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Office for iPad reportedly due in weeks (Update)
The Daily has gotten its hands on the upcoming iPad version of Microsoft Office, which its sources tell them will soon go through the Apple App Store vetting process. The interface is reportedly similar to OneNote, which we reviewed in December, and also contains technology that's in the Windows Phone and the upcoming Windows 8. Like similar office suites from Quickoffice and Documents to Go, users can create Word, Excel and PowerPoint files and edit them either on the iPad or online. The Daily's sources did not have a launch date or estimated price, but it'll most likely be available within the next few weeks. [Via The Next Web] Update: Quite the soap opera drama is unfolding. Microsoft denied that Office for iPad is coming in a statement given to The New York Times, stating that The Daily published "a screenshot that is not Microsoft's software" as well as a story which is "based on inaccurate rumors and speculation." Daily reporter Peter Ha then shot back that the image was not fake, and in fact came from a demonstration given by a Microsoft employee. He then supplied a screenshot of the app's icon running on an iPad.
Microsoft begins Office 15 technical preview, fills up before you knew it existed
Everybody calm... we know, we're excited too. We're just dying to see the latest in spreadsheet and presentation technology. But, for now, you'll just have to wait as the technical preview for Microsoft's next version of Office is all filled up. What exactly Redmond has in store for us it wont say but, it's not shying away from hyperbole, declaring it "the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division." Primarily we assume that's because every arrow in the Office quiver is being updated simultaneously, including desktop, mobile and web apps, Visio, Lync and its countless other peripheral programs. Don't draw a warm bath and grab a straight razor, though -- you'll get a chance to play with all the updated products when they enter public beta this summer.
OnLive Desktop hits the iTunes app store
Not satisfied with iOS? No problem, OnLive has a hefty helping of Windows waiting for you in the iTunes app store. Palo Alto announced the streaming Office app earlier this week, touting it as a no-compromise enterprise experience. The free app is fairly basic, giving iPad users hungry for a dose of Microsoft Office limited access to Windows' premiere word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software -- though the outfit has said that it will intro "pro" and "enterprise" versions of the service with more features in the future. Go ahead, now you can be a Mac and a PC. We won't tell.
OnLive launches desktop app, streams start menus to your iPad, we go hands on (video)
Desktop sized games aren't the only thing Palo Alto's premiere streaming service is pushing to your tablet -- now OnLive is out to stream you an actual desktop, as well. Following up on an old Windows 7 demo and later promises to build a "no-compromise, media-rich enterprise experience," the outlet is now launching OnLive Desktop. It's almost exactly what it sounds like -- Windows, seamlessly streaming to your iPad.Microsoft's OS rides the same bandwidth pipelines that host OnLive's gaming service, and offers tablet owners a streamed desktop with access to fully functional versions of Microsoft Office products like Word, PowerPoint and Excel. The iPad app that is launching Thursday represents the outfit's "free" version of OnLive Desktop, and packs 2 GB of secure cloud storage in addition its limited suite of office applications. OnLive plans to expand the service with OnLive Desktop Pro, a paid variant (starting at $9.99 a month) with 50 GB of cloud storage, priority server access, additional applications and "cloud-accelerated browsing." Need something more specific? OnLive Enterprise will let firms custom tailor their cloud desktop to suit their needs -- dictating data, application and device access by user.But how well does it work? It depends on your connection, of course. We dropped by OnLive's west coast headquarters to stream it from the source. Read on to see how it did, or simply skip the bottom if you're looking for an official press release.
CloudOn offers Microsoft Office functionality for iPad, your parents will love it
If you got your parents an iPad for Christmas, you were probably thanked with this: "Can it run Office?" CloudOn may be the answer, the cloud-based service letting you log in to create and edit Office documents on the aforesaid slate. Similar to a lot of remote services, CloudOn runs Office on its own end and allows you to pull in documents from Dropbox for editing and post them back when you're done. Strangely, CloudOn launched on the App Store as a freebie but was pulled due to heavy demand. The company has asked users to sign up to be notified when the app goes back in the App Store. In other news, Las Vegas oddsmakers are now taking bets as to which will occur first; the release of an iOS-native version of Microsoft Office or the Robot Apocalypse.
