I have had a theory Microsoft has been sitting on this for a while. All the rumors that Office for iPad and iPhone existed, I just think Microsoft didn't want to release it. Releasing Office for iPhone is close to admitting defeat. They had to hope that Office being exclusive to Windows Phone and Surface would draw people from iPhone and the iPad. Didn't work. Then, Apple announced its cloud based office suite, and that was it. Microsoft had to act.
Microsoft is struggling on mobile, losing ground with Windows 8, Xbox One is in trouble, so the only thing Microsoft has going for it is enterprise and business software. They can't afford to give Apple and others an obvious opening any longer.
It's pretty smart, actually. I've always thought Microsoft's going to try and stay and factor in the consumer market and are willing to take big risks there, but in the back of their minds, they see themselves and a business/enterprise company now.
No real web version though. Also the iphone app has pretty limiting editing abilities. But documents look exactly like do in office on the computer & editing and saving them will not screw them up.
Note that any Skydrive account can edit a Word document through the web for free. Excel too. It's far from full featured, but enables basic editing the same as all these web editors. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/web-apps/
Exactly. This is a response to iWork for iCloud which was demoed earlier in the week. Honestly that must have sent shivers down their spines. Sorry Microsoft, I can barely stand using the version of office work gave me for free. I'm sure as hell not paying you a subscription fee.
They are on the precipice. Windows is turgid compared to OS X. If anyone takes enough market share from Office to make it no longer a defacto standard the rest of the dominoes will fall, spectacularly.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious that this was rushed out the door as an "answer" to iWork. They also had to hold back the iPad version so they could still run those awful adverts that tell us how the iPad doesn't have Office but some shitty DELL tablet does.
Interestingly, I just went and read four or five "hands on" articles about the software and everyone is climbing all over themselves to give it a good review even though it's clearly buggy as hell and very severely limited. BGR is especially egregious in that regard but then they always have their hyper-aggressive heads stuck up some corporate ass at that site.
Also just to be annoying myself I have to say "called it!" (in regards Office not really "coming to iOS" but instead a link to Office 360 coming to iOS).
The subscription based model ruins it for many. I don't want to pay for an application over and over again just to use it. iWork with iCloud is a way better deal and I don't have to pay Microsofts extortion money to keep using it. It works on Mac, Windows, and iPad and iPhone and iPod Touch. Microsoft is in trouble with there GREEDY subscription crap. They want to extort the user like they do with there corporate licensing fees every year. It's easy money cause they don't have to do a thing except collect there money.
I agree. I suspect Microsoft has had Windows for iOS ready for some time (including a version for iPad) but was waiting until the market pressures forced them to announce the product.
1) Microsoft has to be present on the most popular systems, if for nothing else to ease migration 'back' to a Windows/Surface/Phone platform. The obvious delay was that somewhere in their heads, the felt that 'just a couple months more' and WinPhone and Surface and Win8 would be 'most popular' and they wouldn't need to release it. The fact they are selling Office on Surface as a differentiator vs iPad and releasing this to iPhone really tells me that they've given up on WinPhone, and are still in a distortion about Surface.
2) Exchange and Office as an App/webApp is the roadmap. Microsoft is selling their exchange cloud solution purely on that You won't be able to buy Outlook as an .exe in 7 years, unless your an existing corp client. Pushing an iPhone version out gives them a testbed for office, for low power users (you're not going to be creating much on a iPhone, just tweaking/updating), and gain a experience prior to releasing a general solution for Android, and iPad (inevitable. see #1)
iWork (and Google Apps) show that for the masses, plinking notes and recipes and filling in squares on a spreadsheet can be done pretty well now with HTML5. Power users will still need fully compiled local applications, but I think you'll see the storage model of the web evolve to a 'write through' concept. Shared documents will become fully journalled objects, so as changes come in, your changes and their changes are merged just like a distributed database.
Microsoft is realizing that capitated revenue will need to move to Azure, owning the rights management of the app access and data access for your personal and professional lives. Eventually, All AD will be a forest of forests eminating from Redmond. The question is, will people put the Credit Card numbers in like they do for iTMS/iCloud? If they don't, Microsoft is doomed to be IBM... a managed service for corporations, and a army of overpriced consultants who are one quarter from being RIFfed at the whims of Armonk.
