You won't find many advocates for putting MS Office on iPads around Redmond for competitive reasons but there are technical reasons, as well. iOS is an operating system designed for a PHONE and a device with less than a meg of total memory. Shoehorning a full-fledged office suite into that environment is no easier for Microsoft than it was for Apple.
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ms office for iPad?
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You won't find many advocates for putting MS Office on iPads around Redmond for competitive reasons but there are technical reasons, as well. iOS is an operating system designed for a PHONE and a device with less than a meg of total memory. Shoehorning a full-fledged office suite into that environment is no easier for Microsoft than it was for Apple.
Is this ever happens I hope Apple introduces the infamous beach ball in the following iOS update.
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kazmac
macrumors G4
as much as I loathe MS
having Word for the iPad would be great.
I just cannot get the hang of Pages. More importantly, I need Word/Office for school. Hopefully I can banish Office at home once I'm done with Uni...
anyway, I'd like this option too.
OR for Apple to rework Pages so it works more like Word (and is more compatible too).
having Word for the iPad would be great.
I just cannot get the hang of Pages. More importantly, I need Word/Office for school. Hopefully I can banish Office at home once I'm done with Uni...
anyway, I'd like this option too.
OR for Apple to rework Pages so it works more like Word (and is more compatible too).
FloatingBones
macrumors 68000
Can you please describe an exact use case where Pages doesn't meet your need for Word/Office today?
I'm not saying your concern isn't real; I just want to understand the exact things you need to do for school you're unable to do with Pages/Numbers. Thanks.
FloatingBones
macrumors 68000
Microsoft may dominate, but Apple has done significant damage to that dominance in the last 5 years. The iWork suite for Mac (now sold as 3 separate programs -- each for $19.99) works quite well for more casual users. The addition of the iOS versions (each $9.99) makes the software more attractive for iPhone/iPad users: casual edits and presentations on those portable devices. I can find no numbers, but Apple has taken a significant bite out of MS's market share.
In 2006, Office for Mac sold for over $300. Today, the student/home edition sells for $150 (with a license for 3 copies). I believe that students on campus are able to buy it for less than that. There have been several factors, but I'm sure the aggressive pricing of the iWork suite has been a major influence in the lower price for Office.
Apple's increasing market share and the lowered prices for Office for Mac has cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars in the last few years.
Every sale that Apple makes of Office for Mac also enriches Apple. I'm guessing only a small percentage of the sales of Office for Mac are actually sold by Microsoft, and somebody is getting a "tax" on all of those sales. Some seem to forget that there's a substantial markup for virtually all retail sales.
There are risks in porting MS Office to the iPad. There are also risks in not porting MS Office to that computer.
It's all shades of gray, and it's a very complicated chess game.
As we have discussed elsewhere, there are some missing parts on iOS. So far, there is no RTF API available. That would make for much more work for MS to port Office. Maybe MS doesn't think that a tablet is a viable platform for Office. Or maybe they had too many other high-priority projects.
Or maybe you're right: they didn't want to lend credibility to the iPad by putting Office there. It's an interesting question.
you make good points.
in the end, though, i think ms office is the standard. i don't know a single business that uses pages, and i cannot think of one that doesn't use word.
it has nothing to do with the quality of the programs (though, i think anyone who used pre-word word processors realizes the revolutionary changes microsoft has wrought). it has everything to do with how the industry developed. assuming microsoft could overcome any technical challenges with ios, they'd be taking a huge risk by contributing such an important product to apple's app market at the same time they roll out their own mobile platform.
i'm not holding my breath. i'm tired of getting tied into any of these proprietary platforms, and i try to avoid them whenever possible. so, i am not terribly concerned about the lack of a microsoft app.
frankly, i can't believe we have come so far with personal computing and we are still stuck with the same incompatibility issues for some of the most basic tasks (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.) that launched personal computers in the first place. how sad.
in the end, though, i think ms office is the standard. i don't know a single business that uses pages, and i cannot think of one that doesn't use word.