Best of 2011 Nominations: Mac productivity apps
During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011. Today's category for Best of 2011 nominations is Mac productivity apps. These are the apps that help you get work done on a daily basis, and include such apps as Pages, Evernote, Microsoft Office, and Marked. Maybe you're a devotee of DEVONThink or the incredible OmniFocus and want to single out one of those apps for an award. Just leave a comment below with your nomination for the best Mac productivity app of 2011, and if we get enough interest in a specific app, it'll be included in the voting in a few days. Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 10, 2011.
Kodak's Document Print app means never visiting the girl from the Xerox place
Printing on the road usually leaves you at the mercy of your local Kinkos FedEx Office, but as long as you've got one of Kodak's cloud-print enabled Hero printers, you can avoid getting gouged. The company's just released an Android app that lets you print nearly everything, even webpages as long as they're accessed from the baked-in browser -- provided that you've left your home printer switched on. You can pull it down for free from the Android market from today and if you're interested, head on past the break for an unusually terse press release from the company.
Microsoft has record Q1, rakes in $17.37 billion in revenue (updated: Skype plans revealed)
Q1 of 2012 (don't ask...) was good to Microsoft. Very good in fact. The company posted a record first quarter revenue of $17.37 billion, a 7-percent increase over the same period last year and slightly higher than the $17.26 billion that was expected. The big hero was Office which accounted for $5.62 billion of that income, though sales of Windows stayed flat and fell somewhat short of expectations. The company's $5.74 billion in net income was also a significant jump of 6-percent over the same time last year. For a few more of the financial particulars check out the earnings report after the break and the spartan spreadsheets at the source link. Update: Wondering what Microsoft plans to do with the newly acquired Skype? Well, details are thin, but during today's earnings call the company revealed it did plan to integrate the VoIP service and its technologies into Lync, Live Messenger and Xbox Live. Soon you may not only have to listen to your friend gloat after every kill in Call of Duty, you might have to watch him do a celebratory dance in his Lazy Boy too.
Emulate Lion's Versions in Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word does not support Lion's "Versions" feature yet, but there's no reason to panic. There are a few options that you can use to cobble together a work- around until the Mac BU team updates the Office suite. Also worth mentioning: although I am focusing on Microsoft Word, the same technique can be used in just about any word processing or text editing application. "Does the app provide any auto-save settings?" The first thing to check is whether the application that you are using offers any auto-save or auto-recover options, even if it doesn't support Versions specifically. Microsoft Word offers two auto-save options. To find them, launch Word, then go to Preferences -> Save and check the options shown below: The middle underlined option is the most important: it says to save auto-recover information every minute. I think the default is every 10 minutes, but a lot can change in 10 minutes. The top checkbox is optional, but creating a backup means that you have another way to recover if something goes wrong. Options never hurt. These backups are stored in the same directory as the original, and the filenames end in "~" which is a long-standing convention for backup file names. The third is also optional, but personally I prefer the older .doc format simply because it's more compatible with other non-Microsoft applications. The XML-based .docx format also got a bad rap previously for compatibility issues with Dropbox, although if you're running the current version of the cloud storage utility you shouldn't have any problems. (That said, .docx is the better format, not to mention the more modern format. I think of the ".doc or .docx?" choice sort of like choosing between .mp3 or .m4a: the newer formats have technical advantages, but not as many applications support them. The difference, of course, is that it's usually pretty simple to convert between .doc and .docx.) "Where does the app store files?" Some applications automatically store files in a certain folder structure, and you can't move them (at least not without getting into creating links, which may or may not work well). Text editors and word processors, however, generally let you choose where to store files you create; Office also has settings for default folders for saving and auto-recovery under Preferences -> File Locations: Note that setting the default for "Documents" does not mean that you can't change it for individual files later, it just tells Microsoft Office where to start when opening or saving new files. You can also change the location of the AutoRecover files. I put mine into ~/Dropbox/Backups/Microsoft Office/ because if the computer I'm on dies completely, I can access the data from