So Microsoft finally shipped Office for iPad last Thursday, March 27th, and I've had four days to actually use it instead of just reading the keynote liveblogs. Short version: the apps themselves are genuinely nice. The business model attached to them is not.
This was Satya Nadella's first real product event since taking over as CEO back in February, and you could tell they wanted it to land well. Three separate apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), each a free download from the App Store, each redesigned from scratch for touch instead of just being the desktop ribbon squeezed onto a smaller screen. Big colorful icons, a ribbon that actually responds to fingers instead of demanding a stylus-precision tap, formula autocomplete in Excel that doesn't feel like an afterthought. I opened a spreadsheet I'd been keeping track of freelance invoices in and it rendered exactly like it does on my laptop. No weird formatting drift, no "this feature isn't supported" banner. That part impressed me.
Then Friday morning I tried to actually change something in a client proposal during a coffee shop wifi session (the wifi at the place on 4th, which is always slower than it has any right to be for a shop that charges $4.75 for a latte) and got hit with the wall: you can view and present for free, but the second you try to type a single character into an existing document, it wants an Office 365 subscription. $99.99 a year for the Home plan, or $9.99 a month if you want to feel worse about it every thirty days. That's not a small ask for something I assumed, incorrectly, would just work like a normal app I'd already downloaded.
The subscription wall
I get why they're doing it. Office 365 is the whole strategy now, not selling boxed software once every three years. Fine. But it's a strange first impression to hand people gorgeous, fast, well-designed apps and then tell them the editing button is locked behind a paywall they didn't see coming. Apple made its own iWork apps free on any new iOS device back in September, and while Pages and Numbers aren't as fully-featured as real Office, they don't ambush you mid-edit. I'd rather know the deal going in.
And it's three apps instead of one. That's three separate icons taking up space on a home screen I've already had to reorganize twice this year because Flappy Bird knockoffs keep multiplying in my "Games" folder like they're breeding. Small complaint, I know, but I notice these things.
To be fair to Microsoft, once you're actually subscribed the experience is good. I ended up paying for it Saturday because I do genuinely need to edit Excel files on the go for work, and once that wall comes down the whole thing feels considered in a way past mobile Office ports never did. Comments and track changes work the way you'd expect. Pivot tables didn't fall apart the way I braced for. Typing anything longer than a paragraph on the glass keyboard is still not something I'd choose over my actual laptop, subscription or not — I keep a Logitech keyboard cover on the iPad specifically because I don't trust myself to write anything coherent using on-screen keys for more than two sentences.
I'll say this too: it's a weird week to be talking about a productivity suite when everyone within shouting distance of tech Twitter is still processing Facebook buying Oculus for two billion dollars on Tuesday. I'm not going to add another take to that pile, there are already about four hundred of them out there and mine wouldn't tell you anything new. But it's funny how a genuinely well-built piece of enterprise software can launch in the same week as a two-billion-dollar VR headset acquisition and just get completely steamrolled in terms of attention. Deservedly, probably. Still funny.
Anyway. If you've already got an Office 365 subscription through work or school, go download these today, they're worth it. If you don't, know what you're walking into before you open that first document expecting to just fix a typo.