We seen both mobile players, QuickOffice and Docs2Go announce upcoming Word and Excel editing suites for the iPhone, but rumors of the king of the desktop doc jungle, Microsoft itself, entering the space remain just that: rumors. For now. TechCrunch has the latest:
I’m here at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote, where Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division, hinted that we may be seeing Microsoft Office make its way to the iPhone some time soon. After his interviewer Tim O’Reilly caught him on the comment, Elop backtracked a bit, stating “not yet, keep watching”. But it’s clear that an iPhone version of Office is on his mind.
So, do we need Big Redmond to give us Office for iPhone, or are the already-announced mobile players enough? Could they provide something no one else outside of Microsoft ever could? Like… Clippy for iPhone?!
We’ve mentioned the original, FREE, MobileFiles application before, which lets you access MobileMe’s iDisk via the iPhone. Well, now we’ve also got MobileFiles Pro and along with the $9.99 price tag comes a killer feature that a lot of productivity mavens have no doubt been waiting for:
EDIT! native Microsoft Excel 2003 documents just as you would on your desktop. Save the edited Excel file on your iPhone, send to your iDisk account remotely, or upload to your desktop using WiFi – all while maintaining perfect data integrity.
MobileFiles Pro is developed by QuickOffice, so this definitely makes the kind of sense that does. The only question is: when will Word and PowerPoint editing follow?
Have you tried MobileFiles yet? If so, let us know what you think!
Sure, Microsoft’s online Live/Mesh/Azure strategy is just a tad less complicated than n-dimensional string theory, but it looks like when the next version of Office (14) ships with it’s GoogleDocs/Zoho competing Office Web, it will include support for not only Mac OS X… but for the iPhone’s MobileSafari browser as well!
According to Macworld, neither release date nor price point are known, but it should be a companion to Office 14 which is slated for 2009(-ish?)
Looking for a mobile office suite for your iPhone? Almost a year ago, when the SDK was announced, Dataviz looked for iPhone users input:
You can bet we’ll have our hands on this SDK as soon as possible. I can’t guarantee anything, but please, if you are interested in having DataViz software on your iPhone, let us know!
Well you spoke up and they listened! It is official that Dataviz is bringing Documents to Go, the very popular office suite, over to the iPhone:
This is great news for former Blackberry, Palm, and Windows Mobile users. With this software users can view, edit, or create Microsoft Office content. All of the big apps are covered including Powerpoint, Word, and Excel.
Dataviz now has a website you can visit to sign up for release information here in this link.
[Thanks for the tip jwc194!]
Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s head of iPod and iPhone marketing shed some light on the iPhone 3G/2.0 and some of its highly requested, yet still missing functionality, like where’s our ability to select text, cut it or copy it, and paste it?
Apple has a priority list of features, and they got as far as they could down that list with this model
Why isn’t there a constant yet ever-so-slightly-disappointed voice telling us we missed our last ten exists and threatening to “re-calculate”?
[T]here are some murky “complicated issues” preventing driving directions apps at the moment. “It will evolve. I think our developers will amaze us.”
Like TomTom?
With regards to David Pogue’s claim that Apple said the iPhone 3G GPS antenna was too small for turn-by-turn?
Find his answer after the jump!
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Chalk another developer up for the iPhone App Watch: Microsoft. Microsoft has a small team called the MacBU that develops the very successful Office Suite for the Mac — an office suite that until the recent version was widely thought to be more advanced than even its Windows counterpart and in some ways a “test bed” for features that would eventually make it into the Windows version of Office.
It may surprise some to hear that Microsoft is looking at the iPhone for development, but it ought not. I mean, they just all got buddy buddy with full ActiveSync Exchange support, so a little thing like utilizing the SDK for a Mini-Office app ain’t no thang.
“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone,” Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Specialized Devices and Applications Group, told Fortune on Monday. “To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.” – FORTUNE [via MacRumors]
What does all this SDK talk mean with respect to the popular DataViz products like Documents To Go? Read on, my friends!
Although it’s easy to be swallowed up in the sea of information spilling forth from the SDK Roadmap earlier today, and even though I’m still hoping for Stevie J to throw us a bone (like copy/paste ready for download from iTunes? ahem), I’m trying to stay calm. Deep breath. Maybe another piece of good news will help.
One of my favorite apps from my Treo days is DataViz’s DocsToGo. I tried to reach DataViz for comment with regard to the SDK release and their plans for bringing their products to the iPhone, but alas, the time-zone gods are against me and all I could come up with was a blurb from their website. Read their statement and glean what you can:
We are currently investigating the opportunity to develop Documents To Go, RoadSync, Passwords Plus and any of our other software titles for the iPhone and would appreciate your feedback.
Here’s our feedback: Yes, Please.
After the break, DataViz CEO Dick Fontana talks up the SDK for Fox News. [via] — “DataViz has a long relationship with Apple which gives Dick reason to be optimistic about the opportunities for DataViz with the iPhone.” — indeed.
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