I think it's more to do with all the different versions of Android and compatibility. It also probably has to do with Androids market share in full featured tablets (i.e. non-nook or fire).
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Microsoft Office on iPad Spotted, Coming Soon to App Store
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I think it's more to do with all the different versions of Android and compatibility. It also probably has to do with Androids market share in full featured tablets (i.e. non-nook or fire).
Pages lacks an important feature; styles. The "styles" on Pages on the iPad are just formatting macros. If you go back and edit the style, the formatting in your document does not automatically update to reflect the style edit. You have to go through and reapply them.
On the desktop, Pages supports real styles.
On the desktop, Pages supports real styles.
Having a quasi-full blown Office on the iPad is going to be hard to work with unless you use a pen of some sort. It's complicated enough on the desktop. Imagine doing some of that stuff with your finger.
Everything about Pages for iOS is a slap dash cludge. They really should be embarrassed that it was a main feature at the iPad 1 reveal. (Keynote is at least passable.)
Unless Microsoft surprises us with inventive features like this. (Only thing missing in that app that is needed is Dropbox sync and it is coming, btw.)
I would use it for quick reference to large data sets, myself. I probably wouldn't build the spreadsheets on it... Hell, I can barely build on an 8-core i7 workstation without it locking up periodically (our I.T. dept won't support a 64-bit version of Office...)
But I hate lugging my laptop into every meeting I get sucked into, and I frequently need to report out. I'd use it periodically for Excel, because even if I'm pulling a summary table at the front end of a report, it's got ODBC/Access links, dynamic named ranges and all sorts of other obscenely large formulas/functions that break in either the default reader or don't work at all with Numbers.
And with the number of reports I generate on a regular basis, it's not practical for me to export everything statically to PDF from a desktop refresh of the linked data.
This will hopefully be good more corporate folks behind iOS, but it's also worth noting that Libre Office is also coming to iOS.
Maybe you should try Pages again. It is actually a pretty good program. I have done many a documents and real grown up documents with it. So I don't know where you get this comment from.
Huge! Most office functionality thus far has been mediocre at best, especially for spreadsheet functionality.
Id like DropBox support too, but I suspect theyll stick with their own cloud product, SkyDrive (which has native support in Mac Office).
#1 is false, Apps for Android can be tied to a user's Android Market account, Amazon Appstore account or the IMEI number of the phone.
#2 MS already creates Android versions of several of their applications, Lyncs, OneNote and so on.
I would pay way over if it works well. It is all that stops me from using my iPad at work and in the field.
This will be HUGE for the iPad and MS
I've done plenty of documents in Pages and the other iWork apps too. Invoices, brochures, posters, newsletters. And pretty slick looking presentations with Keynote. Someone else had it bang on when they said Pages was like a mini InDesign. I love the templates, they're a great starting point for design inspirations.
However, there are certain things that it just isn't designed to do. For example, the other day I put together a mailing list in Excel (which was actually imported from a CSV file I downloaded from a browser-based database, but that's less important) and used Word to generate mailing labels based on the standard Avery 5160 label format. I don't believe there's any way to do that in Pages.
Plenty of reasons why people can justify using both iWork AND Office. No need to choose one over the other.
Might be based on those reports about Android users not buying apps vs. iOS users who can't stop giving out their money for them. But then again the root of that problem might simply be less responsive, inconsistent, or buggy UI that can't match the quality of iOS across a broad range of devices. Though the quality is getting betterso we'll see eventually which is the case.
Besides all thatif the difference between those freebie Androids and iPhones are so closewhy do so many people buy them vs even a $99-199 Android phone that is orders of magnitude better? They do it because they don't have enough money to. And that's the reason phone companies offer the free models. They rope in the morons who think "$99 is so expensive but free?? Hells yeah!" when those idiots don't even consider the thousands of dollars it costs for a smartphone over the course of a contract. When marketing broadly (like telecoms do), it's important to grab the idiot segment before your competitor does because they will believe anything.
Microsoft Office is far far better than iWork.
Microsoft Office is industry standard.
Microsoft Office is familiar to people raised on it over many years.
Microsoft Office is heavily discounted for students to buy
Microsoft Office has many books and training resources available
Microsoft Office file formats are known and used widely
None of this matters a jot to Apple Fanboys of course...but if iWork really was so great it would have overtaken MS office in same way the IOS overtook mobile Windows. That fact that it hasn't is because MS Office is better in every way.
