Microsoft's Czech Unit Reportedly Confirms Office for iOS Coming in March 2013 [Updated]

[SeattleMoose]

Good Move

MS bread and butter has always been their productivity Apps and OS. Other than their gaming HW, all their other forays into HW have proved wasteful.

Besides, it is good for iWork to have some competition.

 

[george-brooks]

You must never need to interact with the rest of the world then. That said, if you need garage sale fliers and Lost Dog posters then Apple Pages is the tool to use.

Note: I'm talking about OS X software here, not iOS. Pages for iOS is pretty bad, I must admit.

What are you talking about? Pages has great support for .doc and pdf. One extra step, sure, but its worth it to save the headaches and nightmares using Word. All of the tools are intuitively and clearly laid out, and very powerful. Hell, I even prefer the little things, like using Helvetica as the default font. I can create the same document in pages in half of the time it would take me in MS Word. I have yet to encounter a compatibility issue.

And it I were to ever make a garage sale flyer or lost dog poster, I would probably just use InDesign. Overkill, sure, but in my opinion, Pages is nothing more than a very powerful word processor, and twice as good at what it does than the competition.

Office 08 was ok but lacked easy access to a lot of tools and had a lot of unnecessary bells and whistles. Its also horrendously slow. Plus, the layout of Office 2011 is horrendous. Better than its PC counterpart but still just awful. I used Pages and Word 08 about equally back in the day when I first switched, but gradually I began using pages exclusively, and when I saw the 2011 Office update, I decided not to upgrade. I will be using Pages until Apple stops updating it.

 

[johncrab]

Shhhhhh! Eez secret! Fearless leader would not want new app to fall into hands of Moose and Squirrel!

 

[tienathlon]

- Who don't care?

- I don't care.

 

[WilliamLondon]

Thanks for the info.

On the quoted part: I assume it is because everyone uses it. All of my professors demand either .doc, .docx, or .pdf for my assignments.

So it is more the fact that it is the "standard"

It used to be a standard.

So do my professors (require certain file formats), but Pages imports and exports Word docs and writes PDF files too. No one is quite as locked into the Micro$haft ecosystem as they used to be, and for the vast majority of people they never have to touch M$ products again if they don't want to. There are *free* open source versions that are every bit as good, no one is forcing anyone to stay on Word.

That said, if you truly like the product (or suite) and use the (extended) functionality it provides and don't mind an awful UI<grin> or spending more money, great. Personally, I am thrilled to be free of that crap suite of products.

 

[Krazy Bill]

What are you talking about? Pages has great support for .doc and pdf. One extra step, sure, but its worth it to save the headaches and

Pages compatibility with Office is dismal at best - particularly with complex documents. I wouldn't dream of using it at my job in an exchange environment where the doc/docx standard is a mainstay.

Like it or not... MS-Office it too engrained in the corporate and academic circles and that's not going to change.

 

[Tinmania]

Wheeeee! I have missed the buggy bloatware experience on my iPhone. I can't wait to download this and experience days of frustration and crashes.

/SNARK OFF

Maybe it will be Office 2003 for iOS and won't be so bad.




Michael

 

[Tinmania]

Note: I'm talking about OS X software here, not iOS. Pages for iOS is pretty bad, I must admit.

What are you talking about? Pages has great support for .doc and pdf.

Great support for PDF?? Interesting since Pages doesn't support PDF at all, other than exporting to PDF which OS X can do anyway.



Michael

 

[ChristianVirtual]

Which package was this?

Polaris Office.

Has a nice file management, templates for files, good rendering of files. It's not perfect but yet the front-runner version we found. And we tried some.

 

[ChristianVirtual]

I can't imagine how this can beat iWork with its iCloud integration.

Problem is that for big (paranoid) companies iCloud is a No-Go ! No guarantee of data availability, data privacy unclear, legal constrains, etc.
And using iWorks with something else (WebDAV) is rather painful.

When MS choose SkyDrive as main storage too (instead of their own Windows server) it will run in the same problem. SkyDrive, iCloud, Evernote, Dropbox, you name it, all No-Go.

Private I like iCloud, save one document here and get it over there. Nice.

 

[olowott]

aint falling for this

 

[slimbek]

I believe Pages etc. are all in excess of 250mb each.

What's the bet Office is a 1gb App? Starts to make my 8gb iPhone and 16gb iPad look a little small - especially with Garage Band, Infinity Blade etc!

 

[bogatyr]

Users don't want Microsoft apps on their Apple devices. They want the total integrated solutions such as Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

I'll take the apps which are fully compatible with most business documents over apps with iCloud sync.

 

[Exhale]

When MS choose SkyDrive as main storage too (instead of their own Windows server) it will run in the same problem. SkyDrive, iCloud, Evernote, Dropbox, you name it, all No-Go.