it has nothing to do with the quality of the programs (though, i think anyone who used pre-word word processors realizes the revolutionary changes microsoft has wrought). it has everything to do with how the industry developed. assuming microsoft could overcome any technical challenges with ios, they'd be taking a huge risk by contributing such an important product to apple's app market at the same time they roll out their own mobile platform.
i'm not holding my breath. i'm tired of getting tied into any of these proprietary platforms, and i try to avoid them whenever possible. so, i am not terribly concerned about the lack of a microsoft app.
frankly, i can't believe we have come so far with personal computing and we are still stuck with the same incompatibility issues for some of the most basic tasks (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.) that launched personal computers in the first place. how sad.
Actually, the threats to Microsoft's domination of the the office productivity market hasn't come from iWorks. It has come from Open Office and more recently from Google Docs.
http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-openoffice-market-shares.html
Overall, Forbes currently estimates that Microsoft has 94% of the office productivity market. That figure may be slightly inflated by the fact that new Windows PC's are typically shipped with 60 day evaluation versions of Office, but the fact remains that it is not iWorks that has driven down the price of Office; it's the free cloud-based applications.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatsp...weighs-on-microsofts-office-license-revenues/
Here's one - Pages has no support for doing redlined document version comparisons. In my work I need to do this every day. None of the existing word processing apps have support for this (some will at least show you the redlines in an existing document, but you can't continue tracking new changes, reject or accept the changes, etc.). Until that functionality exists, neither Pages nor any of the other word processing apps (Docs to Go, etc.) will work for me.
good point. this is a weakness that i have not been able to solve. for some people, opening in pages, saving a file as a pdf, opening in goodreader, and editing there will work. but, of course, that process is a bit clunky.
Yeah, there are plenty of work arounds, but nothing that just works, right out of the chute. What I can't figure out is why Apple hasn't stepped up and made Pages a more robust competitor to Word.
Could be, but I think a stronger theory is that MS is holding out for its own tablet OS to start shipping, together with a pretty robust MS Office tablet suite. Could be just the thing they need to drive enterprise adoption in favor of the iPad.
You do realize that the price of other versions also include a retail markup of 30-50%? Why is it a "tax" when Apple charges it?
Grandpa1947
macrumors member
MS Mess Up
I think MS is making a big mistake not adapting Office for the iPad. They probably think that will push people to buy Windows 8 tablets instead. I think they are wrong. The larger the Apple customer base gets, the less influence MS has over our choices.
I think MS is making a big mistake not adapting Office for the iPad. They probably think that will push people to buy Windows 8 tablets instead. I think they are wrong. The larger the Apple customer base gets, the less influence MS has over our choices.
Bernard SG
macrumors 65816
An even stronger theory is that Microsoft is at a loss figuring out what should Office look like and how it should behave on a tablet (see post #22 by Ditzy).
FloatingBones
macrumors 68000
We were discussing the relative market shares of MS Office and iWork on Macs. The chart you're showing shows all OpenOffice usage, but it doesn't break down which users are on PCs and which are on Macs. The iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) do not run on PCs; they run on Macs and iOS only. Since less than 10% of the laptop and desktop computers can even run the iWork programs, it's not an apples to apples comparison (to coin a phrase).
If you conservatively multiply the market share of iWork by 7, you'll discover that iWork is significant on Macs. IMO, the marketing and pricing of iWork has had a definite impact on the pricing of Office for Mac.
I'm not sure if you realized this statistical error when you posted that chart. Please take care when correcting someone that your data is doesn't have such errors.
That's fair.
I'm hoping that Apple is being sneaky and will include redline functionality in the version of Pages that will be released with iOS 5. It seems to be one show-stopping feature for many users. If the iPad were the only way to do something like that on a handheld device, they could gain a significant number of new users in the next year.
I'm presuming there aren't a lot of other show-stopping features, Mike. Is that right? If not, do you have a shopping list of all of them?
