Microsoft Office Finally Gets iOS App 139
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.'"
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
> missing some key productivity features. 'These include: font options, text alignment, bulleted lists
Is it a joke?
PRISM Sept 2007 (Score:1, Insightful)
Microsoft signed up to PRISM in 2007 which gives the military access to stored data. Office 365 is their ONLINE product where your data is kept online on their servers under US jurisdiction. That gives the US military access to your commercial private data.
Go read up on the commercial spying scandals involving Echelon, and you'll see why you cannot permit your companies documents, or even your own private documents into US cloud services.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story_3.html
"There has been “continued exponential growth in tasking to Facebook and Skype,” according to the PRISM slides. With a few clicks and an affirmation that the subject is believed to be engaged in terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation, an analyst obtains full access to Facebook’s “extensive search and surveillance capabilities against the variety of online social networking services.”
According to a separate “User’s Guide for PRISM Skype Collection,” that service can be monitored for audio when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of “audio, video, chat, and file transfers” when Skype users connect by computer alone. Google’s offerings include Gmail, voice and video chat, Google Drive files, photo libraries, and live surveillance of search terms."
I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
People are going to compose documents, spreadsheets, etc. on a tablet??
Maybe I need more coffee, can someone explain why anyone would want this?
Come on MS (Score:5, Insightful)
No iPad support, which is arguably the largest use case scenario.
You have to subscribe to Office 365.
You can't just buy it in the app store.
I honestly can't come up with a way they could have fucked this up any more. Once again MS snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
Re:No iPad app (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Come on MS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bigger question is, what is up with MS Marketin (Score:4, Insightful)
Because Office is not the same as every other 99c fart app on the App store.
The Office app needs special rules because you and MS say it's special. Yeah, that's not a reason. So all the subscription based apps like the WSJ app can do whatever they want because they are special too?.
Which app on the iPad among the million apps following the "rules" is going get more business sales in companies for the iPad apart from Office?
Funny how you defined "business sales" because if you want to talk millions in sales to consumers you have to ignore Pandora, Kindle, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc.
Thus, MS is in a way stronger negotiating position than the developer of a fart sounds app. If you can't understand that simple logic, I have nothing more to say to you.
Pandora, Kindle, Angry Birds, etc. are not fart apps. It's not logic on your part; it's willful blindness as you appear to be a MS apologist.
If you went to any business in this world and you wanted them to make exceptions for you, you would say it's partially their fault if they say no? What kind of warped sense of entitlement do you have? Can you say to a potential landlord that you want to pay less rent than he's offering and then blame him because he didn't say yes? That the landlord is partially to blame that you were without an apartment. The delay was all MS. They wanted Apple to change the rules. Apple said no. End of story.