Microsoft is a devices and services company now. What that means is, eventually, you need to be on every major platform. This is the beginning of that. Granted, they'd rather you buy a Surface to run Office on, but they really need to support all the platforms. There's a lot of heterogeneity out there. People aren't necessarily completely inside one ecosystem. (For example, they may be using a PC with an iPhone or a Mac with an Android phone.) Office needs to be on all devices to provide a good value in terms of being a service.
So much for Microsoft's latest "iOS Doesn't do Office" commercial.
Now that subscription based software is the red-headed lepper in the room, I hope MS & Adobe suffer the same fate giving way for better suites (like iWork) to shine.
The subscription based model ruins it for many. I don't want to pay for an application over and over again just to use it. iWork with iCloud is a way better deal and I don't have to pay Microsofts extortion money to keep using it. It works on Mac, Windows, and iPad and iPhone and iPod Touch.
I am sure Microsoft would gladly take your money, but the app is probably directed at people that already have the subscription. Many have subscriptions that they're work pays for.
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Microsoft is in trouble with there GREEDY subscription crap. They want to extort the user like they do with there corporate licensing fees every year. It's easy money cause they don't have to do a thing except collect there money.
You obviously do not have to deal with software licensing fees often. For Enterprise software, all things relative, an Office license is a steal. In fact, the subscription model is cheaper than the traditional licensing model. The total price for one year of Office365 is less than you would pay for a single license of Office. Subscriptions are usually about charging less but having a more consistent stream of payments and a higher volume of payments (most will pay $12 / month faster than they will drop $300).
What it basically says that users of Adobe's products, by and large, don't like the switch to subscriptions. Oddly enough though, those that have switched are very satisfied and plan to renew. I think the biggest thing subscription models have going against them is they are new and unfamiliar, but subscription based software has been far more common in the enterprise, so businesses are more quick to embrace it than consumers, and business is where Office is popular.
As such, I don't really see Microsoft being in much trouble here, especially since Microsoft still sells licenses, unlike Adobe. So businesses don't want a subscription, they can still get Office the same way they always have. Plus, I can see certain segments, like colleges and schools, preferring Office365 because they can work out deals so every student has access copy of Office.
As for you as an individual, you have far cheaper options than Office365, so use them, but I don't really think Microsoft expect consumers to jump on board. They're mostly after businesses and students.
So much for Microsoft's latest "iOS Doesn't do Office" commercial.
Now that subscription based software is the red-headed lepper in the room, I hope MS & Adobe suffer the same fate giving way for better suites (like iWork) to shine.
I kind of like Adobe's subscriptions. I need Photoshop from time to time, but not enough to justify the price tag. So $20 for access here and there is sufficient, but ditching licenses altogether was a bad move.
Keep in mind, Microsoft still sells Office the way they always have. Office365 is just a new option. They may go the way of Adobe in the near future, but so far they have not.
Everyone keeps talking like Office365 is the only way to get Office now, and that's completely false. I am not so much defending Microsoft as I am defending accuracy.
Office is Microsoft's last island. They've already sunk their other island with the Xbox One. Windows 8 is at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Windows RT is burning up in the earth's core. Balmer is surfing like an ape on a surfboard having a great old time not realizing the wave will cover his last island.
I simply cannot fathom how far Microsoft has fallen since Balmer has taken charge. The board of directors must be under lock-down to not get rid of this buffoon. At least I respected Bill.
You don't but Apple is taking over the enterprise in mobile, and like it or not, Office is still king in the enterprise on Mac and PC. You're probably not the target market.
Funny you should mention that - I use Pages in, well, and enterprise environment. Then again, like most folks in an office environment, I don't really live/breathe office-type apps (most of my time is spent in SSH if that helps).
