Microsoft Launches Office For iPad: Includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

An anonymous reader writes "At an event in San Francisco today, Microsoft Office General Manager Julia White unveiled Office for iPad, featuring Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The new suite, which supports viewing but not editing for free, will go live in Apple's App Store at 11:00AM PDT (2:00PM EST). Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iPad feature a ribbon interface just like the one featured in Office for Windows and OS X. The trio of apps are much more powerful on the tablet than the smartphone, but naturally aren't comparable to the desktop versions."

Comments

Perfect

[lgw]

The absolute best use of a phone in the office IMO is to connect the meeting-room projector/screen to the phone HDMI out and project without needing a laptop. When I worked at VMware we'd do this with a remote desktop app back to a Windows desktop, but just running PPT/Word native is even easier. Plus the opportunities for embarrassing chats popping up are that much better!

Re:Perfect

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Is it really even needed for that though?

One thing I keep hearing from the MS fans (yes, they very much exist) is how great it is to have Office for free with Windows RT (Yep, that dead bastardized OS still has fans.) They insist that it is the killer mobile app that makes those devices (windows phone, surface) worth having. Invariably you run into one problem with that statement though: Nobody is buying either of them. If this is really such a killer app, then why isn't it flying off of shelves? I think I know the answer to that: Nobody needs office suites anymore.

Consider these:

Word: How often do you write formal letters anymore to the point that you MUST have Word? Usually it's just an email, sms, or a tweet if you're the social network type. None of those need or even expect fancy formatting, which is what Word is all about. In fact, in those settings, such things are often shunned because they take away from brevity. But suppose you do on occasion need to write a formal letter; you probably aren't going to do fancy formatting on a mobile device. Instead you're going to draft your letter while the thoughts are in your head on an app like evernote, maybe email it to yourself, and then copy and paste it into Word on a desktop system where you'll do all of that fancy shit. You certainly won't write even a half decent resume on a mobile device.

PowerPoint: I don't think I need to explain the problems with creating presentations on mobile devices (kind of annoying to pull up your images and other whatnots and then scale and position them properly using just your fingers, even with the best of NUIs.) But let's set aside that entirely. Look at how much a lot of organizations now hate powerpoint. The DoD says it's making its servicemembers dumber and wants to get rid of it entirely. Certain educational institutes are preferring the old (well, kind of old) whiteboard again.

Excel: Excel is perhaps one of the most useful components of office. Problem is, MS Office suffers a bit from the reverse of the Pareto Principle: 80% of its users only use 20% of its features. This is especially true for Excel where you don't use a whole lot of its more advanced features. That said, MS Excel is overkill (and expensive, I believe $80 buys you a license for ONE PC, and it cannot ever be transferred to another PC once installed.) But even for the free RT/WP versions, the interface actually isn't that well designed compared to other spreadsheets for mobile devices. In my experience, quickoffice has perhaps the best touch NUI for this. Best of all, it costs nothing.

TL;DR, I don't think MS Office, or even LibreOffice or any other office suite, is really needed anymore. I only have it installed because some of my classes at school require me to, but I noticed that when I'm not doing these assignments, I have only used it to create my resume.

Re:Perfect

[Grizzley9]

TL;DR, I don't think MS Office, or even LibreOffice or any other office suite, is really needed anymore. I only have it installed because some of my classes at school require me to, but I noticed that when I'm not doing these assignments, I have only used it to create my resume.

You had a good point up until you only considered student assignment usage.

Re:Perfect

[FlyHelicopters]

Yes, it is needed...

When you get out of school and move on to the real world, you'll find businesses use MS Office, it is the standard and is quite useful...

Social media is nice, but that isn't where business is done...

Re:Perfect

[vux984]

I only have it installed because some of my classes at school require me to, but I noticed that when I'm not doing these assignments, I have only used it to create my resume.

I've never met any sort of admin person who could function without office. They need excel and word for literally everything they do all day long.

AND anyone who interacts with an admin person needs to be able to read, and often write to those files.

An inventory manager might send someone an excel sheet of inventory that is missing and needs to be located. Or an asset list that needs to be completed. Or a table of phones that were stolen.

An accountant uses Excel in all kinds of ways, and those documents need to be disseminated to management.

What do you think your companies policy manuals were written in? The ISO quality manual? Material Safety Data Sheets? The log sheet to record when the bathrooms were cleaned? Device Master Records? Customs declarations paperwork? Grant applications? Investment Prospectus? Meeting minutes? New Employee Orientation packages? Legal Contracts? Stock Option Grants? SEC Filings? Press Releases? Performance Reviews?

