Microsoft this afternoon took the unusual step of responding to The Daily’s report earlier today that Microsoft plans to bring Office to the iPad — saying the publication was “given bad info” by someone.
The story, by Seattle-based tech reporter Matt Hickey, said the iPad version of the Microsoft Office suite had been finished by its design team, would soon be submitted to Apple for approval and “could be released in the coming weeks.”
Microsoft posted on Twitter this afternoon: “Great respect for The Daily but regrettably someone is giving them bad info, and that’ll be clear in the ‘coming weeks.’ ”
Which means that something is apparently happening in the coming weeks. But what?
The company isn’t giving further details, leaving it unclear whether it’s disputing the entire premise of the story or simply a nuance. A spokesperson tells Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet that the picture accompanying the story — appearing to show an Office app on an iPad — is “not a picture of a real Microsoft software product.”
Is Microsoft splitting hairs, saying that an unfinished version doesn’t constitute a real product? That’s not clear, either.
In any event, The Daily is standing by its story. Technology editor Peter Ha said on Twitter that a working version of the app “was demoed to us by someone at Microsoft.” He said the publication didn’t fabricate either image that ran with the story.