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Bernard SG
macrumors 65816
footnotes. pages without footnotes makes it useless in an academic setting. perhaps ios5 will grant us this boon?
Not logical reasoning?
If the meaning of the first sentence is: More people will buy iPad if Office is adopted for the device, and that will get Apple a larger customer base - then the third sentence seems to me to be somewhat illogical in this line of reasoning, because it stands to reason that MS wants to have more influence over our choices (as certainly also Apple would like to have); both companies are of course making a living of the customer base, and it is not anything wrong with that.
But when it comes to our choices, I think the main thing is: what kind of product (hardward and software) meets our (in this case) productivity needs in the bst way? The numbers are clear: Office does to day, but did it even better IMO in the 2003 version. Open Office demands far too much resources of the system. Many plain text word processors is and certainly can in the future be a really hot choice for many writers, for instance OmmWriter and so forth. But they must not be too fancy (and then in fact too "complicated" and distracting at least visually) in their alleged "simplicity". And above all: Compatibility must be a very high priority - also in the iCloud to come. I hope this not will turn out to be an "issue" with that great idea.
If the meaning of the first sentence is: More people will buy iPad if Office is adopted for the device, and that will get Apple a larger customer base - then the third sentence seems to me to be somewhat illogical in this line of reasoning, because it stands to reason that MS wants to have more influence over our choices (as certainly also Apple would like to have); both companies are of course making a living of the customer base, and it is not anything wrong with that.
But when it comes to our choices, I think the main thing is: what kind of product (hardward and software) meets our (in this case) productivity needs in the bst way? The numbers are clear: Office does to day, but did it even better IMO in the 2003 version. Open Office demands far too much resources of the system. Many plain text word processors is and certainly can in the future be a really hot choice for many writers, for instance OmmWriter and so forth. But they must not be too fancy (and then in fact too "complicated" and distracting at least visually) in their alleged "simplicity". And above all: Compatibility must be a very high priority - also in the iCloud to come. I hope this not will turn out to be an "issue" with that great idea.
Apologies for not understanding your point. I have to say though that using phrases like "market domination" when you're limiting your focus to less than 10% of the systems in use is, at best, hyperbole. The "market" for MS Office is the vast range of personal computers in use, not the tiny percentage that Apple constitutes of that total.
He may have meant market domination in regards to the tablet market; not the entire PC industry.
Actually he appears to have meant the market to include only MS Office used on Apple products. Folks are free to make up any kind of definition they like on the internet but such a definition in this case is, at best, confusing. From Microsoft's perspective the "market" for Office is far larger than the small share used on Apple products.
Looking at it from MS's perspective, they have 2 parts of their business really, windows and office. It seems that the iPad is damaging windows, so they'll want to fight back against it. An iPad version of office would help the iPad, not hinder it, so don't expect it any time soon 😉
On the other hand, I bet there is an iPad running office somewhere in Redmond. If the iPad proves unstoppable, not having office on it would damage the office business unit. If windows 8 tablets aren't too successful I think they'll release office on the iPad.
On the other hand, I bet there is an iPad running office somewhere in Redmond. If the iPad proves unstoppable, not having office on it would damage the office business unit. If windows 8 tablets aren't too successful I think they'll release office on the iPad.
Bernard SG
macrumors 65816
You know what? The terrible thing is that you might be right with that theory and that would mean Microsoft's top executives are betraying their shareholders.
I've lost track of the count of iPad sales, but I believ by end of this quarter, that would be around 50 million cumulative. If we assume only 10% of those users would be interested in an iPad MS Office, priced at $50, that would mean Ballmer and Co are squandering a quarter-billion revenue.
By the time Windows 8 tablets are out, I think iPad will have hit the 100 million milestone: using the same conservative assumption of 10%, that will be $500 million revenue left out.
Meanwhile Apple is working on improving iWork for iPad. The more it goes, the less relevant becomes the perspectives of Office for iPad.