How many of us need to fill out an excel or word document to submit a timesheet, prepare a customer a quote, submit an expense report, request vacation time, fill out an order, prepare a project budget, estimate a job?

I have only used it to create my resume.

Yeah, not everybody is you.

Re: Perfect

[TheGrimmReaper]

"airplane mode"? Hey, I want to be able to FIND my phone, not lose it in the ocean :)

Re:Perfect

[Archangel Michael]

Google Docs does 90 % of what anyone does and stuff Office CANNOT do, that when people see it, they will want it. Namely Multiple and simultaneous editing of documents. Sharepoint is not easy or cheap, and therefore doesn't count. Google Docs also forces users to do their own security, rather than have IT do it for them. Sharing a doc with only two people, easy in GDOCS, impossible with Office.

Collaboration is the new "hot" thing for organizations. And for the people that "need" office, well then they can buy it.

Re:Perfect

[Archangel Michael]

GoogleDocs converts to PDF just fine. As does your LATEX file. PDF is "portable" while MSWORD, MacWrite, even LibreOffice are not. However MSWORD and LibreOffice both can save as PDF.

Don't be a douche

"Naturally aren't comparable"?

[SuperKendall]

Doesn't seem that way:

Make no mistake about it: These three apps are feature-rich, powerful tools for creating and editing Office documents. They look and act like their Office 2013 counterparts on Windows. And although these iPad apps obviously can't replicate every feature of the full desktop programs, they deliver an impressive subset of those features. Anyone who was expecting Office Lite or a rehash of the underwhelming Office for iPhone will be pleasantly surprised.

(Thanks to DaringFireball for the link and summary).

I will download them for sure, but it really puts me off having to use a subscription to use them for editing.

Re:"Naturally aren't comparable"?

[exomondo]

I will download them for sure, but it really puts me off having to use a subscription to use them for editing.

I agree, I would have thought "free for non-commercial use" would have worked well enough. Corporates are the ones driving Office revenue anyway, end users are much more likely to go with iWork or Google Docs than paying for Office.

Re:"Naturally aren't comparable"?

[exomondo]

I would have thought "free for non-commercial use" would have worked well enough

So you want to rely on a DRM system which decides if you are using it for commercial purposes? Or just the honesty of users?

Neither sound like a good options when dealing with a product that is known for making good sums of money.

It's already been done for years, this isn't a foreign concept, have you not seen Office Home and Student for example? Not sure why you don't think it's a good option given it's been used for so long and continues to be used today.

Forgot to mention even a flat fee for a perpetual non-commercial Home & Student license would probably work.

Hmmm... 'Free'...

[Chordonblue]

This isn't so much about a paid subscription as it is not having to pay Apple for each copy of Office sold. This is their way of getting around that. Wonder how long it'll take Apple to close this loophole in the future...

Re:Hmmm... 'Free'...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, because Apple still takes a 30% cut if you buy the subscription as an in-app purchase. This is more about getting a constant stream of money ($10/month) rather than a one-time (or every two or three years) payment of $50 or whatever.

Re: Hmmm... 'Free'...

[base2_celtic]

That's incorrect. They do offer the subscription in-app. It goes through the App Store, and Apple takes 30% if you choose to do it that way.

http://recode.net/2014/03/27/m...

Re:Hmmm... 'Free'...

[tlhIngan]

This isn't so much about a paid subscription as it is not having to pay Apple for each copy of Office sold. This is their way of getting around that. Wonder how long it'll take Apple to close this loophole in the future...

You're under the impression that it matters to Apple that people skirt the rules like that.

Guess what? It doesn't. The only thing is that for payments in the Apple ecosystem, you use Apple's payment provider to provide less confusion and annoyance to users who may wonder if the box with their credit card number in it is secure.

Apps are just a way for Apple to sell more hardware - apps, books, movies, music, etc., iTunes makes some money, but it's not at all clear how much profit it makes or if it goes into their data centers.

Contrast this to Amazon, where sales of hardware are a conduit to sell more content. So Amazon would have a problem if you did this because they want to sell content.

Re:Hmmm... 'Free'...

[Savage-Rabbit]

Not really, because Apple still takes a 30% cut if you buy the subscription as an in-app purchase. This is more about getting a constant stream of money ($10/month) rather than a one-time (or every two or three years) payment of $50 or whatever.

