So yeah, if it's the price to pay, I'm perfectly fine by that ;)
 
Spid said:
Since my business rely on Apple products, my bad time (and down time) has been reduced by 70% in comparison when we were relying on Microsoft products...

So yeah, if it's the price to pay, I'm perfectly fine by that ;)
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out of curiosity what apple products do you rely on and who was responsible for the bad and down time?
 
SakuraSuki said:
I agree keynote has better transition effects and has better slides, but Pages is not even come close to Word at all. At least Word has build in mathematics function editor which Pages lack of.
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For every-day word processing, Pages is a breath of fresh air to use: uncluttered, sleek and fast. If you need every conceivable feature known to man (and some do), Word will serve best.
 
While the iOS version is pretty useless for me, the Mac version should be quite useful.... here's to hoping my university quickly picks it up at a steep discount just like Office 2011 :)
 
subscription!

How is this going to work with apple's app policy.

Will you have to go to a website buy a subscription then down and enter your details to use a FREE app?

It's so convoluted just pay the 30% MS and be happy at least someone is still buying office.

iWork's is about as complex as you would ever want to get on a tablet, i don't see how ms is going bring anything good to the party, and way too late.
 
Michael Goff said:
They might not have wants to dumb down Office for a touch environment...

Also, porting isn't as simple as pushing a single button.
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I'm not sure sure exactly what you're trying to say because of the error in your sentence, but just in case...Are you seriously defending how long this took? It's Microsoft. The only reason they took so long to release Office is because they didn't want to make their competitors product "better" by allowing the most common office suite to run on it...even though you could already run it over the cloud with several apps...
 
Elbon said:
I have no need for Office on the iPad. For that matter, I have no need for an iPad. I tried for the last 6 months to use an iPad Air as a replacement for my laptop (a MacBook Pro), and it just fails miserably. It's a great device for browsing content, but not for creating it.

Either way, the iPad's screen spontaneously cracked over the weekend - so I'm done with it. Going back to the laptop.
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Yeah, same thing happened to me when I tried to use a tent to replace my house(6 bedroom detached with garage) , it just fails miserably. It's great for camping but having the family round for christmas dinner just didn't work.

The tent spontaneously caught fire over the weekend-so I'm done with it. Going back to the house.
 
samcraig said:
You missed the point.

One of the main complaints of the iPad when it first launched was the lack of productivity apps.

Feel free to re-write history though. Or pollute the argument with the old song and dance of how it sold millions anyway. That doesn't negate anything I've written.
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I didn't miss the point. Apple did not NEED anything from Microsoft. The iPad and iPhone did, and continue to do, extremely well without them.
 
Michael Goff said:
Afraid you don't get it, then. Microsoft doesn't want to basically give money to Apple through Office sales.
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Good point.

But also, the way iPad is taking off in enterprise, individuals aren't the ones paying for the subscription anyway; it's the employers. Until Numbers catches up to Excel on the advanced features list, Fortune 500s won't be touching iWork. Neither will thousands of other, smaller businesses. I suspect, though, iWork will continue to slowly gobble up the productivity software space percentage point by percentage point as Numbers becomes more feature-full. Especially when companies begin realizing they can ditch thousands of dollars+ per year on number-crunching, page layout and presentation software costs.
 
kazmac said:
My job offers the Home User full version of Office for around $10-20 per version. I can use these as long as I'm an employee. It's been nice not to pay much for Office for Mac the last five years especially since I only use Word at home.

And whenever that changes, I'll move over to iWorks officially.
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I love this Home Use Program. A full Office Professional with MS Access for 2000 Yen plus 2000 yen for a DVD. Great deal for my Win8 tablet. Too bad I can't order Mac version in addition. Greedy me. ;)

But still: buying a license and be sable to decide when to upgrade (if at all) I prefer to a fixed subscription.
 
Microsoft has such an odd way of doing things. How about making things simple?

3 new apps on the App Store: Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

9.99 each, or w/e
 
thekeyring said:
Microsoft has such an odd way of doing things. How about making things simple?

3 new apps on the App Store: Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

9.99 each, or w/e
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Because Apple would get a 30% cut.

Microsoft can (and should) offer iOS version of Office for free from the app store and charge 9.99 per module via some kind of "one time charge" subscription outside of the app store fee model.

Or, Microsoft and Apple could come to an agreement for Apple to take a smaller cut.
 
iSunrise said:
They certainly will, however, Enterprises are not very eager to use Office 365, since they already have their own private or hybrid clouds with hosted Exchange or something else.

Also, I am very sceptic about Office on an iPad in general, as no one in their right minds would edit something just with the iOS keyboard. The Surface Pro, however, comes with a touch keyboard, which is a lot more useful for such tasks.

Therefore I don't think that Office for iPad will ever become a viable solution other than a niche for Microsoft. Their primary focus should still be the Surface Pro.
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I use aan external keyboard/case on my iPad and it works great. Don't need a crappy surface, but whatever MS homer.
 
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