any other Dropbox-connected account. Is this an unlikely scenario/edge case? Absolutely. Does it hurt to set it anyway? Nope. "But my application doesn't have those settings!" Check out Default Folder X which, as the name implies, can set the default folder for just about any application (plus other things). Dropbox No doubt you noticed that I suggested using Dropbox to save the files. That's not just because they are available online or on any iOS device. Dropbox also keeps every revision for the past 30 days. That means that every time you hit "Save," a separate version is saved on Dropbox. Browsing Dropbox revisions isn't as visually slick as using Versions on Lion. To view them, select the file in Finder, and then use the Dropbox icon on your Finder toolbar, or Control-click (right-click, or two-finger click) on the file and use the Dropbox contextual menu. That will launch the Dropbox website and show you a listing of all the versions, and give you a chance to download them (some file formats can even be previewed online). While Dropbox only saves 30 days' worth of revisions, Dropbox Pro users also have the option to add the Pack-Rat feature which will keep revisions indefinitely. With every save, you are creating an off-site backup of your latest work, so even if you only use one computer, Dropbox is the place to save your most important and most often changed files. "But what if I forget to press save? My app doesn't have any sort of auto-save functionality!" Don't fret if your app doesn't have auto-save; you can add it to any application very simply by using Keyboard Maestro. It's as simple as creating a macro which says "If I am using {insert application name here}, and there is a 'Save' button, press it every X seconds or minutes." I've created just such a rule for Microsoft Word here: This rule will only run when Microsoft Word is active and there is a menu option for "Save" (which will be disabled if you don't have any files open). If it does find the Save menu item, it will select it. (You could also tell it to press "⌘ + S" but I prefer selecting menu items to keyboard shortcuts.) With this rule you never have to worry about spending an hour on a Word document only to lose it all when the app crashed and you realized that you had forgotten to save it. If the file isn't saved when the Keyboard Maestro macro runs, it will prompt you to name the file. (There are other applications like Keyboard Maestro which support the same kind of features, but Keyboard Maestro is the one that I know and use. If you would recommend others, let us know in the comments.) Versions is great, but there's no need to wait for your app to support it Versions is a great addition to OS X, and I love not having to remember to save, but only a handful of applications support it at the present time. If you want to (or are required to) use another application, take a few minutes to check out your auto-save options. There are few things more frustrating than losing unsaved work, but the good news is that there are fewer and fewer reasons for that to ever happen.
Apple iCloud and iWork beta for iOS hands-on
We've had a few weeks to get accustomed to iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion, but one headlining feature has been notably inaccessible since it was unveiled earlier this summer. During his WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs touted iCloud as a service that will sync many of your Apple devices, for free. Macs, iPhones, iPads, and even Windows computers can synchronize documents, contacts, calendar appointments, and other data. You'll also be able to back up your iOS devices remotely, use an Apple-hosted email account, and store your music in the cloud. Well, this week Apple finally lit up its cloud-based service for developers, letting some of us take a sneak peek at the new service. Apple also announced pricing, confirming that you'll be able to add annual subscriptions with 10GB ($20), 20GB ($40), or 50GB ($100) of storage 'atop your free 5GB account. We took our five gig account for a spin, creating documents in Pages, spreadsheets in Numbers, and presentations in Keynote, then accessing them from the iCloud web interface to download Microsoft Office and PDF versions. We also tried our luck at iOS data syncing and the soon-to-be-controversial Photo Stream, so jump past the break for our full iCloud hands-on.%Gallery-129793%
Office 365 ditches the beta tag, ready to take on Google Apps
We know what you're thinking -- you like the idea of Google Apps, but the Mountain View crew kind of creeps you out. Well, don't worry, Microsoft has your back. After making its beta debut last year, Office 365 is officially ready to spread its wings and offer its productivity web app wares to the business-minded masses. For $6 per-user, per-month small businesses get access to Microsoft Office Web Apps, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync video conferencing and can take advantage of the suite's integration with WP7 once Mango lands. Larger, enterprise plans start at $10 per user while adding support for desktop Office products and Lync VoIP solutions as you climb the pricing ladder. Really there's not much more to say except, check out the full PR after the break.
