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Microsoft Office Mobile arrives for iOS
- wikwocket 13y agoNow if we could just get Google to play nice and release apps for Windows Phone...
- thurn 13y agoI expect BlackBerry apps would be first, since they still have the larger market share [1]. [1]: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2482816 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2482816
- josefresco 13y agoThe numbers are trending in MS's favor. Q12012 share for BB was 6.8 now only 3. Windows Phone in Q12012 was 1.9, now 2.9 Not rocket growth but the trend clearly points to MS being the weak #3. Not sure how the existing install base for both effects this conclusion. Sales are only 1 piece of the puzzle.
- rbanffy 13y agoFor a vanishingly small market share? Not worth the effort. The web app works just fine.
- pWneD 13y agoWell, there's already Office for mac...
- sidcool 13y agoHighly editorialized title. It was quite an expected move.
- xaritas 13y agoIt's an allusion to Steve Jobs' somewhat notorious "hell froze over" introduction to iTunes for Windows, from 10 years ago (... wow). This was also a widely anticipated introduction but it still seemed a little subversive. http://news.cnet.com/Apple-launches-iTunes-for-Windows/2100-1041_3-5092414.html http://news.cnet.com/Apple-launches-iTunes-for-Windows/2100-...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- josteink 13y agoHm. Clever strategy releasing only for Office 365 customers first. Microsoft is clearly aware that most people with a tablet already have something by Apple or an Android device and that trying to use Office to sell them a Windows RT device isn't going to work. However enticing organizations to "upgrade" to Office 365 (which comes with a regular subscription fee and better long term profits) to get a version for the tablet they already have might actually move some 365-licenses. I say they are making the best of the situation.
- zuppy 13y agoI understood that it's only for iPhone. I hope they're not sacrificing office sales, just to force you to buy RT. It's not yet available for me so I can't check that.
- nwh 13y agoI struggle with the move towards everything being subscription based. Very quickly it becomes difficult to quantify just how much it is costing to own, and maintain ownership of a license for a piece of software. If I see an application that is $50, I can quickly quantify that into hours I need to work for this to be paid off. I can compare the value I am getting to the amount of currency that I expend on it. I know that if I need to in the future, it will always be there for me to rely on. If I see a service that is $12 a month it becomes a much harder game. Sure it might be worth it for the first month, but the second one becomes a much harder decision. Do I unsubscribe, and lose all the data that I have stores, or do I pay another $12 and hope that it continues to be useful to me in the future? In the future I might need to sign up again, which is a lot more hassle than it is worth. All of these "small" subscriptions are beginning to cost me more than I'd like.
- bornhuetter 13y agoThat's one of the reasons why companies love them. People subscribe for a few months, stop using it as much but forget or don't bother to unsubscribe. The entire gym industry is based on this principle.
- smackfu 13y agoOTOH, companies love to buy them too. A predictable monthly cost that can be budgeted, that is directly tied to the number of employees? Yes, please. Doesn't make as much sense for consumers, but Office 365 isn't aimed at them.
- bornhuetter 13y agoYes, that is true. Although Microsoft are trying to get consumers on to Office 365 too - they got rid of their 3 computer home license to push the Office 365 home package which runs on 5 devices. Personally I don't think that's a great idea - I think too many people are going to think about the cost of a subscription and decide it's not worth it. Buying a license as a one off cost with your new computer is easier to swallow imo.
- mikek 13y agoThe pricing makes sense. But not from the perspective of what's best for Office. It makes sense in that Microsoft doesn't want Apple to take a 30% cut.
- bornhuetter 13y agoIf only Microsoft released Office for Linux and Apple let OSX run (in a VM or otherwise) on non-Apple hardware the world would be a much better place.
- k-mcgrady 13y agoIf Apple let OS X run on other hardware the OS would suffer with them having to spend time supporting so many different configurations. If they didn't their reputation would suffer. Microsoft building Office for Linux would be a complete waste of time and money. The majority of Linux users would complain that it was expensive, closed source, and continue using the free, open alternatives.
- freyrs3 13y ago> The majority of Linux users would complain that it was expensive, closed source, and continue using the free, open alternatives. I don't know what you're user base you're sampling but the vast majority of Linux users are not opposed to closed source ( Steam, VMWare, Humble Bundle ) and are quite willing to pay for quality software.
- bornhuetter 13y agoAs much as I'd love to live in a Free Software world, I'm happy to just take steps toward it by using proprietary software on top of a Free operating system. The ability to run the OS on any hardware I want (within reason), swap in and out components like DEs, and run any compatible software I own on it is more important to me personally than the apps being open source.