The only target demographic I could see for this new app is maybe the exec who wants to edit the occasional PowerPoint or Excel bit at the last minute. Anyone else will need a keyboard/mouse, or they can use one of a zillion other apps to do the same thing... here's six of them off the top of Google: http://teachmeios.com/6-ios-apps-to-edit-ms-office-documents-word-excel-and-powerpoint/
The only target demographic I could see for this new app is maybe the exec who wants to edit the occasional PowerPoint or Excel bit at the last minute. Anyone else will need a keyboard/mouse, or they can use one of a zillion other apps to do the same thing... here's six of them off the top of Google: http://teachmeios.com/6-ios-apps-to-edit-ms-office-documents-word-excel-and-powerpoint/
You'll notice I didn't defend the iOS version. If someones already has a Office365 account at work, school, or otherwise, they might use this. Then again, Pages has been around to edit Word documents for awhile, so if you REALLY needed that capability on the iPhone or iPad, chances are you've already purchased an app for it or migrated to iWork.
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Funny you should mention that - I use Pages in, well, and enterprise environment. Then again, like most folks in an office environment, I don't really live/breathe office-type apps (most of my time is spent in SSH if that helps).
I'm glad Pages does what you need, but unfortunately, I ran out of options. The main reason I make use of Office is because the files sent to me are nearly always in MS Office format. I really wanted to do without Office when I switched to Mac, but I just couldn't manage it as I was spending far too much time dealing with the incompatibilities, especially with Excel. I tried, it didn't work. Honestly, I could use iWork for myself, but that doesn't stop others from sending me XLSX and DOCX documents.
Also, my wife is in school and she tried to do without Office on her laptop. She had a professor that failed her on a paper because he couldn't open it. He didn't let her know when it happened, she found out when she got her grade on the paper. He told her he only accepted Word documents and flunked other papers if they would not open. She was using OpenOffice at the time, and I think she just forgot to do a "Save As..." and change the format to Word. The grade isn't the point though. She got paranoid about using anything other than Office and didn't want to flunk more papers because she forgot to pick the right menu option. So we bought Office. Not because of Microsoft, but another person,
It's just hard to use another program when you live in a world where some people act like Microsoft Office is the ONLY software for editing documents.
Wow, it's Friday morning and someone at Microsoft decided, "what the hell, let's really blow this week!"
Really, can Microsoft do anything right these days?
I was really excited about MS Office for iOS, but wow, did they blow it... and not in a beta/version-1 kind of way, but in a way that's all kinds of bad and not likely to improve.
I'm ok with the $99 a year. I don't like it, but if it's solid, it's worth it.
What I'm not ok with is simple things like not being able to save a document unless you're connected and able to log in. Not being able to print at all. And worse, somehow managing to be less compatible with Office than several other apps including Apple's iWork.
I think the ultimate, "just give up Microsoft" moment for me was when I read this review on InfoWorld:
Specifically, "I have to be fair to Microsoft: Its version of Mobile Office for Window Phone has all the same issues and limitations, as did the years-old version of the long-dead Windows Mobile platform".
In other words, for Microsoft, this is as good as it gets.
Err, I have Pages, which as a bonus integrates with Text-To-Speech. What the hell would I want a crippled subscription-only bit of bloatware for?
This is just a viewer with very light editing capabilities, what bloatware. Plus it's not meant for you but medium to large companies who use Office 365, which is actually a pretty decent service. I love being able to retrieve all my documents, company documents and company memos anywhere, where as before I had to wait to get to the office. This is a very handy tool for those who use an iPhone and their company utilizes Office 365.
I was really excited about MS Office for iOS, but wow, did they blow it... and not in a beta/version-1 kind of way, but in a way that's all kinds of bad and not likely to improve.
Wow, this isn't Office for iOS but just a document viewer for Office 365. If you or your company doesn't use Office 365 then this isn't meant for you.
They also had to hold back the iPad version so they could still run those awful adverts that tell us how the iPad doesn't have Office but some shitty DELL tablet does.
I agree they held back for strategic reasons. However, since iPhone apps run on an iPad that claim is no longer valid.
