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Microsoft Office Finally Gets iOS App
An anonymous reader writes "After years of rumors and months of bickering with Apple over revenue splits, Microsoft has finally released an official iOS app for Office 365 subscribers, allowing people to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint on their iPhones and iPads. According to a hands-on report with the software, the Office app has basic functionality, but is missing some key productivity features. 'These include: font options, text alignment, bulleted lists and, again, more color choices, all of which you can find in, say, the Google Drive app.' They say it's a fairly useful addition for current subscribers, but certainly not enough to make it worth the Office 365 subscription fee on its own. '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. 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.'"
You can barely type on most tablets.
You can connect a bluetooth keyboard to most tablets. I ignored the remainder of your comment because it was therefore irrelevant.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In case you haven'y noticed, worker bees vastly outnumber "bosses". I rarely take my laptop home these days, but my tablet is also redundant for me personally at work.
Having said that, I bought a couple of tablets for some of our "worker bees" out in the workshop. They use them for an app I wrote that lets them receive new machining tasks, and give live updates on production status from out on the floor. So tablets aren't just useful for PHBs and layabouts.
which is totally what she said
They could easily release an iPad app without paying Apple the 30% - they just make the app require an Office 365 account. Done. Sign up for the account online, go back to the app, done.
They only have to pay Apple the 30% _IF_ users can sign up for the account _IN_ the app. If they do so via a web browser, on their own, it allows the developer to avoid the 30% cut to Apple.
Please do try to understand how the process works before offering your opinion on it.
People are going to compose documents, spreadsheets, etc. on a tablet??
No, not really.
Maybe I need more coffee, can someone explain why anyone would want this?
People want to be able to *edit* them on a tablet (last minute crap, corrections, etc). I'm hoping it's only minor edits. Of course, with the lack of proper font, alignment, bullet point and color support it may do more damage to an existing document than help it ;-)
Tablets are generally a consumption device. Some users can use them to create content, especially when used with a keyboard, but they are by far the exceptions.
Compose, no. Edit and update, yes.
Done right, it's actually a crazy powerful workflow.
Here's a trivial example... I do agility training with my dogs. I keep a spreadsheet of skills for each that I need to work on and add a check mark whenever I touch on that skill. I built it on my desktop using Google Drive, and keep a synced, offline version on my phone. Which means I can reference it and add that check mark when I'm actually training, or add a new skill to the list when I'm at class.
Now, is a spreadsheet the right tool for this sort of thing? Maybe a dedicated Android app would be better, but Google Drive is available on every device I care to use.
Obviously I'm assuming that this workflow is viable with whatever toolset Microsoft is offering. I have doubts that they could screw up something so simple, but lately I'm been amazed by their ability to do things exactly the least useful way.
Log in or piss off.
So basically, the market penetration on this will be zero, because Office 365
Meanwhile, in reality: One million subscriptions in 3.5 months.