- mwfunk 13y agoIt's hard to say. I get the sense that there's a huge disconnect between the demographics of all Linux users, and the impression one might get of those demographics by doing a survey of blogs, forums, mailing lists, online polls, etc. For example, if you just read the most popular Linux forums, you could easily get the impression that every single Linux user despises Ubuntu with every fiber in the fabric of their being, and that they would never use any closed source product under any circumstances, and that they would only consider paying for anything if what they were paying was itself 100% open source. As far as I can tell, though, that's not necessarily the case at all, with the Steam/VMWare/Humble Bundle cases being well-known counterexamples. As far as I can tell, nobody really knows. The Humble Bundle cases are interesting because Linux users have historically paid more than users from other platforms, on average, but is that because most Linux users want more closed source Linux software, or is it because a subset of Linux users want to encourage more closed source, and are voting with their wallets to demonstrate that? Anyway, nobody knows. But if you are correct that the vast majority of Linux users are not opposed to closed source, then that would imply that pretty much the entire online Linux community is a hugely disproportionate misrepresentation of Linux users as a whole. Given that Linux as a platform is far more reliant on having a healthy online community than other platforms, that would be a big problem. However, my gut feeling is that you are correct, and that the online Linux community is a vastly disproportionate subset of Linux users, and that it's unfortunate that the online community is so dominated by one particular type of user.
- daigoba66 13y agoIt should be noted that this is apparently an iPhone-only only app in terms of resolution. Which kind of makes it not super useful (in addition to requiring an Office 365 subscription).
- andrewgleave 13y agoIt will look perfectly at home on iOS 7.
- corresation 13y agoSome 600 million iOS devices have been sold. Microsoft is ultimately a software company (despite the recent "ape what Apple does" corporate direction. Microsoft would be worth treble if it diverged into self-interested divisions years ago), and this makes complete sense.
- marban 13y agoDoes anyone have any insights on who really uses these kinds of apps on their phone (and how)? Whether it's MSO, iWork or GDocs I can't find any productive use for them other than a quick lookup. Even editing a simple 10 page document is just a huge pain and there's really no piece of mind that it'll look good on a desktop device.
- rednukleus 13y agoCorporate types like to be able to read documents sent to them via email on the train or in the pub. I have seen an impressive number of edits done to documents and long emails typed on blackberrys by people in the pub in the past. The process will be much more reliable on an official MS set of apps, and for many companies that's worth a lot of money.
- varikin 13y agoI imagine it is more aimed at the quick look up. Check a document in a meeting and things like that. Review someone else's work, etc.
- Terretta 13y agoI regularly round trip proposals and contracts using Pages on the iPad (with a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover). It's not a huge pain, it's straightforward; and you can render to PDF as well if you're concerned about appearance.
- jakebellacera 13y agoKeynote for iOS has been incredibly useful for me in the past. My office's meeting rooms each have a TV with an AppleTV connected into them, so I just use my iPad to stream the presentation.
- outside1234 13y agoMicrosoft is opening up - Linux VMs, SDKs for Android / iOS, Office everywhere. The religion has been cast off (finally) at Microsoft and its going where the developers and users are.
- bornhuetter 13y agoI'd love it if that were true, but I'm not sure how much has really changed. They have always allowed Windows to run in a VM on Linux - it's just the special free VM packages that didn't run on Linux before. They have also always had Office on Mac - it's the best way to make sure no other office suite can get off the ground, and makes Office documents more industry standard. If they were to release Office for Linux, then that would be something.
- at-fates-hands 13y agoDoesn't Libre Office do pretty well in the Linux space?
- bornhuetter 13y agoIt does do well, and for personal use it's fine (far better than Open Office ever was), but it's just not on the same level as MS Office. When you start getting into document tracking or Macros things start to break down, and the general usability is not as good - especially for Excel vs Calc. I'm happy with Gimp for image manipulation and indie games (I've got a 3DS and a Windows partition on my desktop for that), but I still boot into Windows or fire up a VM on my laptop to run MS Office (or watch Netflix).
- emehrkay 13y agoIs Apple setting up iWork for iCloud (very Microsoft-y naming here) subscription based or free if you happen to have an iCloud account? I ask because these two applications/SOCs would be direct competitors with MS having the advantage
- Terretta 13y agoiWork applications and apps are paid but dirt cheap, cloud sync is free for first 5GB storage. Pages handles MS Word formats well, even full "track changes" interop from iPad, so you can round trip office docs from a train.