Comments
I have had a theory Microsoft has been sitting on this for a while. All the rumors that Office for iPad and iPhone existed, I just think Microsoft didn't want to release it. Releasing Office for iPhone is close to admitting defeat. They had to hope that Office being exclusive to Windows Phone and Surface would draw people from iPhone and the iPad. Didn't work. Then, Apple announced its cloud based office suite, and that was it. Microsoft had to act.
Microsoft is struggling on mobile, losing ground with Windows 8, Xbox One is in trouble, so the only thing Microsoft has going for it is enterprise and business software. They can't afford to give Apple and others an obvious opening any longer.
It's pretty smart, actually. I've always thought Microsoft's going to try and stay and factor in the consumer market and are willing to take big risks there, but in the back of their minds, they see themselves and a business/enterprise company now.
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Originally Posted by peteo
No real web version though. Also the iphone app has pretty limiting editing abilities. But documents look exactly like do in office on the computer & editing and saving them will not screw them up.
Note that any Skydrive account can edit a Word document through the web for free. Excel too. It's far from full featured, but enables basic editing the same as all these web editors. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/web-apps/
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Originally Posted by Dunks
Exactly. This is a response to iWork for iCloud which was demoed earlier in the week. Honestly that must have sent shivers down their spines. Sorry Microsoft, I can barely stand using the version of office work gave me for free. I'm sure as hell not paying you a subscription fee.
They are on the precipice. Windows is turgid compared to OS X. If anyone takes enough market share from Office to make it no longer a defacto standard the rest of the dominoes will fall, spectacularly.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious that this was rushed out the door as an "answer" to iWork. They also had to hold back the iPad version so they could still run those awful adverts that tell us how the iPad doesn't have Office but some shitty DELL tablet does.
Interestingly, I just went and read four or five "hands on" articles about the software and everyone is climbing all over themselves to give it a good review even though it's clearly buggy as hell and very severely limited. BGR is especially egregious in that regard but then they always have their hyper-aggressive heads stuck up some corporate ass at that site.
Also just to be annoying myself I have to say "called it!" (in regards Office not really "coming to iOS" but instead a link to Office 360 coming to iOS).
I agree. I suspect Microsoft has had Windows for iOS ready for some time (including a version for iPad) but was waiting until the market pressures forced them to announce the product.
I'm of 2 minds on this...
1) Microsoft has to be present on the most popular systems, if for nothing else to ease migration 'back' to a Windows/Surface/Phone platform. The obvious delay was that somewhere in their heads, the felt that 'just a couple months more' and WinPhone and Surface and Win8 would be 'most popular' and they wouldn't need to release it. The fact they are selling Office on Surface as a differentiator vs iPad and releasing this to iPhone really tells me that they've given up on WinPhone, and are still in a distortion about Surface.
2) Exchange and Office as an App/webApp is the roadmap. Microsoft is selling their exchange cloud solution purely on that You won't be able to buy Outlook as an .exe in 7 years, unless your an existing corp client. Pushing an iPhone version out gives them a testbed for office, for low power users (you're not going to be creating much on a iPhone, just tweaking/updating), and gain a experience prior to releasing a general solution for Android, and iPad (inevitable. see #1)
iWork (and Google Apps) show that for the masses, plinking notes and recipes and filling in squares on a spreadsheet can be done pretty well now with HTML5. Power users will still need fully compiled local applications, but I think you'll see the storage model of the web evolve to a 'write through' concept. Shared documents will become fully journalled objects, so as changes come in, your changes and their changes are merged just like a distributed database.
Microsoft is realizing that capitated revenue will need to move to Azure, owning the rights management of the app access and data access for your personal and professional lives. Eventually, All AD will be a forest of forests eminating from Redmond. The question is, will people put the Credit Card numbers in like they do for iTMS/iCloud? If they don't, Microsoft is doomed to be IBM... a managed service for corporations, and a army of overpriced consultants who are one quarter from being RIFfed at the whims of Armonk.
I think this is a huge win for Apple in enterprise sales. The only thing that can top this is MS Office for iPad.
Microsoft is a devices and services company now. What that means is, eventually, you need to be on every major platform. This is the beginning of that. Granted, they'd rather you buy a Surface to run Office on, but they really need to support all the platforms. There's a lot of heterogeneity out there. People aren't necessarily completely inside one ecosystem. (For example, they may be using a PC with an iPhone or a Mac with an Android phone.) Office needs to be on all devices to provide a good value in terms of being a service.
