“Back in November, The Daily initially uncovered the existence of an iPad version of the Microsoft Office Suite. Sources now say that the app will soon be submitted to Apple for approval,” Matt Hickey reports for The Daily.
“A brief hands-on with a working prototype of the software revealed a number of new things,” Hickey reports. “The app’s user interface is similar to the current OneNote app, but it has hints of Metro… Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be created and edited locally and online. But it’s unclear if Microsoft will support other Office apps at launch or at all.”
Hickey reports, “Sources close to the matter also commented that an Android version of Office is not in the works.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: For those who consider Office a necessity (most businesses, government, etc.), this will be yet another strike against Google’s Android and another positive for Windows Phone and Windows 8 which will surely have its own version of Office, too. Along with increasing royalty payments and legal losses that decrease functionality and usability, Office availability will be a big reason why Microsoft will likely soon begin to eat into Google’s Android market share.
Nice to get to hate Microsoft again. I missed that.
good answer LOVE It.
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=20109
having WORD and OFFICE on iPAD is a horrid idea.
iPAD owners running the software will be assisting the folks to became accustomed to the WINDOWS 8 way of working.
THERE will be those who defect to WIN8 tablets – so let them now – their are PC tablets out there already — WINDOWS will make iPAD look inferior – as they tried with WORD on mac.
SCAM
I’ll stick with Pages/Numbers but I know many will want Office simply cause they need it for work etc.
I installed Cloudon, it already allows you to run Word, Excel, powerpoint on an iPad. Requires Dropbox for syncing though. And haven’t checked for sure but may also require to be online at all times..
but it’s free. Best price for office 😉
Nice Kimber ;^) CloudOn is definitely good to go – as are the Apple offerings. The key thing I wonder about is how “feature rich” iPad Office will be in comparison to available apps. And the pricing better be very competitive, to. Otherwise it’s good that MS recognizes the importance of having an iPad presence.
I love my Kimber 😉
I’m surprised how well CloudOn works really. I’m not a big excel user but both my mom and uncle are, they both said it works great. My mom has an iPad 2 and my uncle will be buying one this week or so. (for his new business an iPad is going to replace his current setup)
Only a positive for Apple. This just show how the iPad is becoming professional device, not just a toy.
Amateur time is over RIM
An enemy of an enemy…..
Sure, KSH, because up until now, the iPad has only been a toy, right?
Office? We don’t need no stinkin’ Office!!
=:~)
Yes, Yes we do!
It will sell another several million iPads at least and round out the device. Microsoft has no choice but to play along with this. It’s fantastic!
Ridiculous – No — We don’t need Office on iPad.
Same as Apple does not need Flash on iPad to sell more.
More about the big picture… If anything it’s a transitional move for PC people to use an Apple product. Office on the iPad leads to Office on a Mac.
Let’s see if they shoot themselves in the foot with the pricing.
That was my first thot. How is MS going to position Office for iDevices? Doesn’t really seem like they have good options. Maybe $20 – $30 per app tops.
Methinks that the mobile version of Office has no chance to ever become the cash cow that the PC version is/was.
I tolerate Office on my Mac only because I can’t be bothered to work out the minor incompatibilities that exist when clients send me documents formatted in Word. I don’t think I’ll be springing for Office for iPad as it”ll be a bloated piece of trash.
I’ll stick with Documenta to Go for now. I don’t do much editing on the iPad as incompatibilities invariably arise because the simplified interface on the iPad messes with deep level formatting on the document. For review and editing of Office documents I turn to my Mac.
agreed – BLN
– there are alternative already as well as APPLE software.
Microsoft will be forced to remove most of the bloat in order to make Office run on iPad. I would use the iPad version of Excel—but that’s it. Word is a piece of filth, and PowerPoint causes brain damage.
i hope they have separate apps for Word, Excel, & ppt. I have so many excel files that Numbers doesn’t like that it would make my life easier.
That said, Keynote is much better than PowerPoint. I work in a mixed Windows/OSX environment and .pptx files and files made with the Windows version of Powerpoint are better opened with Keynote than my old version of MS Office for Mac (it’s at least two versions old, so I can’t blame MS for the fact I haven’t upgraded…well, I can, since I hated the last two versions after a test upgrade). Fonts look nicer, too. Jebus I hate Helvetica in MS applications. It looks like shizzle.
Pages is fine Word replacement for a tablet.
I want to like Numbers, but I don’t have time to transition.
Did Microsoft just shoot themselves in the foot?
Is WOA DOA?
(Windows On Arm)
WOA is not DOA.
As big as the ipad has become, MS had no choice but to get on the train.
That said, I’m sure they’re thinking it’s still the 1990s and the masses will buy a MS tablet because, well, it’s from 🙂 Microsoft :).
They’ll get some suckers and IT goons with that approach. For the rest of us, time has marched on.