HP TouchPad rumored to lack document editing at launch
The WebOS nuts at PreCentral have received an anonymous tip-off that HP's imminent slate won't be able to edit Office docs out of the box. As much as we'd like to dismiss this as a retaliatory rumor put out by BlackBerry, it emits an unfortunate whiff of truth. While HP has previously made a big deal of the TouchPad's inclusion of the Quickoffice app, it has only said it's "working with Quickoffice" to include document editing, and it has never demoed editing in action. The company has recently been trying to boost its app count, but perhaps it should have put more effort into securing core functionality instead. A glimmer of hope, though: the same tip-off also suggested that at least some editing capabilities will be introduced "via a downloadable update in Q3 2011". Hey, what's the rush?
Microsoft loses $290 million patent battle, begins searching couch cushions
We've diligently followed the Microsoft v. i4i Limited Partnership patent dispute as it wound its way through the courts, and now comes the day of reckoning: by a unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court has upheld the patent-infringement finding against Redmond. For those of you just catching up, MS had been taken to court by Toronto-based i4i over a portfolio of XML-related patents -- patents it had already offered to license to the software behemoth. In court, Microsoft claimed it had not infringed and that the patents were invalid; a 2009 Texas court disagreed and awarded $200 million in damages. A subsequent appeal failed. Oh, and the government sided with i4i. Today's Supreme Court verdict upholds the lower courts' decisions: Microsoft Word is an infringing product, and the company now owes $290 million. The finding likely won't affect consumers, as the offending versions of Word are now obsolete. Still, $290 million isn't chump change, even for the world's largest software company. There's probably a joke in here about i4i justice, but we'll be dadblasted if we can find it.
Amazon says 'no MAS' with Mac Download Store
In the next effort to go toe-to-toe with Apple, Amazon took a swing at the Mac App Store and launched the Mac Download Store today. While its offerings aren't as robust as the Mac App Store, Amazon scored some big points by offering Mac software for download that Apple doesn't have -- namely Microsoft Office, QuickBooks and Roxio's Toast. In a battle that has thus far involved Amazon launching a cloud music service first and pending court discussions over the question of what exactly is an "app store," Amazon is doing its best to wrestle a piece of the Mac-user pie for itself. The Amazon downloads require OS X 10.5 and higher. Purchases can be downloaded an unlimited number of times and are stored in Amazon's Games and Software library. [Via The Loop]
Microsoft notes how Office 365 will benefit Apple customers
Business people are increasingly accessing files stored in the "cloud," and Microsoft wants in on the action. A new suite of online tools called Office 365, still in beta, is meant to appeal to those users. A recent post on the Office 365 Blog describes how the service will benefit Apple customers. "End users still get a phenomenal experience across the Mac, Safari or iPhone so they can easily work with co-workers on PC's," notes blogger Andrew_MSFT. "The IT department also benefits with access to Admin pages and can set up one set of policies for secure access." Apple customers can benefit in several ways. For example, Office for Mac 2011 users can share and co-author Word and PowerPoint documents via SharePoint Online. Those without Office installed can make "light edits" with SharePoint Portal, view PowerPoint broadcasts and check Exchange email with Outlook Web Access, all via Safari. iPhone users can set up Exchange Active Sync and use one of several third-party apps to view and edit MS Office documents (though there is still no official Office for iPhone app from Microsoft). Office 365 pricing is complicated. ZDnet has put together a slideshow of the options that will likely be available when it launches in mid-2011. ZDnet notes that pricing starts at US$72 per year for the basic service. The service could change a bit but with a rumored July launch, the feature set is probably fixed. Is Office 365 something you'd think of using, or would you prefer to go to Google or even roll your own solution using, say, Dropbox? Let us know in the comments. [Thanks Rich for the tip!]