- bornhuetter 13y ago> Pages handles MS Word formats well Does it? The people that I've known to try this have all complained to me about problems. Not sure if this is a compatibility issue or Pages itself (and not sure if it's just my small sample of friends).
- parasubvert 13y agoLong time Pages user - It does handle Word reasonably well, just as Numbers handles Excel, and Keynote handles PPT. But as with most import/export functionality it has quirks so that you cannot use it exclusively. It is not useless, but not perfect. Depends on the document. I'd say Keynote<-->PPT is the best of the bunch, followed by Pages<->Word. VBA Excel macros are hard to port.
- jmspring 13y agoHell freezes over? The trade press has mentioned this was in the works for awhile. Microsoft actually makes some decent iOS apps. A company of 100k will have different groups with different beliefs/approaches. It's like the thread earlier this week about a particular person's experience with the group he was in after 8mo.
- pixie_ 13y agoNice, and they already styled it to look like iOS 7!
- Ologn 13y agoWith regards to the mentions of Office and Excel on Android... Android spreadsheets which are Excel compatible are something I am interested in. There's a few options - Documents To Go, Quickoffice, Olive Office... Two years ago I started to write a spreadsheet which could handle Excel format on Android without network access. I used the Apache POI libraries. I could handle pre-2007 Excel files OK (XLS), but post-2007 (XLSX) was more of a challenge. I learned the hard way of Android's famous 2^16 methods per Dalvik executable file limit while doing the project, and discovery of the existence of that limitation put the project on an indefinite hiatus. I tried to get around the problem - I pulled a lot out of the schema but it was still over the 65536 method limit. One option available would be custom class loading of multiple Dex files, which would be a pain. Another possibility is some kind of cloud solution where XLSX files would be uploaded to a server - something I have little interest in. The remnants of my project are here - http://bit.ly/1abDbhK http://bit.ly/1abDbhK - although there is not much there, just a very, very bare skeleton of a spreadsheet which can handle XLS (pre-2007 Excel) files. I have to update the README though since the API of the Apache POI libraries have changed - it still works with the archived and still downloadable, circa-June-2011 POI libraries though.
- thornad 13y agoDoes it have an NSA backdoor?
- nostromo 13y agoI wish Microsoft had decided to separate into several companies way back during the US v. Microsoft case. Office is actually a great product and Excel in particular still is the best available spreadsheet around. But Office has been hamstrung by being part of Microsoft; in particular by not supporting iOS or Android or online (until being forced to). If Office was its own company, I'm sure these platforms would have been supported years ago. I feel like Microsoft is one of the rare cases where the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts.
- bornhuetter 13y agoOffice would do well without the rest of Microsoft (in fact possibly even better), but I'm not sure the rest of Microsoft would do well without Office. Office is a huge stable cash-cow that allows Microsoft to experiment on things like Kinect without having to worry if they aren't always profitable. You could argue the same thing with Apple and iOS. iOS would be better if it weren't so tied to OS X, but I'm not sure the rest of Apple would be in anywhere near the same position (or even still around) if it weren't for the big iOS and iPod cashcows.
- tambourine_man 13y agoiOS would be better if it weren't so tied to OS X Why is that?
- bornhuetter 13y agoTwo main reasons: 1. If people could develop for it on other platforms it would significantly increase the number of people able to write iOS apps globally, particularly people from lower socio-economic groups. In the short term it doesn't make a big difference, but there are millions of people in India and China that can't afford even an entry level Mac, and I think in the long run this is detrimental to the ecosystem. 2. Many iOS services are tied into the Apple ecosystem, such as messages, notes, facetime etc. If they weren't using iOS to try to get people onto OSX then these services would be more likely to be cross platform and therefore far more useful.
- rogerchucker 13y ago$80 subscription for Office 365 is too expensive for someone on a student's budget.
- objclxt 13y agoSorry, $80 for a four year subscription? Because that's what the Office 365 for Students deal is. That's $1.66 per month. Seems pretty in-budget for a student.
- rogerchucker 13y agoThen charge us per month - don't ask for a freaking down payment.
- smoser 13y agoBeing a 'free' download looks like a good compromise for Microsoft and bad for users. Apple wasn't going to make a pricing exception for Microsoft (30% to Apple). So Microsoft just shifts the 'purchase' to the web.
- parad0x1 13y agoTheir commercial stating that the iPad can't have Office just became obsolete.