SAN FRANCISCO–As Satya Nadella kicked off his presentation announcing the much-anticipated release of Microsoft Office for iPad, Apple fans were getting their day started at the annual Macworld/iWorld convention held a few blocks away in the City by the Bay.
GeekWire stopped by the gathering of Mac- and iOS-heads yesterday afternoon to see how the Apple faithful felt about Microsoft offering Office on the iPad.
Interestingly, news of the announcement hadn’t reached most of the people wandering around the conference floor, probably due in part to the fact that Microsoft didn’t have a booth at this year’s conference. But the people who I talked to were generally enthusiastic and curious about Microsoft making its flagship productivity suite natively available on Apple’s tablet for the first time since the device launched in 2010. Here’s what they had to say:
What do you think of Microsoft announcing Office for iPad?
Joe Fong: Well, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. I’ve heard rumors about it, but I don’t really believe anything until I see it. But I did wonder if there was going to be an app or an Office 365-type app, because there’s so much robustness of the original Office desktop. How do you fit all that into the iPad? It’ll be interesting to try out, because I have clients that will be real interested in it. They’ll be able to edit on the road and all that kind of good stuff, but we’ll have to see what it looks like first.
Lynn Rea: I think it’s a great idea. Yeah, I would use it if I could hook it up to my printer, because I’m a writer, and I’d appreciate it if I could take it on an iPad wherever I am. It would be easier to keep working rather than carrying a heavy laptop.
Henry Brown: (I feel) pretty good, because obviously the conversion from the Office suite to the Mac suite for the iPad, particularly for PowerPoint, is kind of a pain in the butt. As far as Word, I don’t think there’s any difference. But for PowerPoint, that would be great, because any small glitches and changes would not be happening, and I use PowerPoint a fair amount.
Steve Armstrong: I’m real curious about it. I pretty much use iWork mostly, because for certain situations, I like the aesthetic look of it, but at the same time, I have the full Office suite that I use at times. I’ll check it out, I’m curious, but I tend to default to the iWork suite.
What do you think of yesterday’s announcement? Let us know in the comments.