Let's just take a look at this deal. I just bought a 356 subscription and according to the in-app purchasing wizard in the Office 365 suite on my iPad the subscription is $156 per annum. For that you are getting:

1. Word, Excel, Powerpoint and change.
2. License to install on up to 5 PCs/Macs
3. Use on mobile devices.
4. 20 GB of additional OneDrive storage.
5. Skype world minutes (60 of them per mensem)

Which sounds like a pretty OK deal to me considering the volume of product I'm getting. As far as I can tell there are no temporal usage restrictions on the PC/Mac licenses in this this sub, according to the office 365 community forums multiple users can log into the same account and edit the same document. If that is true than this subscription will cover my office needs, my parents's, my sister's and her husband's and we can split the costs. As for corporate profits.... If Apple is taking 30% then Microsoft is getting $109,8 / 12 = $9,15 per month and they still have to deduct costs and taxes. Mind you, being a corporation, MS, like Apple, Google, IBM and the rest of that ilk probably enjoy considerably lower tax rates than what Joe Six-pack has to contend with. However, MS does have to pay developers, maintain their cloud service data-centers and pay the system administrators of their cloud service department out of that and pay for marketing and other such crap. I'm sure MS makes tons of money off of this stuff but it's not like the profit meter at Microsoft HQ goes Chi-chinggggg! and increments by $9,15 every time they sell an office subscription to an iPad followed by a spontaneous chorus of manic laughter from every MS manager in the known universe over how they are ripping off their customers.

Odyssee II

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I wonder how porty the ports are.

Will I go to shut down my phone and be greeted with a popup that "Cannot quit Excel now"?

Will I thumb-whip an Excel spreadsheet to scroll down, and be greeted with a popup saying, "Insufficient resources to display", accompanied by a screen that no longer redraws?

These are both still features of 2010.

Re:Odyssee II

[Sir Holo]

MS Word has bugs that are at least 18 years old.

For example, endnotes/footnotes and cross-references inevitably screw up with "Bookmark not defined!" if you move them around. Same for Figure numbering, etc.

Example 2: PowerPoint (at least on Mac) will take minutes to open a PPT file if it contains any EPS images. This bug is just as old. And god forbid you copy-and-paste a graphic from Word to PowerPoint. It will fail to render, not for you, but for the customer you sent it to.

Completing the list of bugs >10 years old is left as an exercise to the reader.

Re:pointless

[DaHat]

I just can't see getting an Office365 subscription to use these applications.

While I don't think we'd get to see any #'s... I doubt that many will get an Office 365 subscription *just* to be able to use the iPad apps... instead being able to use the subscription on the iPad and a couple of desktop and laptops (up to 5 devices I think) is where the motivation to subscribe will comes in.

Implementation

[HyperQuantum]

I wonder if they wrote it more or less from scratch, or if they managed to reuse a lot of code from some other platform (e.g. Office for Mac OS X)?

Re:Libreoffice?

[rasmusbr]

You'll probably have to wait a while judging by this: https://wiki.documentfoundatio...

Re:Well, that took a while

[MightyMartian]

It's a pretty seismic shift in Microsoft's direction. The unholy trinity of Windows-Office-Backoffice has been the guiding paradigm of Microsoft's strategy for two decades. Now it's pulling Windows out of the loop and allowing Office-Back Office to stand semi-independent (yes, I know, Exchange and Sharepoint still run on the Windows operating system). It looks like the split between operating system and software is happening a decade later than it might have if the DOJ had stuck to its guns.

As usual, Outlook is conspicuous...

[Radical Moderate]

...in it's absence. Honestly, is it really that hard to develop an Outlook client? I mean, I understand that Microsoft is only one of the biggest companies in the world, but, still....

Too much competition already

[Grizzley9]

Meh, I'll just use Google Docs. When that isn't enough I'll open Libre/Open Office.

While I prefer Excel, those other options do just fine for anything I'll be doing outside of work. Plus you can get Apple's suite of office apps for free as well. MS screwed themselves by making it a pay to edit setup.

Too little, too late.

[norite]

Sorry guys, but you're way too late to the party, everyone has already been and gone and eaten your lunch a long time ago. They didn't think you'd ever show up. Your cola is still here if you want it, but it's warm and flat.

$80 for a 365 subscription? pffffft, please.

Still holding out for DOS for ipad

[jfdavis668]

I have had enough of this touch stuff on my ipad. I need to install DOS and get some real work done.

Re:Ribbons?

[angel'o'sphere]

For me the ribbon just looks like multitude of toolbars, takes me always ages to find functionality that I need, as the icons tell me nothing and I have to hover over everyone to see what it does.

Re:Well, that took a while

[BasilBrush]

Your doubts don't count for much given that Microsoft has also released MS Office for Android already. Check out the tabs for the platforms supported.

http://office.microsoft.com/en...