Microsoft recently released Microsoft Office for the iPhone – available only with an Office 365 subscription. Two significant reviews have both panned the app.
David Pogue in the NY Times on June 20 had a devastating review. Key points include:
“But once you tap a document to open it, you quickly discover that this app isn’t anything like the full Microsoft Office — it’s more like the Microsoft Vestibule. It’s extremely stripped down. It offers only the features Microsoft thinks you’ll realistically use on a bus or in the doctor’s office with nothing but your phone in hand.
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Notably absent: style sheets (normal, heading 1 and so on). Spelling checker. An undo command. The ability to change the font or insert a graphic. You can make the type bigger or smaller, but you can’t specify a size by number. Layout-intensive documents — lots of boxes, embedded graphics and so on — sometimes don’t come through to the phone fully intact. “
The iPhone J.D. blog was similarly negative:
“Unfortunately, this version 1.0 of Microsoft Office Mobile is so lacking in features that it will not be the right solution for many lawyers.”
Another significant lack is that the app can’t open *.doc documents, only those generated by Office 2007 or later, which still constitute a significant percentage of Word documents.
And of course, in order to get it you have to accede to Microsoft blackmail by getting Office 365.
David Pogue in the NY Times on June 20 had a devastating review. Key points include:
“But once you tap a document to open it, you quickly discover that this app isn’t anything like the full Microsoft Office — it’s more like the Microsoft Vestibule. It’s extremely stripped down. It offers only the features Microsoft thinks you’ll realistically use on a bus or in the doctor’s office with nothing but your phone in hand.
...
Notably absent: style sheets (normal, heading 1 and so on). Spelling checker. An undo command. The ability to change the font or insert a graphic. You can make the type bigger or smaller, but you can’t specify a size by number. Layout-intensive documents — lots of boxes, embedded graphics and so on — sometimes don’t come through to the phone fully intact. “
The iPhone J.D. blog was similarly negative:
“Unfortunately, this version 1.0 of Microsoft Office Mobile is so lacking in features that it will not be the right solution for many lawyers.”
Another significant lack is that the app can’t open *.doc documents, only those generated by Office 2007 or later, which still constitute a significant percentage of Word documents.
And of course, in order to get it you have to accede to Microsoft blackmail by getting Office 365.
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