Microsoft confirms Office for the iPad
(MoneyWatch) The mobile revolution -- spurred by devices like the iPhone and iPad -- is seven years old now, but Microsoft has maintained a fairly tight grip on its office productivity cash cow Office for most of this time, only begrudgingly releasing limited versions that work on anything but full-powered PCs.
To be fair, Microsoft has introduced Office for the iPhone and has both iPhone and iPad versions of OneNote. But you can't really write much of a report or spreadsheet on your phone; what people really want is a version of Office optimized for the iPad. And Steve Ballmer has finally acknowledged that one is coming.
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That said, it won't be anytime soon. According to The Verge, Ballmer spoke at a Garter analyst event last week, where he said: "iPad will be picked up... when there's a touch-first user interface."
So not only do iPad users have to wait for the touch-first interface, they'll need to wait out the initial release on Windows 8 as well -- Microsoft will almost certainly want to make the suite available for its own touch interface operating system first. The company has already shown off a touch-enabled version of PowerPoint at this summer's BUILD conference, but it was a very early version of the program -- indicating there's a long road ahead before we see touch-friendly modern app versions of Office for any operating system.
You can already use a touch-friendly version of Office on the iPhone, but it's not very encouraging; to use it, you need to purchase the full $100 Office 365 subscription, and the included Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps are clumsy, counter-intuitive, and don't follow traditional iOS conventions. Here's to hoping that Microsoft gets the next version right.
Photo courtesy Microsoft
Dave Johnson
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Dave Johnson is editor of eHow Tech and author of three dozen books, including the best-selling How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera. Dave has previously worked at Microsoft and has written about technology for a long list of magazines that include PC World and Wired.
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