The move to the iPad essentially announces Microsoft’s surrender to Apple. For four years Microsoft has struggled with the tablet revolution, first ignoring it, then struggling to catch up in a fast evolving market. But the lack of widespread adoption of Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 has finally pushed Redmond to take the famed ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ route.
Office for iPad is available as three apps: Word for iPad, Excel for iPad and PowerPoint for iPad. You can download them for free, but with extremely limited capabilities (and we mean limited – you can’t even create a document). To fully use Office for iPad, users will need to get an Office 365 subscription, which costs $99 a year (that includes five installs on a mobile device, and five installs on desktops and laptops.)