“Microsoft is making a mobile version of its Word, Excel and PowerPoint products available for iPhone users via its Office 365 subscription plan,” Mary Jo Foley reports for ZDNet. “The roll-out begins starting June 14 in the U.S., with additional availability in 135 additional markets and 29 languages to follow next week. The Office Mobile for iPhone suite is available in the Apple app store.”
Foley reports, “The Office Mobile for iPhone suite is very much like the Office Mobile suite that Microsoft preloads on Windows Phone, meaning it is optimized for the editing, viewing and creation of Word and Excel documents. (Microsoft has offered OneNote for the iPhone since 2011.) While the new Office Mobile for iPhone suite can be used at 2X resolution on iPads, it is not optimized for that platform, Microsoft officials said.”
“Current and future Office 365 subscribers will be able to get Office Mobile for iPhone for use on up to five iPhones for free. These five devices won’t count against the five-device usage rights that Office 365 subscribers currently have with Office 365 plans that include Office client access,” Foley reports. “In other words, if you are an Office 365 subscriber, you can use Office 2013 or Office for Mac 2011 on a combination of five PCs and Macs plus Office for iPhone on five iPhones.”
Read more in the full article here.
“For the iPad, Microsoft is steering people toward its Office web apps,” Dana Wollman reports for Engadget. “To run Office, you’ll need an iPhone 4, 4S or 5 (or a fifth-gen iPod touch) running iOS 6.1 or higher. Since you already have [the required US$99.99/year] Office 365 subscription, you won’t need to create any new usernames or passwords; just enter the email address associated with your Office / Microsoft account, followed by the password.”
“We can’t tell if Microsoft deliberately handicapped Office Mobile for iPhone, or if it’s simply saving some features for a later update. (A company rep declined to comment on what we can expect from future versions.) We’re willing to believe Microsoft still has some unfinished items on its to-do list, but even so, it’s a shame that iPhone users waited this long for an Office app, only to get something with such a minimal feature set,” Wollman reports. “All told, Office Mobile represents a good enough start for Microsoft, and in some ways it’s better than Google Drive, particularly where spreadsheets are concerned. Still, it’s miles behind other office apps for iOS, including Apple iWork.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 100% Microsoft free for many years, thanks. We’ll pass on this overpriced, half-assed anachronism, too.
