Office on the iPad: Nadella Ushers in New Mobile Era at Microsoft

By Jim Lundy

In one simple move, Microsoft changed. It admitted that the iPad matters, but more importantly, that Microsoft Office is a business that can make lots of money for Microsoft. As we predicted last week, today marked the official beginning of the Nadella era at Microsoft.

Office on the iPad is here

Microsoft Office for iPad was unveiled with four  apps that are available:

MS Word
MS PowerPoint
MS Excel
MS OneNote

Watch our video blog on our take of using Microsoft Office on the iPad – featuring PowerPoint.

Office on the iPad – Office 365 required

As we indicated last week, a user has to have an Office 365 Subscription, such as the $99.00/year Office Home Premium (5 users), to access and use these apps. Microsoft is also making a personal subscription available for one user and one tablet for $69.00

Office on the iPad – PowerPoint is Easy

We downloaded PowerPoint for iPad and got started with it. It looks and acts like the Powerpoint I know. It seems intuitive and was very easy to export a presentation I created and send via email to my Mac.

While this post is basically just our unboxing of PowerPoint for iPad, as well as the other Office apps, the intuitiveness is there. Some of the Fonts we expect, such as Helvetica Neue were not. Mobile is all about UX and based on this initial take – Microsoft has delivered.

There is much that other teams at Microsoft could learn from the Office team. We have said that for years and once again, the Office team has delivered. It may have taken a CEO change to get this version of Office shipped, but good news these days often comes in small doses. What this means for Microsoft is yet to come, but to us it does represent a new beginning.