I wonder how sandboxing works with MS Office and iWork apps. Will iWorks still be able to open Office docs? Apple's strict regulation of certain aspects of apps might get a little complicated.
We have yet to see how they are going to handle the upgrades to iWork apps. Are they going to be free like they said, or are they going to break the rules and charge for them? Will docs created in one app be accessible to another app? They are not supposed to be.
As to sandboxing -- I suspect the next release of OSX and iOS will refine and broaden the definition of sandboxing/sharing:
1) Any app can register with the OS for the kinds of documents it is interested and can handle.
2) Any app can register with the OS for other apps it wishes to "fast switch to" with a documents -- e.g. document is open in Pages switch to Mail without changing documents -- just change apps.
3) A given app can create a document that is:
-- private (current implementation)
-- public -- read only
-- OS managed -- checked out and updated by any authorized app/user one-at-a-time.
There already is some of this going on in iOS for Apple apps:
-- iOS iMovie you can access iTunes Music and the camera roll with an OSX-like media browser
-- iOS Avid Studio cannot do this directly... no media browser API, so it must read all the music/video/photo entries and build its own index.
I wonder if MS crippled the functionality of Office for iPad. Remains to be seen.
That would the most stupid move for Microsoft to make. Office for iOS needs to be 100% functional equivalent to the PC version, or the crowds will object!
With the upcoming SkyDrive release for Mac, this seems like a better all-in-one Cloud synched product than the current market offerings, which rely on DropBox or Evernote connectivity. That being said, I believe Microsoft will charge their usually premium pricing (probably $20 for each product).
As for the stability and usability of the products, well, that is another story.
Hmm. Is Apple willing to accept an app that syncs via a competing cloud service? Frankly, I wouldn't be. I would very much like to access my many hundreds of Word files on my iPad and iPhone directly through the hardware's native cloud server. Pages is a fine mid-level word/document processor; for precise text control MSWord still leads the pack.
Microsoft Office for iPad can be awesome if it is really compatible with Microsoft Office for Mac. But sadly it will not be. Because Microsoft Office is not compatible between Mac and Windows, and it is not even compatible between different Microsoft Office versions on Mac, and it is not even compatible between different Microsoft Office versions on Windows. The same (not compatibility between Mac and iPad) can be said for Apple iWork. And I mean for any document created on Mac; not just the plain simple ones. Just use tables, pictures, formatting, audio, video, backgrounds, colors, animations, transitions, special fonts, tracking changes, spell checking, etc and you will be in a nightmare. We know that very well at our University. So, the conclusion is clear: a really mobile Mac is needed (400 to 600 g, and as small as possible). The Mac in your pocket. Always. It is not to work on it. It is mainly for mobility and Keynote and PowerPoint presentations.
I understand some of the comments were written with a bit of sarcasm but why do people feel we have to go back to business as usual by getting any software from Microsoft? What part of "Think Different" don't people get? Apple put out a good computer in a tablet form factor, why does that mean you have to immediately put all your old garbage on it? Isn't it time to look for something better or are we so entrenched in an archaic word processing program that we can't let loose of our comfortable "pencil?" I read schools aren't teaching cursive anymore not because it isn't a reasonable way to convey information (Windows Office products) but because the method of information sharing has changed. We're past the Microsoft Office days, let go of that disastrous product and move on.
Unfortunately, not all users have the option to simply switch to OSX or iOS productivity apps given the need to collaborate with co-workers using MS Office documents.
While iWork apps can open, edit and export to MS Office file formats, you sometimes run into formatting issues since some features are incompatible across platforms and it's not immediately obvious which ones. I learned this the hard way when I first imported a complex Keynote presentation into PowerPoint only to discover that many of my slides needed to be recreated since some formatting and transparency settings didn't carry over. My slides needed to be merged with others as part of a larger presentation so PowerPoint was a requirement. Interestingly, some features (e.g., certain fonts) don't even carry over between the Mac and iOS versions of iWork documents.
These limitations act as a deterrent to fully embracing the Mac productivity apps, despite their superior quality, unique features, ease of use and affordable prices.
Um, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote have the exact same features on the iPhone as the iPad. There's no reason for Office to be iPad only.
Pricing will be very interesting. Apple wins no matter what. Even if MS prices it the same as iWork ($9.99/app), Apple gets a 30% cut (or perhaps MS can negotiate that lower). But MS is used to making $150 or more for the suite.
