Microsoft plans to add trackpad and mouse functionality to its Office for iPad suite of apps by the fall, according to two published reports.
Microsoft’s head of marketing says his company is no longer interested in battling with Apple. This is surely a shocking statement to anyone who remembers the days when these two brawled relentlessly. But those days are over.
The change was brought about by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who accepted the need to bring his company’s products to whatever devices could run them, not just Windows.
Microsoft Office for iPad only landed six weeks ago, but Microsoft claims it’s already been downloaded a whopping 27 million times.
The figure was thrown out by Julia White, the general manager of Microsoft’s Office division, who mentioned it during a keynote speech on Monday at Microsoft’s TechEd customer conference in Houston.
Today Microsoft released an update to its Office for iPad suite that brings the ability to print from within Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The apps use Apple’s AirPrint to automatically find a nearby printer on the same network.
Office for iPad hasn’t been in the App Store for very long, and it has already done surprisingly well. Microsoft recently bragged that Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote have been downloaded 12 million times combined in a week.
Microsoft won’t say how many Office 365 subscriptions have been bought through its new apps. Anyone can download them for free to view documents, but the editing features have to be unlocked with an in-app purchase.
The team behind Office for iPad took to Reddit today to answer questions about how the suite of apps was made, what took so long, and what’s planned for the future. Here are the five most interesting revelations:
For those who thought Office for iPad was too late to the party, the numbers tell a different story. Today Microsoft announced that Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote combined have been downloaded a staggering 12 million times in one week.
If you doubt that number, then just take a look at the App Store charts.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is the anti-Steve-Jobs: a sweaty, tongue-lashing ogre of a corporate figurehead who exudes a sort of Ben-Grimm-like lovability through his orange, scaled outer shell. He often says foolish things, and that’s okay, because we love him anyway.
This morning, Ballmer’s talking to Bloomberg Businessweek about the just-released Office 2013 (not to be confused with Office 365, Microsoft’s online productivity suite). In the interview, he talks a little bit about Office for iPad, and then bizarrely decides to slag off Dropbox for a spell.