Private I like iCloud, save one document here and get it over there. Nice.

Microsoft makes heaps on money selling additional software for enterprise content management. They are not going to enforce the use of Skydrive because it would impede with selling their other software.

Business and Government is their prime source of income, not consumers.

 

[ChristianVirtual]

Microsoft makes heaps on money selling additional software for enterprise content management. They are not going to enforce the use of Skydrive because it would impede with selling their other software.

Business and Government is their prime source of income, not consumers.

Agree, but it will depend on the focus they put on iPad ... They also will not make it too easy for enterprise to not use Win8 (in both CPU variants)

 

[Les Kern]

It will come in 4 versions: Student Version for $29 Word only, Basic Version for $49 Word and PowerPoint, Advanced Version for $69 Includes Excel but cant do macros or functions, and Super-Duper Extreme $199 which come with the works and a free Zune they didn't bury in the landfill.

Seriously though, in my line of work I had to make a call... upgrade to the new version of Office for (gulp) $75,000, OR, go with Open Office for $0. A no-brainer, huh? And now that we are getting ready to purchase a substantial number of iPads, I need to again re-visit the reason I will probably pay a premium for... what exactly?
Okay, so office apps aren't free, but some are darned close. MS will have to make this worth it for us to buy it. REALLY worth our while.
I'm not holding my breath.

 

[dolph0291]

Thanks for the info.

On the quoted part: I assume it is because everyone uses it. All of my professors demand either .doc, .docx, or .pdf for my assignments.

So it is more the fact that it is the "standard"

Well, it's nice that you took my sentence out of context. The point was, I see people all the time bring out Word to make a shopping list, or a simple letter. It's overkill and unnecessary. In short, it's not the best tool for the task. Yet I see people do it all the time. And because it's not the best tool for the task I do wonder about it. The fact that your professor demands it for your homework is irrelevant.

 

[Navdakilla]

A little late on the iPad train.. I been using docs to go and it's been good enough for me

 

[dolph0291]

What exactly is missing from Numbers? I hear people slate it all the time, but what is it that they want from it? It seems it do the job for me.

I feel the same way. I find Numbers to be an excellent spreadsheet program, preferable in many ways to Excel. I especially like the way it's possible to put several tables on one sheet, as opposed to the Excel way of one table per sheet. It's easier to work that way and easier to see when changes affect multiple tables. The print view and the formula list are killer features - especially since printing from Excel is always painful. The function list is complete with everything I need, and the charts are the prettiest of the bunch, of course.

 

[StyxMaker]

I'm happy with Quick Office, it does everything I need

 

[damir00]

The point was, I see people all the time bring out Word to make a shopping list, or a simple letter. It's overkill and unnecessary.

Using a computer at all to make a shopping list is "overkill and unnecessary".

And that certainly includes using Pages.

So what?

 

[george-brooks]

Pages compatibility with Office is dismal at best - particularly with complex documents. I wouldn't dream of using it at my job in an exchange environment where the doc/docx standard is a mainstay.

Like it or not... MS-Office it too engrained in the corporate and academic circles and that's not going to change.

Thats true, I neglected to think of collaboration. 99% of the documents I create in Pages are intended to be printed or emailed with no one editing on the other end. I am also not creating any sort of complex documents with pages. If I need a complex layout, I will always use InDesign. It will take me half the time and look twice as good. So I never run into issues with converting to .doc. When I need to collaborate on a document, I always use Google Docs.

Great support for PDF?? Interesting since Pages doesn't support PDF at all, other than exporting to PDF which OS X can do anyway.

True, I was speaking only of exporting pdfs, I rarely need to edit a pdf (I always just ask for another format if I need to edit something). I was talking about compatibility with viewing documents on other systems. I am a student, emailing papers to professors is all that was going through my head.

MS Office is definitely better for the business, but thats only because it has been the standard for so long. Regarding document creation, I feel that pages has vastly superior tools to MS Office and a significantly more pleasing GUI.

 

[Drunken Master]

I can't imagine how this can beat iWork with its iCloud integration.

Maybe if you work with a bunch of people who don't use iWork?

Even if you can export to a .doc or what-have-you, there will still be formatting issues. Companies don't use iWork, they use MS Office, because most companies use Windows. MS Office's programs are clunkier than the iWork ones and not as polished or well-designed but they also have more features. That said, they run like ass on OS X. I held out for as long as I could with just iWork on my Mac but the real world will often want you to have Office, for their convenience.

I still prefer to do my personal writing in Pages over Word though.

 

[michelepri]

Apple Pages is excellent. Why would anyone buy MS Word?

 

[Zach Vega]

Let's hope it's not slow, buggy bloatware like it is on the conventional OS version.