Until a couple of days ago, you needed a paid subscription to be able to create or edit documents using Word, PowerPoint and Excel on the iPad. Although the Microsoft iOS apps were free to download they weren't much use to anyone who didn't have an Office 365 subscription. These subscriptions don't come cheap (they start at £59.99 pa) so I imagine that the user base for the iOS apps was small.
Things may shift a little after updates to these apps last Thursday, 6th November 2014.
Now anyone can create or edit documents for free in Word, Excel or PowerPoint on the iPad - and now also on the iPhone. You need a (new free) Microsoft account which allows 'basic editing' as distinct from the 'advanced editing' available to its paying 365 subscribers. Microsoft has chosen to use Dropbox as the sync and storage tool for its free accounts compared with OneDrive, its own cloud service for its paying subscribers. Interestingly MS are now giving their 365 subscribers unlimited OneDrive cloud storage (it was 1TB before) which is more than any other cloud service. This could be the start of a fightback as MS have not made the inroads in the mobile market that they hoped to to date.
Having used the MS iOS apps on the iPad for a couple of months now (as a paid subscriber) I like them: they certainly aren't Office on the desktop (see screenshots below) but they are simple and intuitive - until it comes to printing which is not obvious at all. I do like having Excel on my iPad but would always choose to use Apple's own Pages app over Word: firstly it has many more tools and features; if you want to produce something that looks really good Pages can let you do it, and easily too, it just works so well with the touch interface whereas Word is trying to be its old mouse driven familiar self. Secondly Pages lets you import and export different file formats and share easily with other apps. Thirdly the Microsoft syncing is not straightforward on the iPad. If I create a Word document on the iPad it does not automatically get synced into OneDrive so that I can read and edit in on a desktop or on another device; the default is for it to remain on the iPad. Last week's changes have now made it possible to move ipad files into the cloud - something I never managed to do before. In contrast I have found Apple's iCloud faultless for letting me carry on editing a document I started on the iPad on a desktop. Somehow the MS offering feels less streamlined than the Apple Suite of productivity tools. It also doesn't play so well with other apps, it is more restricted.
In terms of what this means for us in school there is no immediate effect from these changes. If you have an Office 365 Home subscription then you will probably have tried the apps already. If you are a committed Dropbox user then you might like to give these apps a try. It gives users another choice beyond Google Docs and Apple's own suite (Pages, Keynote and Numbers) and the many other productivity apps on the iPad although I expect that the heaviest users may remain the corporate customers. Their unlimited Cloud storage is competitively priced and may have an impact on other cloud services in the future.
Want to read more? Check out the links below.
Microsoft's own UK page introducing the revised apps
iPhone MS in the App Store initial user reviews are very poor :-(
If you've never used Office apps on the iPad here is what the new ones look like (as a paid subscriber not a free user).
