Apple
iPhone users and Microsoft
Office Lovers, have I got Good News for you!
On Thursday March 27th 2014, Microsoft unleashed the Microsoft Office 365 unto the Apple iPad as I'd reported in my Geezam blog article entitled “Microsoft to introduce Office to Apple iPad on Thursday March 27th 2014”.
However,
if you downloaded the Microsoft
Office 365 App for the Apple iPad, you could only view documents and not much
else. You have to get at least a US$6.99 subscription to Office 365 to do any
editing.
Now
Microsoft Office 365
has gone Freemiun on the Apple iPhone on Thursday October 6th 2014,
with the Office 365 being able to do editing without the need for a
subscription as reported in the article “Microsoft:
Now you can create, edit on Office mobile apps for free”, published
November 6, 2014 6:00 AM PST by Ben Fox Rubin, CNET News and “Editing, Creating
Docs Now Free on Office for iPhone, iPad”, published NOVEMBER 6, 2014
11:38AM EST BY STEPHANIE MLOT, PC Magazine.
It’s
officially mentioned on the Microsoft
Blog article entitled “More
Office. Everywhere you need it”, published November 6, 2014 by Corporate
Vice President, Microsoft
Office John Case, Microsoft Blog. To
be precise, Microsoft
split Office 365 into three (3) separate Standalone apps:
1.
Microsoft Office Excel
2.
Microsoft Office
PowerPoint
3.
Microsoft Office Word
This
is pretty big news, as even the
Jamaica Observer reported this in their article “Microsoft
makes Office free to rival mobile platforms”, published Friday, November
07, 2014, The Jamaica Observer.
It's
almost as nifty as the partnership with Dropbox
to allow access and editing of Office 365 Documents from Dropbox as explained in the article “Microsoft,
Dropbox team up in mobile move”, published November 4, 2014 8:06 AM PST by
Mary Jo Foley, CNET News.
Microsoft Office 365 is
free - Now One Becomes Three Apps in a Freemium Model
When
the Microsoft Office App
for the Apple iPad and the Apple iPhone originally came out, I was quite
pleased. This means that Microsoft
had come to their senses and realized that Apple paying customers was good
business.
However,
by July 2014, some four (4) month later, Office 365 Personal users got 1TB of
Free Microsoft OneDrive
Cloud Storage as stated in my blog article entitled
“Microsoft
rewards OneDrive users with 15GB Free Storage - How Office 365 users can get
1TB Free Storage as they Chase Google Drive”.
Apparently
things weren't going so great since launching Microsoft Office 365 on
Thursday March 27th 2014.
Possibly
the limited nature of Microsoft
without a subscription made many feel cheated, as many other apps existed on
the Apple iPhone that could edit Microsoft Word documents
and the ones that were purchased were of a lower one-purchase price from the
Apple iTunes Store compared to Microsoft’s US$6.99
monthly subscription.
Also,
despite the lower level of editing power afforded by Google Docs, their Google
Drive gave away 15GB Free Storage since Tuesday April 24th 2012 as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “Google Drive,
the Dropbox clone, now ups the ante to 15GB of Free Storage during Google I/O”.
This
would explain why they’ve got more than 240 million active since then! That's
way more than Microsoft's
Office 365, which albeit fast growing, having reached roughly 1 million
subscribers back in June 2013, has since only garnered 7 million subscribers to
Office 365 consumer versions as of Tuesday September 30th 2014 as reported in
the article “Microsoft
Is Giving Away Its Office 365 Mobile Apps” by Nov 6, 2014 9:01 am ET,
By SHIRA OVIDE, The Wall Street Journal.
Office 365 Word, Excel
and PowerPoint – Restriction Galore make US$6.99 monthly look like a Deal
The
three (3) new apps are entirely unrestricted as noted in “Office
for iOS goes freemium: What you need to know”, published November 6, 2014
6:07 AM PST by Jason Parker, CNET News.
You
still can't chance text colours and edit charts and tables with the same level
of precision. Also, say bye-bye to switching documents between Landscape and
Portrait mode in these freebies and the use of Presenter View in the PowerPoint
App that allows a preview of notes and upcoming slides.
Not
to mention missing out on a Free 1TB of Microsoft OneDrive Storage
that now supports 10GB uploadings and sharing of files as stated in my blog article
entitled “Microsoft
OneDrive finally Breaks Free – 10GB Uploading and Sharing with drag-and-drop
that's great for Streaming larger files”.
Folks,
go out and get the three Microsoft
Office apps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. You'll probably like it so much
that spending US$6.99 per month on the Office 365 Personal and getting the free
1TB Cloud Storage from Microsoft
OneDrive will make you feel like you're on Cloud 9!
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