Okay, I’ll admit – when I got my MBP, I got MS Office, not iWork. The main reason was it had more online compatibility features. But then iWork introduced compatibility with iOS, and then iCloud. Now it’s still a tough call. Yes, I prefer MacOS a million times to Windows. But between MS Office and iWork? That’s still a tough call.
Count me in as one of the people who hates going over their Pages export because others are entrenched in MicroHell. That said, I don’t know if it warrants a separate contribution to the Borg in order to make this easier on my iPad. I think it’ll depend on pricing.
Hopefully Office for the iPad will be better than Office for the Mac. I’ve tried very hard to like the Mac version of Office (I’ve tried every version), but inevitably I always revert to using the Windows version of Office via Parallels. The Mac versions are only half baked. I bet the iOS version will be more of the same — a half baked version that isn’t nearly as nice as what MS will develop for their own tablets (assuming they ever get them to market).
Office for Mac 2011 is pretty on par with the Windows version.
At least Excel (the one I use the most) seems to be very on par with the exception of ODBC drivers in VBA out of the box and some functions are in different places on the ribbon.
Thankfully, I don’t need no stinkin’ Office, just a word processor. But yes, as the platform evolves, it’ll be good for the iPad to have it.
I hold my nose anytime I have to use Word (usually only to cut and paste into a sensible InDesign doc). PowerPoint, I break out the gas mask and if I have to open a Publisher file… well just shoot me.
This is good. As a long-time Mac user I’ve mainly viewed MS as a developer for the Mac platform. Excel is about the only thing I really need and I welcome it on the iPad. Well, that and Bing as I’m no longer using *ANYTHING* that’s Google.
This may be hard to embrace for long-time Apple fans, but I would say that Google is a bigger enemy for Apple at the moment than Microsoft. And you know what they say… the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Regardless, Microsoft Office for iPad can only be considered a good thing for the platform. Like it or not, MS Office is the gold standard for productivity apps in the Enterprise. As much as it may hurt WP7’s adoption, Microsoft doesn’t have a viable competitor in the tablet space right now. And with as much momentum as Apple has in that market, particularly in the enterprise, they’re losing out on quite a few potential customers.
Besides, OSes were never Microsoft’s cash cow. They may have put Microsoft on the map, but Office has always been a huge profit center for them, both on Windows and on the Mac.
If it supports charting in Excel, I’ll get it, otherwise NOT!
No need for Microsoft office on the iPAD.
KEYNOTES and PAGES and NUMBERS already fine.
IF you want choice USE iDOCs on Google – heavens forbid.
http://www.imwatch.it/ca-en/
A few design ideas using the IPOD nano as a watch now is android watch — NOW here is good MOVE for GOOGLE.. make something different – innovate with ideas floating around the net… this is fair…
APPEL should have done it long ago — but has not.
But i bet if APPLE wishes they WILL DO IT BETTER..
how
SIRI – on such a small device – SIRI make more sense…
I sense history repeating itself. In the mid-1980s, Bill Gates had MS working on several Macintosh projects to gain experience developing software for a windowing environment. The first “windows” version of Word was on the Mac; Excel debuted on the Mac, and was Mac-exclusive for 18 months. Powerpoint began life as a third-party Mac app that MS bought and made-over.
MS now needs to figure out how to do touch interfaces and its only real test environment is the iPad. So it will push Office onto iPad and get some experience with it before having to ship a version for Win8.
Sadly for all, MS will almost certainly cripple the iPad version (relative to its Win8 version), leading to a poor experience for iPad users, and fewer sales for MS. They never seem to learn…
MS is deep into Office for Windows 8 at this point. There is no way they can expect Windows 8 to have any penetration without it.
From a programming perspective coding for touch interfaces is not much different from coding for a mouse driven UI. The real challenge is designing your UI layout in a manner that is fluid for the end user.
Microsoft is assuming its rightful place – the place Bill Gates wanted at the start – as Apple software developer!
Despite MS’ decline there are still people who *think* they need Office. This will remove another barrier to the iPad for them.
a strike against GOOGLE… WORD on iPAD is a waist of time.
SPECIALLY once OSX is running on a MAC TABLET. And the REAL iPad killer is exposed from the makers of IPAD.
GOOGLE has iDOCs in the cloud. I believe this is way ahead of all the competition. It would have been wise APPLE did it this way. Not to defend them – but they do have the right idea – GOOGLE DOES.
No upgrades – No downloads – it works – and a CLOUD concept before APPLE made their iCloud public.
I didn’t understand a word you wrote but I like that expression “waist of time.” In time, my waist has grown. I should stop wasting time and go get some exercise.
Do you really believe that no one at Google headquarters is going to be peering at your documents? (Shudder)
For me Office is still my main office app on my iMac, and while I have the mac suite they are not as easy for me to use considering how long I have used MS Office, plus have thousands of files to convert. So I would definitely be interested in an iOS version.
For Microsoft it also keeps people using Office, and would stop migration to Pages Note and Numbers.
Agreed. I’ve used excel for over 2 decades and prefer it to Numbers. These apps would make my life so much easier.