Word is a very bloated application with more functions than the average user needs (especially in light of every communication done in email; I can't recall the last time I created a standalone word processing document instead of just writing in the body of an email).
Pages is more streamlined, less expensive.
If one wanted to make an argument for Office, Excel would be it... particularly for very advanced users (no I'm not talking about pivot tables).
Good luck doing this in Numbers:
=IF(AD2=1,"PTO Bundle",IF(AND(AD2=0,AE2=1),"PTO PPU",IF(G2="PROLINE TAX IMPORT",IF(SUMPRODUCT(($G$2:$G2=G2)*($B$2:$B2=B2))>1,"","PTI"),IF(G2="PROLINE TAX RESEARCH",IF(SUMPRODUCT(($G$2:$G2=G2)*($B$2:$B2=B2))>1,"","PTR"),""))))
Well, this is like comparing the iPad to a full blown computer. Sure many things the iPad does equally well, but there is a ton of things that it simply can't do. The same goes for pages and numbers (and to a certain extend maybe even for keynote). There is a lot of functionality beyond inputting text that is essential in larger corporate contexts.
It also helps that it runs on Windows, which is still used in the majority of major corporations, where Pages & Co. are limited to OSX.
Plus it is essentially THE format to exchange documents in. Almost everybody has it or can at least convert from or to it.
T.
iWork only offers a tiny fraction of MS Office's features. Do VBA and "office automation" mean anything to you? They are THE reason why Office has become the de facto standard. Office can be customized until Kingdom Come and it can easily be integrated in third party software. It's a powerful collection of Lego bricks. iWork is a simple one trick pony in comparison.
I may be hard pressed to remember the last day I didn't open Word...and that is why technology is so great. You need Excel functions (nice formula) that many will never use and many people need Word every day. Making them both usable on an iPad is a win for everyone.
Yeah, my perspective on MS Office vs. iWork on the desktop kind of considers the user, i.e., the additional complexity and overhead (possibly cost) for personal use vs. the flexibility/extensibility of the professional.
Word, great for pros needing complex documents with loads of organization objects (TOCs, footnotes, etc.), highly overblown for most personal use (including “lite” college writing, etc.). Pages competitive at the personal level, in fact, better due to less confusing UI and options.
Excel, any complexity enters your worksheet, there’s no comparison. Numbers only for very lite personal use, without any programmability.
Powerpoint, great for Pros and personal use (if there’s such a thing ...
), however, Keynote is nearly as good. This ultimately comes down to compatibility. ... of course, if interop with other users of MSO is crucial and you’re dealing with moderately complex documents and want the least hassle, go MSO.
This is great news.
Personally I hate Office. Keynote's always made better slides, and it's easier to make nice and readable documents with Pages.
That said, iWork has clearly been heavily neglected by Apple. I can't believe how long we've had to wait for an update to iWork on OSX (we're still on iWork 09! And even that update was disappointing).
There have been things like iCloud support, but really these apps are still lacking massively. For one thing, equation editing is torturous, while Office makes it as easy as typing plain English.
It doesn't look like they're really dealing with the iOS version either: document compatibility is still dreadful. It really makes this seamless iCloud integration hard when most of what you want to do isn't supported (it's always iOS).
Hopefully Apple takes the announcement not only as a win for the iPad, but also as a challenge to it's iWork team to do better.
I imagine they'd do it via in-app purchase in that case.
Personally I hate Office. Keynote's always made better slides, and it's easier to make nice and readable documents with Pages.
That said, iWork has clearly been heavily neglected by Apple. I can't believe how long we've had to wait for an update to iWork on OSX (we're still on iWork 09! And even that update was disappointing).
There have been things like iCloud support, but really these apps are still lacking massively. For one thing, equation editing is torturous, while Office makes it as easy as typing plain English.
It doesn't look like they're really dealing with the iOS version either: document compatibility is still dreadful. It really makes this seamless iCloud integration hard when most of what you want to do isn't supported (it's always iOS).
Hopefully Apple takes the announcement not only as a win for the iPad, but also as a challenge to it's iWork team to do better.
I imagine they'd do it via in-app purchase in that case.
Because there are hundreds of millions of users worldwide who understand Office, as compared to maybe a few million iWork users. Nearly every secretarial (administrative assistant) school advertises that they teach Office skills. Our office is now more than half Mac, but we still use Office and our newest hire doesn't even want to consider iWork apps on her iPad. I know she'll be very happy when Office is finally available.