While true now, those apps were iPad only at first.
Or clever one, they hook businesses into that and then bring a tablet out that has more features relating to their cloud.
This would be smart, and is very likely their move.
Get business's back to using MS Office (on the iPad), hooked into a cloud service that they feel dependent on... then come out with a Tablet that offers way more cloud features, and cripple the iPad version... getting people to switch back.
...Apple didn't approve the software for sale on iTunes for weeks or months, specifically to disrupt whatever marketing strategy that Office on iOS is part of for Microsoft.
...Apple didn't approve the software for sale on iTunes for weeks or months, specifically to disrupt whatever marketing strategy that Office on iOS is part of for Microsoft.
I think Apple wants this as much as Microsoft does. If Apple can make Windows Tablet stronger & Android Tablet weaker, that just strengthens the iPad relatvie to both (and iOS since that's the mobole os with great marketshare/ apps in both phone & tablet versions).
I think Apple would be fine with allowing MS to make the 'productivity software' & allow Apple to focus on other areas. If Apple were serious about making a world class Productivity suite to compete with Office for the enterprise environment, they would have already.
I imagine that Apple will be quite satisfied taking a 30% cut of every purchase of an MS Office product from the App Store, even if it means lower sales for Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
This could actually spur a fair amount of iPad sales now that more people will view the device as truly productive and useful in the workplace (not that it wasn't already).
So what happens to DataViz (Documents to Go) and QuickOffice now their their reason for existence disappears? I guess they could have/should have seen this day coming and planned accordingly.
Especially since Microsoft owns DataViz, and has for a while...
Pages is a fine mid-level word/document processor; for precise text control MSWord still leads the pack.
I'm not sure what 'precise text control' means, but I have always found Word to be really clunky when is comes to typography. Pages has very nice text control features such as ligatures, line and letter spacing as well as paragraph spacing, before and after, hyphenation on a single paragraph as well as control over widows and orphans. If Word can even do those things it is certainly not intuitive enough for people to actually use those options on a regular basis.
Not saying that Word doesn't have some nice features possibly missing from Pages but text control is not one of them in my opinion.
You obviously haven't used Numbers for any length of time. Keynote/Pages are great replacements for PowerPoint/Word, but Numbers (for the iPad) is VERY feature poor compared to Excel and conversion of docs from one to the other does not always go smoothly. Just because you have no need for it, doesn't mean that others are 'living in the past' because they do.
This will be a win/win for Apple & MS. MS because it keeps Office as the default Word processor/Presentation/Spreadsheet apps. Apple because it makes the iPad useful to more and pore poeple. It also helps MS by weakening Android. There is room for a second tablet OS. In fact, there needs to be one, by doing this, MS is making it iOS & Windows 8 for business people, and further marginalizing Android (on tablets). Strategically it's a nice move on their part.
There is also no solution today that properly formats and displays Powerpoint documents. Pages is ok if you don't need to do a lot with the styles. (If you are ok with what is built in, it is a nice program). Numbers is ok for pretty basic work. I do like some of the options for output numbers has and it is better than excel for a quick chart.
I would buy office for iPad if it would let me view people's powerpoint's correctly.
...Apple didn't approve the software for sale on iTunes for weeks or months, specifically to disrupt whatever marketing strategy that Office on iOS is part of for Microsoft.
I suspect this will be one of the shortest approval processes in history. This is a huge win for Apple and Microsoft.
Unfortunately, not all users have the option to simply switch to OSX or iOS productivity apps given the need to collaborate with co-workers using MS Office documents.
While iWork apps can open, edit and export to MS Office file formats, you sometimes run into formatting issues since some features are incompatible across platforms and it's not immediately obvious which ones. I learned this the hard way when I first imported a complex Keynote presentation into PowerPoint only to discover that many of my slides needed to be recreated since some formatting and transparency settings didn't carry over. My slides needed to be merged with others as part of a larger presentation so PowerPoint was a requirement. Interestingly, some features (e.g., certain fonts) don't even carry over between the Mac and iOS versions of iWork documents.
These limitations act as a deterrent to fully embracing the Mac productivity apps, despite their superior quality, unique features, ease of use and affordable prices.
I am with you if you change your sometimes to always or at least most of the time. Very rarely is there a smooth transition between iWork and Office. Certainly not something I would rely on for a client deliverable.
Comments
your argument is semantic, but it is nevertheless fair.
