[Macworld]

Post your comments for Office for iOS may be coming, but does it really matter? here

[Steve_S]

I would tend to agree. Office in general is nowhere near as important as it was in the 90's. Having MS Office means nothing to most consumers. It has some value for the corporate environment. But even in the corporate environment, I'm seeing workarounds such as accessing Citrix hosted apps like Office from the iPad. It's not ideal, but it works.

[icerabbit]

I used to be a hard core MS Office user. The only way it would matter to me is if it still had the office of old and I could use it with an external keyboard and mouse, putting that retina screen to good use. But, considering I carry a notebook for work, am still bitter over Office 2007 and haven't digested Windows 8 Metro - which influence likely is to permeate Office of iOS - ... no sales nor recommendations here.

[leicaman]

I am in agreement as well. We're going to a massive web page at work that many people are going to be building. The problem is, that means it has to be template-driven rather than built by professionals. (What else would consultants do to make their money pile bigger?) So most text going in are plain blocks of text. Video and images are wrapped in special wrappers. So why would anyone need office for that?

I do use Keynote and Numbers a lot, and Pages occasionally, but only because I'm still learning Scrivner, and Scrivner doesn't let you make "pretty" documents.

Heck, I've dropped most of the Adobe Creative Suite! Flash is gone (after learning Actionscript - huh, and people talk about Applescript!) Illustrator is here, Photoshop and Lightroom are pretty much the big programs I use now, along with Filemaker Pro Advanced.

No need for Word, Excel, what was Access again? Outlook? Oh, yeah, I do need that one - once our IT department upgrades Exchange Server 2003 to something that works with Macs. Microsoft Office is to Apple as IBM's OS/2 was to Windows 15 years ago. Dead, just not everybody knows it yet.

And I just noticed the "Related Stories" thing has an icon of the Macalope. The furry one related to a story by John Moltz. Hmmm...

[wardoggie]

I rely on MS Word for my writing and our agency uses Outlook for email. Both do their jobs admirably, IMO. Occasionally, I have to open (or—gasp!—create) a PowerPoint presentation. Rarely, I have to open a spreadsheet.

But because I have to interact with people in midsize to large companies, everything needs to be MS Office. It's the only way I've found that ensures compatibility between Mac and PC documents. Tried Open Office and Neo Office and was disappointed in the performance, compatibility or both. I have yet to try iWork, but was thinking of trying Keynote for those rare times when I do have to create a presentation. Forget printing software: creating presentations in PowerPoint is my definition of hell!

[Hutchinp2009]

I totally agree with what has been said before. The only MS Office product that I really need would be MS Outlook, and even that is not a big deal as Mozilla offers a very good client that does a good job if not better than what is offered with MS Outlook. Having used the Pages and numbers I totally agree that for most people these would suffice for a word processor and spreadsheet and the total package is lot cheaper.

[grovbergian]

I like you all very much, but the levels of hubris here are astounding. You don't use Office very much any more? MUST BE IRRELEVANT! It's like a person assuming rain no longer exists because it hasn't rained at their house in a week.

There are Fortune 500 companies where every single person there spends 40 hours a week using Office. These people wildly outnumber the tech journalists who are constantly talking about how irrelevant Office is anymore. Sales of Office are STILL GROWING and I can not count how many times I've had to have the "No, there really isn't a version of Office for the iPad your boss bought you as a nice end-of-year bonus. Yes, I understand that your whole job involves using MS Office, therefore making the iPad kind of useless." conversation every single time I do any kind of iPad instruction. They are stunned, because to them, that's the primary function of a computer.

Assuming that just because you are interested, that no one else will be either isn't analysis—it's hubris.

[RonAnnArbor]

I own my own company, and work almost 100% with two Fortune 500 companies -- where Office is basically irrelevant -- almost all work is done using collaborative internet-based PDF programs -- PDF editing software allows groups to collaborate and make changes, additions, etc - its no longer a world in which word processing software is relevant -- Pages and Numbers create the same PDF's that everything else creates -- as do most free software programs. I can not, literally, for the last three years recall a time that any .DOC or .DOCX file has appeared in my inbox, not have I sent one out -- everything is PDF.
I have 30 employees and not one of them uses Office for documents -- and 80 percent of them work on iPads as their primary writing instrument.
The only expenditure that I keep getting across my desk week after week is for iPad-compatible bluetooth keyboards.

[tfmeehan]

My memory of the whole Apple/Microsoft "agreement" back in the day was due to Microsoft's fear of losing a lawsuit over the Windows GUI. Thus the nonvoting stock purchase.
The real prize (at the time) was the continued development of Office for Mac but that was not much of a sacrifice on MS's part. Though they didn't sell the Mac version anywhere near the numbers of the PC version, they DID make more profit off the Mac version, so they were not giving much up to make that commitment. And they weren't really in a position to refuse.

[tfmeehan]

Quote

...and I can not count how many times I've had to have the "No, there really isn't a version of Office for the iPad your boss bought you as a nice end-of-year bonus. Yes, I understand that your whole job involves using MS Office, therefore making the iPad kind of useless." conversation every single time I do any kind of iPad instruction...

What? You mean this horde of people never saw the myriad articles and reports on how the iPad is only good for entertainment? And how sad that you know so many people of limited intelligence and experience, who never heard of the internet or digital media, etc.

[jrockyo]

only one app in office means anything today and that's excel. excel has no peer with its sophistication and computational abilities. if ms released a complete version of excel on ios it would set the world on fire. a hobbled version will do nothing.

[ingus]

Quote

I like you all very much, but the levels of hubris here are astounding. You don't use Office very much any more? MUST BE IRRELEVANT! It's like a person assuming rain no longer exists because it hasn't rained at their house in a week. There are Fortune 500 companies where every single person there spends 40 hours a week using Office. These people wildly outnumber the tech journalists who are constantly talking about how irrelevant Office is anymore. Sales of Office are STILL GROWING and I can not count how many times I've had to have the "No, there really isn't a version of Office for the iPad your boss bought you as a nice end-of-year bonus. Yes, I understand that your whole job involves using MS Office, therefore making the iPad kind of useless." conversation every single time I do any kind of iPad instruction. They are stunned, because to them, that's the primary function of a computer. Assuming that just because you are interested, that no one else will be either isn't analysis—it's hubris.

Well put. If M$ is willing to code it, iOS users should be able buy it (from anywhere they choose) and to run it. Without permission from anyone!

This post has been edited by ingus: 09 January 2013 - 05:01 PM

[danmusician]

I actually miss AppleWorks more than I miss MS Office. I used the database in that app extensively and loved the integration between the modules.

I agree with previous poster in that my personal computing hell is creating presentations in PowerPoint. I MUCH prefer working in Keynote. PowerPoint is one frustration after another for me.

I also agree that rather than print, I send PDF files to the people I work with. I rarely send .doc files. Excel is the only app in Office that I prefer to the iWorks package.

[macFanDave]

It will depend on what M$ leaves out on the slimmed down versions of the Office apps.

As much as I've tried to love Numbers, it just doesn't have the power of Excel. Being able to add VBA functions to spreadsheets make them much more powerful.

I'm disappointed that Apple hasn't kept improving iWork and even more disappointed that they dropped AppleWorks altogether. AppleWorks integrated word processing, spreadsheets, drawing and painting AND databases more beautifully than anything I have seen since.

AppleWorks on the iPad -- FTW! And while I'm at it, let's have HyperCard, too!