The way we will work in the future looks brighter every day. Recent innovations are key to freeing people from the chains that once bound them to their desks. Whoever said that one must remain stationary in order to be productive? Not Microsoft (News
- Alert) – and they invented Office 365.
People that have an iPad with Office 365 can get a taste of the latest feature that is in store for Office Web Apps for Office 2013: touch control. The touch features of these apps are so new that they are still in the experimental phase. Since Microsoft has a cult following of fans of the classic Office features, it has left open the option to use a keyboard or mouse. Fans of tablets, however, will probably embrace the opportunity to assist in the pioneering of the future for Office 365.
Not everything Microsoft has come out with lately has been a hit with owners of Apple (News
- Alert) devices, so testing out the touch features of the new Office Web Apps is probably a good move. Office for Mac 2011 was a disappointment for people who own the MacBook Pro with retina features. As evidenced by comments that were posted on the Office for Mac blog, some people thought that Microsoft’s claim to be “Mountain Lion ready,” were false. The forum showed unflattering comments describing Office for Mac 2011 suite “absolutely dreadful,” “fuzzy,” “blurry,” and even “crap.”
But that doesn’t mean that just because iWork – which ComputerWorld describes as “Apple’s Office wannabe” – does have retina support, that consumers will readily make the switch. In fact, Mac users wouldn’t have been so angry if they felt that iWork was of equal quality to say, Office 365.
One thing that market watchers did point out is that Microsoft better start adapting retina support into all of their upcoming products and services because this is the direction that Apple will continue to take with upcoming devices. Yet, the fact that Microsoft already made the switch to cloud-based Web apps shows that the company values Apple’s prominent place in the market.
Microsoft’s touch-friendly solution indicates that Office 365 creators see tablets continuing to increase in popularity for both work and personal use cases. Since some analysts predict that working remotely will replace the traditional office all together, it makes sense that Microsoft’s Office suites evolve to accommodate mobility.
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Edited by Jamie Epstein