Allow me to retract and restate:
Consumers who choose to use the App Store will continue to have all the protections that they currently enjoy.
Yeah, I was probably a bit overly pedantic on that one.
I wonder how sandboxing works with MS Office and iWork apps. Will iWorks still be able to open Office docs? Apple's strict regulation of certain aspects of apps might get a little complicated.
We have yet to see how they are going to handle the upgrades to iWork apps. Are they going to be free like they said, or are they going to break the rules and charge for them? Will docs created in one app be accessible to another app? They are not supposed to be.
As to sandboxing -- I suspect the next release of OSX and iOS will refine and broaden the definition of sandboxing/sharing:
1) Any app can register with the OS for the kinds of documents it is interested and can handle.
2) Any app can register with the OS for other apps it wishes to "fast switch to" with a documents -- e.g. document is open in Pages switch to Mail without changing documents -- just change apps.
3) A given app can create a document that is:
-- private (current implementation)
-- public -- read only
-- OS managed -- checked out and updated by any authorized app/user one-at-a-time.
There already is some of this going on in iOS for Apple apps:
-- iOS iMovie you can access iTunes Music and the camera roll with an OSX-like media browser
-- iOS Avid Studio cannot do this directly... no media browser API, so it must read all the music/video/photo entries and build its own index.
What's your best guess on price ... I'm thinking it has to be more that iWork apps if only so as to seem better ... maybe $19.99 a module?
That would be my guess too.
What's your best guess on price ... I'm thinking it has to be more that iWork apps if only so as to seem better ... maybe $19.99 a module?
That would be my guess too.
Yeah, that's the sweet spot -- and some reasonable free/fee options for iCloud and SkyDrive.
I wonder if MS crippled the functionality of Office for iPad. Remains to be seen.
That would the most stupid move for Microsoft to make. Office for iOS needs to be 100% functional equivalent to the PC version, or the crowds will object!
With the upcoming SkyDrive release for Mac, this seems like a better all-in-one Cloud synched product than the current market offerings, which rely on DropBox or Evernote connectivity. That being said, I believe Microsoft will charge their usually premium pricing (probably $20 for each product).
As for the stability and usability of the products, well, that is another story.
Hmm. Is Apple willing to accept an app that syncs via a competing cloud service? Frankly, I wouldn't be. I would very much like to access my many hundreds of Word files on my iPad and iPhone directly through the hardware's native cloud server. Pages is a fine mid-level word/document processor; for precise text control MSWord still leads the pack.
What would the "tablets are toys" trolls say now?
"Office runs terribly on the iPad because it's an Apple product. When Microsoft releases their tablets, Office will run much better."
So, the conclusion is clear
No. That's far from clear and far from what will ever happen.
I understand some of the comments were written with a bit of sarcasm but why do people feel we have to go back to business as usual by getting any software from Microsoft? What part of "Think Different" don't people get? Apple put out a good computer in a tablet form factor, why does that mean you have to immediately put all your old garbage on it? Isn't it time to look for something better or are we so entrenched in an archaic word processing program that we can't let loose of our comfortable "pencil?" I read schools aren't teaching cursive anymore not because it isn't a reasonable way to convey information (Windows Office products) but because the method of information sharing has changed. We're past the Microsoft Office days, let go of that disastrous product and move on.
Unfortunately, not all users have the option to simply switch to OSX or iOS productivity apps given the need to collaborate with co-workers using MS Office documents.
While iWork apps can open, edit and export to MS Office file formats, you sometimes run into formatting issues since some features are incompatible across platforms and it's not immediately obvious which ones. I learned this the hard way when I first imported a complex Keynote presentation into PowerPoint only to discover that many of my slides needed to be recreated since some formatting and transparency settings didn't carry over. My slides needed to be merged with others as part of a larger presentation so PowerPoint was a requirement. Interestingly, some features (e.g., certain fonts) don't even carry over between the Mac and iOS versions of iWork documents.
These limitations act as a deterrent to fully embracing the Mac productivity apps, despite their superior quality, unique features, ease of use and affordable prices.
Um, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote have the exact same features on the iPhone as the iPad. There's no reason for Office to be iPad only.
Pricing will be very interesting. Apple wins no matter what. Even if MS prices it the same as iWork ($9.99/app), Apple gets a 30% cut (or perhaps MS can negotiate that lower). But MS is used to making $150 or more for the suite.
While true now, those apps were iPad only at first.
