Microsoft has released a new all-in-one Office app for Apple’s iPhone that combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app eliminating the need to switch apps when using Microsoft’s word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs.
It also will save a significant amount of space on your iPhone when compared to downloading three distinct apps.
The Office app is for the iPhone and can be downloaded now for free. There is a subscription needed, starting at $6.99 per month, to unlock most features.
Microsoft said it is planning to eventually bring the app to iPadOS.
MacDailyNews Take: On our iPhones, we prefer to use Apple’s Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for free.
Cool. When will pages, Numbers and Keynote be completely compatible with MS Office? Never. That’s why most use MS office in the corporate (enterprise) world. Apple doesn’t really care about compatibility. Jobs vs. Cook, round 1000.
I agree with the post above, why doesn’t Apple care about this? A few years ago, they even offered a professional certification for Numbers, Pages, and Keynote, that gave it a presence of enterprise level legitimacy. It is a free productivity suite that isn’t just as good as Office, its better in many ways. Now, Apple limps it along like a bastard step-child. They don’t really promote it….shame, shame Apple for letting Microsoft eat your lunch.
I am a Mac person, but i would never say that the Apple productivity suite compares to Office. It’s just not even close. I prefer Mellel for writing, but even then, i have Word envy. Word is so much easier to use and has a better interface. Using styles and layouts in Pages doesn’t even come close. Apples offerings are NOT as good as Office. Not even in the same ballpark.
Pages on Mac was my preference for about half a decade and then Apple kneecapped it in favor of a dumbed down iOS version, maybe it has improved since but I’m not bothering to even check, waste of time as long as I can get a standalone version of Word for Mac.
MS Works is back!!
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Works was very capable software, a lot like ClarisWorks. M$ deliberately (IMO) kept the file formats incompatible with Office and did what they could to encourage people to upgrade.
MDN: Nothing is free. If an iPhone was a healthcare policy, you’d be railing against it, claiming you shouldn’t be forced to subsidize one ore more Apple default apps that you don’t use.
Perhaps you intended to write, “On our iPhones, we prefer to use Apple’s crippled and incompatible Pages, Numbers, and Keynote versus paying for superior alternatives.”
Default app acceptance makes you sound exactly like the unadventurous Internet Explorer users you loved to bash in the past.
MS’s fancy marketing video does not mitigate the complexity of MS Office products. For 98% of the work I do, Pages, Numbers and Keynote are better and cleaner. I agree with other posters – if only Apple would make them fully compatible with Office files. Part of my workflow often involves creating and editing in iWorks and then checking to make sure formatting and functions are retained in Office. Its a pain in the tuchus.
The suite of iOS and iPad software from Apple and some of the better third party developers are a joy to use with the Mac and the iPad-iPhone hardware, hopefully Apple will see the light before it’s to late and realize that forcing subscription is a dead for small and medium sized developers, the crapware from Microsoft and Adobe is not better. (Apple, Affinity, Procreate, Notability, Omniware and many others) are far beyond the bloatware coming from MS and Adobe.
iOS apps in general are not a joy to use, because the underlying goal for all of them is to force you into a corral. Using artificial limitations like file incompatibility, restricted sharing and file transfer options, and other stripped capabilities, not to mention hiding user tools that should be easily accessible, they are all a pain in the butt compared to document processing on a Mac or PC.
It goes without saying that the end user should be able to determine what package is adequate for his needs, but claiming that a highly limited iOS default package is best because your personal needs are limited just advertises to everyone who are the fanboys.
Note: a fanboy always touts his benevolent overlord/sponsor’s solution no matter what. A wise consumer considers all available options from every company and without judgment will assess the strengths and weaknesses of each. It’s been years since MDN did any objective assessments of their own. Today however a portable SSD comparison article popped up. That is very useful. It is the kind of article onto which MDN could, if they were trying to be helpful, add yet more value. For example: are any of these SSDs compatible with iOS devices? What would be required for that to happen? Is performance of these SSDs different when used with a Mac versus when used with a USB-C equipped iPad, versus an adapter to an iPhone? Why? Objective evaluation and proper forum moderation could improve this site dramatically.
Background: I gave my Macbook Air to my future son in law for college, so I was left with my iPad and iPhone as my Apple products to use pages, etc. I purchased a keyboard for the iPad, but it is still horrible compared to using my Macbook Air. (At work I must use MS products, I do not use office at home).
I have a home PC, and thought I will just use Pages online. Why is it so difficult for Apple to implement features that google Docs has for online use? I can copy and paste as I would normally with my mouse in docs, but that feature is not available with Pages. I would like them to just step up their game. I was so excited when Pages came out, but it seems to be stuck in development.
Select-copy paste easy, both work the same in the end, Pages isn’t Word and never will be, I use Word, Excel, and Outlook at work too, Excel is the only program worth it, but it will never work on a Mac like it does on Windows (it’s been 30 years), the other programs however are not worth crying about.