Office for iPad is Finally Here; Comes in a Freemium Model

At its San Francisco event, Microsoft’s newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella announced the much longed Office for iPad. Yes, finally the Redmond giant’s cash cow productivity suite is now available on both iPad and iPad mini devices.

The India-born CEO, Nadella, stood confidently in his casual wear and talked about Microsoft’s roadmap. The company believes in “ubiquitous computing”. And finally one of the most successful software in the history of mankind, Office successfully ported itself to iPad.

Problem with last year’s Office Mobile

Last year when company announced Office Mobile for iPhone, it was very highly appreciated. However, the suite had limited functionality and the small screen was really not the best of the screen one would want to edit a 1000-word document on. You don’t have to bother with it anymore.

The app goes live on Apple’s App Store at 11 AM PT. Office for iPad will be free for reading and presenting documents. But for editing you will be required Office 365 subscription – which costs $6.99-per-month and $69.99 a year.  Thanks to Microsoft’s OneDrive, multiple users will be able to work together on Office files. The Office suite changes the keyboard style of the iPad for Excel.

Office for iPad has become available on the iTunes Store. Office for iPad includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint to the tablet. However, you need to be running iOS version 7 or higher to install these apps. Much like year’s Office Mobile, the Outlook email client is missing in action. However, Outlook does come as a separate app on iOS, so perhaps that’s the reason.

Features in Office for iPad

Much like the desktop version, the iPad client comes with the Ribbon interface that Microsoft first introduced in Office 2007. The company claims that the iPad client will be able to do everything with the same accuracy as you would do on the desktop. It sports proper formatting, re-flowing and support for touch.

All in all, the suite is really well made, and while we are yet to take it to spin, from the things we have seen and heard, the app has been very well coded for iPad. Microsoft hasn’t simply ported the app to the iPad, it has actually redesigned it around iOS.

The Office Curiosity

Nadella dreams to make Office 365 ubiquitous, and I think this giant jump, will definitely attract many people from the other side of the pond. However, not to forget, Office was one of the flaring exclusive feature that Microsoft touts on its Surface tablets, or any other Windows tablet for that matter. Now that Office is available on iPad as well, it will definitely hurt Microsoft’s ever so small Windows tablets division.
Over the coming days, we will be taking all the Office applications on a spin. Are you excited about using Office on your iPad?
Again, at your convenience, here is the download link for Word for iPad, Excel for iPad and PowerPoint for iPad.