Now that subscription based software is the red-headed lepper in the room, I hope MS & Adobe suffer the same fate giving way for better suites (like iWork) to shine.
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Originally Posted by b9bot
The subscription based model ruins it for many. I don't want to pay for an application over and over again just to use it. iWork with iCloud is a way better deal and I don't have to pay Microsofts extortion money to keep using it. It works on Mac, Windows, and iPad and iPhone and iPod Touch.
I am sure Microsoft would gladly take your money, but the app is probably directed at people that already have the subscription. Many have subscriptions that they're work pays for.
Quote:
Microsoft is in trouble with there GREEDY subscription crap. They want to extort the user like they do with there corporate licensing fees every year. It's easy money cause they don't have to do a thing except collect there money.
You obviously do not have to deal with software licensing fees often. For Enterprise software, all things relative, an Office license is a steal. In fact, the subscription model is cheaper than the traditional licensing model. The total price for one year of Office365 is less than you would pay for a single license of Office. Subscriptions are usually about charging less but having a more consistent stream of payments and a higher volume of payments (most will pay $12 / month faster than they will drop $300).
This is an interesting article:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57586530-92/survey-creative-suite-users-loathe-adobes-subscriptions/
What it basically says that users of Adobe's products, by and large, don't like the switch to subscriptions. Oddly enough though, those that have switched are very satisfied and plan to renew. I think the biggest thing subscription models have going against them is they are new and unfamiliar, but subscription based software has been far more common in the enterprise, so businesses are more quick to embrace it than consumers, and business is where Office is popular.
As such, I don't really see Microsoft being in much trouble here, especially since Microsoft still sells licenses, unlike Adobe. So businesses don't want a subscription, they can still get Office the same way they always have. Plus, I can see certain segments, like colleges and schools, preferring Office365 because they can work out deals so every student has access copy of Office.
As for you as an individual, you have far cheaper options than Office365, so use them, but I don't really think Microsoft expect consumers to jump on board. They're mostly after businesses and students.
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Originally Posted by Kaipher
So much for Microsoft's latest "iOS Doesn't do Office" commercial.
Now that subscription based software is the red-headed lepper in the room, I hope MS & Adobe suffer the same fate giving way for better suites (like iWork) to shine.
I kind of like Adobe's subscriptions. I need Photoshop from time to time, but not enough to justify the price tag. So $20 for access here and there is sufficient, but ditching licenses altogether was a bad move.
Keep in mind, Microsoft still sells Office the way they always have. Office365 is just a new option. They may go the way of Adobe in the near future, but so far they have not.
Everyone keeps talking like Office365 is the only way to get Office now, and that's completely false. I am not so much defending Microsoft as I am defending accuracy.
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Originally Posted by realwarder
Subscription only is one way to get around paying any store cut.
Will be interesting to see how long before it appears on an iPad given the push of Office as a USP on a Surface tablet. I'd say a while or never.
Actually, as far as I know Apple doesn't allow publishers to get around paying the 30% cut by using external subscriptions systems.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/12/11/apple-and-microsoft-at-odds-over-skydrive-app-subscription-fees
Presumably Microsoft got a special deal from Apple.
Office is Microsoft's last island. They've already sunk their other island with the Xbox One. Windows 8 is at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Windows RT is burning up in the earth's core. Balmer is surfing like an ape on a surfboard having a great old time not realizing the wave will cover his last island.
I simply cannot fathom how far Microsoft has fallen since Balmer has taken charge. The board of directors must be under lock-down to not get rid of this buffoon. At least I respected Bill.
Retraction?
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Originally Posted by rednival
You don't but Apple is taking over the enterprise in mobile, and like it or not, Office is still king in the enterprise on Mac and PC. You're probably not the target market.
Funny you should mention that - I use Pages in, well, and enterprise environment. Then again, like most folks in an office environment, I don't really live/breathe office-type apps (most of my time is spent in SSH if that helps).