Or clever one, they hook businesses into that and then bring a tablet out that has more features relating to their cloud.
This would be smart, and is very likely their move.
Get business's back to using MS Office (on the iPad), hooked into a cloud service that they feel dependent on... then come out with a Tablet that offers way more cloud features, and cripple the iPad version... getting people to switch back.
...Apple didn't approve the software for sale on iTunes for weeks or months, specifically to disrupt whatever marketing strategy that Office on iOS is part of for Microsoft.
It would be hilarious if...
...Apple didn't approve the software for sale on iTunes for weeks or months, specifically to disrupt whatever marketing strategy that Office on iOS is part of for Microsoft.
I think Apple wants this as much as Microsoft does. If Apple can make Windows Tablet stronger & Android Tablet weaker, that just strengthens the iPad relatvie to both (and iOS since that's the mobole os with great marketshare/ apps in both phone & tablet versions).
I think Apple would be fine with allowing MS to make the 'productivity software' & allow Apple to focus on other areas. If Apple were serious about making a world class Productivity suite to compete with Office for the enterprise environment, they would have already.
I imagine that Apple will be quite satisfied taking a 30% cut of every purchase of an MS Office product from the App Store, even if it means lower sales for Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
This could actually spur a fair amount of iPad sales now that more people will view the device as truly productive and useful in the workplace (not that it wasn't already).
So what happens to DataViz (Documents to Go) and QuickOffice now their their reason for existence disappears? I guess they could have/should have seen this day coming and planned accordingly.
Especially since Microsoft owns DataViz, and has for a while...
Pages is a fine mid-level word/document processor; for precise text control MSWord still leads the pack.
I'm not sure what 'precise text control' means, but I have always found Word to be really clunky when is comes to typography. Pages has very nice text control features such as ligatures, line and letter spacing as well as paragraph spacing, before and after, hyphenation on a single paragraph as well as control over widows and orphans. If Word can even do those things it is certainly not intuitive enough for people to actually use those options on a regular basis.
Not saying that Word doesn't have some nice features possibly missing from Pages but text control is not one of them in my opinion.
You obviously haven't used Numbers for any length of time. Keynote/Pages are great replacements for PowerPoint/Word, but Numbers (for the iPad) is VERY feature poor compared to Excel and conversion of docs from one to the other does not always go smoothly. Just because you have no need for it, doesn't mean that others are 'living in the past' because they do.
This will be a win/win for Apple & MS. MS because it keeps Office as the default Word processor/Presentation/Spreadsheet apps. Apple because it makes the iPad useful to more and pore poeple. It also helps MS by weakening Android. There is room for a second tablet OS. In fact, there needs to be one, by doing this, MS is making it iOS & Windows 8 for business people, and further marginalizing Android (on tablets). Strategically it's a nice move on their part.
There is also no solution today that properly formats and displays Powerpoint documents. Pages is ok if you don't need to do a lot with the styles. (If you are ok with what is built in, it is a nice program). Numbers is ok for pretty basic work. I do like some of the options for output numbers has and it is better than excel for a quick chart.
I would buy office for iPad if it would let me view people's powerpoint's correctly.
It would be hilarious if...
...Apple didn't approve the software for sale on iTunes for weeks or months, specifically to disrupt whatever marketing strategy that Office on iOS is part of for Microsoft.
I suspect this will be one of the shortest approval processes in history. This is a huge win for Apple and Microsoft.
Unfortunately, not all users have the option to simply switch to OSX or iOS productivity apps given the need to collaborate with co-workers using MS Office documents.
While iWork apps can open, edit and export to MS Office file formats, you sometimes run into formatting issues since some features are incompatible across platforms and it's not immediately obvious which ones. I learned this the hard way when I first imported a complex Keynote presentation into PowerPoint only to discover that many of my slides needed to be recreated since some formatting and transparency settings didn't carry over. My slides needed to be merged with others as part of a larger presentation so PowerPoint was a requirement. Interestingly, some features (e.g., certain fonts) don't even carry over between the Mac and iOS versions of iWork documents.
These limitations act as a deterrent to fully embracing the Mac productivity apps, despite their superior quality, unique features, ease of use and affordable prices.
I am with you if you change your sometimes to always or at least most of the time. Very rarely is there a smooth transition between iWork and Office. Certainly not something I would rely on for a client deliverable.
I would buy office for iPad if it would let me view people's powerpoint's correctly.
My new pet peeve.