Appatic

OK, I must admit that I never thought that there would be such a big deal about Office coming to the iPad. Or that a scoop from late last year by The Daily. Would revive in such a way. I had already forgot about it. Since I did a follow-up on their scoop.  That I measured with having a  75%  chance of being all true because of where I got the info.  Then yesterday, The Daily did an update on their scoop that included a photo of an Office Suite running on the iPad. And Boom it turned into Techmeme big story of the day as it became a controversy after Microsoft first denied this being Microsoft Software and even going the length of saying the images were FAKE! All this without denying they were building an Office Suite for the iPad.   Something that left most scratching their head. Even those that have been following Microsoft for decades like me or premier Microsoft Watcher Mary Jo Foley. Who I admit I am biased in favor of as she has always been my favorite Microsoft Watcher.

Mary Jo Foley then decided to take a hard look at this story in two posts that are a must read to understand this whole ordeal in the fastest and clearest way:

Microsoft Office for iPad: Separating fact from fiction

How to parse a Microsoft denial

And after those post I was ready to leave it a that and forget about it. After all I really don’t care about the iPad.  But then I care about Office and Microsoft issues this enigmatic tweet that was worded in a way that drove me crazy all of yesterday afternoon.

The way it is worded is very calculated. And it don’t uses Microsoft usual Parlance Style.  That bothered me enough to go chasing for something that could tell me what that fucking meant.  It basically pissed me off.  So I went and scourged for hours for bits of information. And found two from two sources as rumors should be run. Unfortunately the info is not first hand or second hand, but third hand as it comes from two ex-microsofties.  Making it a flip of a coin thing. But it is so juicy and so good that I had to run it. And here is what the rumor mill poured:

• Office For iPad is not a normal app.
• It is a suite app very much in the style of Office Starter.  Meant to be a Office Companion and not Office Replacement. But enough for casual or light use.
• It don’t has Ads. Just that it will be used to promote other Microsoft  iOS apps.
• It is a Office Suite App. With Word, Excel and Powerpoint in it bundled into it.
• It is still unclear if it will cost money or not. Or if it goes in a freemium plan like the iOS OneNote app. In any way if it cost money it or got a freemium model. it could go for only $9.99!
• There is a good reason why it don’t includes the OneNote app.
• Office for iPad apparently is made from the Office Web Apps. Just made offline capable and optimized and customized for iPad. Something I have read was needed because the regular Office Web Apps just don’t work well in the iPad. I would not know about that, but it is an issue apparently.

How about that? Again it is a rumor, but man, given how many specifics it got and how juicy it was. How could I resist? specially after Microsoft way of handling this leak they had months to contain was handled so poorly. I deemed it fair game to spill this one out there. Anyway, that is that.  Now,  I do think that if they said coming weeks, in Microsoft time framing that is usually about a month.  Meaning I think it will be delivered post MWC and post iPad 3 reveal.

.

.