The only target demographic I could see for this new app is maybe the exec who wants to edit the occasional PowerPoint or Excel bit at the last minute. Anyone else will need a keyboard/mouse, or they can use one of a zillion other apps to do the same thing... here's six of them off the top of Google: http://teachmeios.com/6-ios-apps-to-edit-ms-office-documents-word-excel-and-powerpoint/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Penguinisto
The only target demographic I could see for this new app is maybe the exec who wants to edit the occasional PowerPoint or Excel bit at the last minute. Anyone else will need a keyboard/mouse, or they can use one of a zillion other apps to do the same thing... here's six of them off the top of Google: http://teachmeios.com/6-ios-apps-to-edit-ms-office-documents-word-excel-and-powerpoint/
You'll notice I didn't defend the iOS version. If someones already has a Office365 account at work, school, or otherwise, they might use this. Then again, Pages has been around to edit Word documents for awhile, so if you REALLY needed that capability on the iPhone or iPad, chances are you've already purchased an app for it or migrated to iWork.
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Funny you should mention that - I use Pages in, well, and enterprise environment. Then again, like most folks in an office environment, I don't really live/breathe office-type apps (most of my time is spent in SSH if that helps).
I'm glad Pages does what you need, but unfortunately, I ran out of options. The main reason I make use of Office is because the files sent to me are nearly always in MS Office format. I really wanted to do without Office when I switched to Mac, but I just couldn't manage it as I was spending far too much time dealing with the incompatibilities, especially with Excel. I tried, it didn't work. Honestly, I could use iWork for myself, but that doesn't stop others from sending me XLSX and DOCX documents.
Also, my wife is in school and she tried to do without Office on her laptop. She had a professor that failed her on a paper because he couldn't open it. He didn't let her know when it happened, she found out when she got her grade on the paper. He told her he only accepted Word documents and flunked other papers if they would not open. She was using OpenOffice at the time, and I think she just forgot to do a "Save As..." and change the format to Word. The grade isn't the point though. She got paranoid about using anything other than Office and didn't want to flunk more papers because she forgot to pick the right menu option. So we bought Office. Not because of Microsoft, but another person,
It's just hard to use another program when you live in a world where some people act like Microsoft Office is the ONLY software for editing documents.
Wow, it's Friday morning and someone at Microsoft decided, "what the hell, let's really blow this week!"
Really, can Microsoft do anything right these days?
I was really excited about MS Office for iOS, but wow, did they blow it... and not in a beta/version-1 kind of way, but in a way that's all kinds of bad and not likely to improve.
I'm ok with the $99 a year. I don't like it, but if it's solid, it's worth it.
What I'm not ok with is simple things like not being able to save a document unless you're connected and able to log in. Not being able to print at all. And worse, somehow managing to be less compatible with Office than several other apps including Apple's iWork.
I think the ultimate, "just give up Microsoft" moment for me was when I read this review on InfoWorld:
"Microsoft Office for iPhone is pathetically bad"
Specifically, "I have to be fair to Microsoft: Its version of Mobile Office for Window Phone has all the same issues and limitations, as did the years-old version of the long-dead Windows Mobile platform".
In other words, for Microsoft, this is as good as it gets.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Penguinisto
Err, I have Pages, which as a bonus integrates with Text-To-Speech. What the hell would I want a crippled subscription-only bit of bloatware for?
This is just a viewer with very light editing capabilities, what bloatware. Plus it's not meant for you but medium to large companies who use Office 365, which is actually a pretty decent service. I love being able to retrieve all my documents, company documents and company memos anywhere, where as before I had to wait to get to the office. This is a very handy tool for those who use an iPhone and their company utilizes Office 365.
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Originally Posted by macslut
I was really excited about MS Office for iOS, but wow, did they blow it... and not in a beta/version-1 kind of way, but in a way that's all kinds of bad and not likely to improve.
Wow, this isn't Office for iOS but just a document viewer for Office 365. If you or your company doesn't use Office 365 then this isn't meant for you.
I agree they held back for strategic reasons. However, since iPhone apps run on an iPad that claim is no longer valid.