Microsoft releases Office 2011 Service Pack 1
Office 2011 version 14.1 (Service Pack 1) is now available from Microsoft's website. As announced on April 6, the update includes a variety of improvements to the new Outlook for Mac, including built-in support for Apple's Sync Services which allows users to more easily synchronize Outlook data with other Mac OS X software (like iCal and BusyCal) and devices (like the iPhone and iPad) through iTunes. The update also includes the usual fixes for "critical issues" and patches a security vulnerability that could allow an attacker "to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code." Microsoft offers more details about the software update on its official Office for Mac blog. Even if the update isn't showing in Office's AutoUpdate utility yet, you can download the 246 MB package here. [via MacUpdate]
Office 2011 Service Pack 1 due next week, improves Outlook compatibility
The upgrade from Microsoft Office 2008 to 2011 has not been without its drawbacks; for users of Entourage who moved to the all-new Outlook for Mac, in particular, there have been a few holes in the feature lineup. None of them are necessarily showstoppers, but the collection of odd omissions has given the flagship mail/calendar/contact management platform an air of unfinished business over the past few months. Good news, though: Microsoft's Office for Mac blog reports that we will be seeing Service Pack 1 for Office 2011 next week. The big-ticket returning feature for Outlook is calendar support in Sync Services, meaning that Outlook calendars may once again synchronize locally with iCal, BusyCal or tethered iPhones, iPod touch or iPad units through iTunes. Outlook's punch list also includes editing support for Exchange's server-side rules (which last appeared on the Mac in Outlook 2001 for Mac OS 9!), the return of the Redirect and Resend options in addition to simple message forwarding, and editing of messages in the Inbox. Excel is also getting better Solver integration, and there are sure to be hundreds of other bug fixes and minor improvements. While the Sync Services calendar support is welcome, it's slightly ironic that it's coming back to Microsoft's PIM at the same time that Apple's MobileMe calendars are transitioning to CalDAV -- which in turn is breaking Sync Services support for those hosted calendars via iCal and BusyCal. That means there still won't be a supported way to get MobileMe calendars to synchronize with Outlook for Mac (or Entourage 2008, for that matter), at least in the short term. There are some Outlook users who will be able to synchronize to MobileMe's CalDAV servers... but they aren't using Mac OS X. 32-bit versions of Outlook 2007 or 2010 on Windows can indeed sync up to MobileMe, with the help of Apple's MobileMe control panel on Windows XP, Vista or 7. The Office 2011 SP1 download will be available sometime the week of April 11; we'll let you know when it drops. Hat tip to The Loop.
Microsoft releases OneNote app for iPhone, free for a 'limited time'
Well, here's something of a surprise -- Microsoft has just brought its OneNote app to the iPhone, and it's made it available as a free download "for a limited time" to boot. As with the Windows Phone 7 app (previously the only mobile version), the iPhone app will let you manage notes and shopping lists (and even add pictures taken with the iPhone's camera), and then sync those with Windows Live SkyDrive so you can access them in either the Windows desktop application or its web-based counterpart. As ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley notes, however, perhaps just as interesting as the app itself is the question of what else might follow -- a native OneNote app for iPad, perhaps, or even iOS versions of other Office applications? Microsoft unsurprisingly isn't commenting on those possibilities, but it did note that the OneNote app is the culmination of some 18 to 24 months of development from a team of Microsoft Mac Office and OneNote engineers, which is either a sign of some serious slacking or a fairly significant commitment on Microsoft's part. No word on when the "limited" free period will run out (so you'll probably want to grab it while you can), nor is there any world on a worldwide release -- it's currently only available to US users, unfortunately. [Thanks, Pradeep]
Microsoft axes Office Genuine Advantage, says program has 'served its purpose'
It's not offering any indication that Windows Genuine Advantage will follow suit, but Microsoft has just made the rather surprising move of shutting down its longstanding Office Genuine Advantage program. As with Windows Genuine Advantage, that program was designed to combat piracy and, as any Office user can no doubt attest, it wasn't shy to make its presence known -- warnings like the one above popped up when downloading templates from Office.com, for instance. Why the change? Microsoft isn't exactly offering too many details, with a spokesperson only going as far to say that the program has "served its purpose," and that Microsoft is "making several new investments that will allow us to engage with customers and help victims of fraud." In the meantime, however, it looks like you can now simply go about your business without a warning to be found.
Microsoft Office 2011 update fixes bugs
An update for Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 (14.0.2) boasts improved reliability when accessing Office for Mac through third-party applications, a fix for problems with Microsoft's AutoUpdate program and improved stability for Outlook 2011. The update is available now through MacUpdate, where we were tipped off about it, or it should eventually appear in the AutoUpdate. [via MacUpdate]
