Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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)?
I am not really here right now.
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
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.
I have had enough of this touch stuff on my ipad. I need to install DOS and get some real work done.
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.
"airplane mode"? Hey, I want to be able to FIND my phone, not lose it in the ocean :)