Big news for those of us that are slaves to Office:
I still haven’t figured out a comfortable way to do word processing or anything serious on an iPad, but this might help.
With the Windows 8 based tablets so close to release and Office being their only real killer app, I find this news hard to believe.
When you consider that there has always been an Office for Mac, it doesn’t seem far-fetched. Add in Microsoft’s ability to smell profit from a mile away, and it seems like a no-brainer.
Office for Mac seems more like a charity case. I mean, the Mac market is like 6% of the entire PC market? Even with 100% marketshare that doesn’t seem like the greatest reason to enable your only serious rival to have equivalent functionality.
Office for Mac is (a) very profitable and (b) helps drive their business goals.
Microsoft is a business, in the purest sense of the word compared to many of their rivals. They make most of their money on end-user apps and infrastructure-related services, and when they can’t do that, they find another way to collect royalties, if possible (e.g., Android licensing). They can get iPads to help support an MS-centric infrastructure (Exchange, et al) instead of Google, while collecting a nice tax on iPad sales via Office – which is why it’s no surprise that Office for iPad exists. I figure it’ll be released when it’s ready.
The reality is that MS is faced with the choice of “allow Apple users to use Office” or, “Have those users use a different office product, thus weakening the office brand.”
It’s unlikely that they could actually kill iOS at this point, so witholding office from those users would just mean that those folks would find another office suite to use.
Looks like it’s not going to happen according to the update on the OP article.
Not really. Standard corporate ‘No Comment on rumors’ non-denial.
Some places are speculating that it will be announced when the iPad3 is announced.
I sure as hell hope it doesn’t require an IPad 3.
That wasn’t a denial.