Microsoft’s Office Mobile for iPhone A Disappointment, But There Are Alternatives

Macworld UK’s Jeffery Battersby says that the many quirks and missing features in Microsoft’s Office Mobile for iPhone make it a difficult app to recommend, noting that while Office for iPhone may be a nice addition to your existing Office workflow, the app strikes him as unnecessary, not particularly good, and – considering that it requires a $100-plus subscription to Office 365 – rather expensive for an app that offers little in the way of tangible value, concluding that while Office for iPhone may provide a modicum of value for some users, the reality is that most Microsoft Office users will see no benefit from this app. He explains why in some detail.

Bringing Microsoft Office to the iPad Wasn’t Easy

VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar notes that Microsoft took its sweet time bringing Microsoft Office to mobile devices (it just announced Office for the iPhone last month), which left the door wide open for other solutions.

One such is CloudOn’s cloud-powered iPad mobile productivity software come in. CloudOns apps let you stream full versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel on most mobile devices. It first launched on the iPad last year and has since brought its apps to the iPhone as well as to Android tablets and smartphones.

Hardawar observes that plenty of other apps let you edit Office documents, but CloudOn is notable for building a virtualization platform that can scale to just about any device as well as handle many different types of software. The company also connects to cloud storage services like Google Drive, DropBox, Box, and Microsoft SkyDrive. As of February, the company claims its apps have been downloaded more than 3.5 million times.

Hardawar asked Jay Zaveri, CloudOn’s vice president of product, to explain how the company approached bringing one of the most popular productivity apps to a completely new platform.

You can check it out at:
http://goo.gl/w75YT

Get The Authentic Word Writing & Editing Experience On iOS With iDocs

Cairo based Beleela, the innovative mobile solutions development branch of EIPC, has announced the launch of iDocs onto the App Store. Compatible with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, this unique file creation, organization, sharing, and editing utility gives users the power to open and edit every type of Windows Word document on the go without losing all important formatting, or sacrificing the use of Word’s intuitive text editing features. A fully featured file download and management platform as well, the app enables users to manage, view, save, and share any type of file – even those normally incompatible with iOS – all via a single centralized hub. iDocs is currently available for download on the App Store for $5.99 in the Paid Productivity category.

Claimed to be the most authentic Microsoft Office Word experience on iOS and much more, iDocs brings users the power to open, create, save, edit, and share Word documents on their mobile device the way these iconic text docs were meant to be utilized. The app supports .docx and classic .doc formats, and every Word document you make, save, and edit retains its original formatting regardless of being opened, closed, imported, or exported as well. iDocs features every one of Word’s flexible text and font formatting options, staying true to the iconic text creation programs’ look and feel. Text alignment functions, as well as spacing and color options are offered as well.

iDocs isn’t a simple document editing solution. In addition to its editing toolbox the app includes iOS’ native spell-check and dictionary features to help users when editing or drafting new texts, and the app itself doubles as a fully stocked file management platform. The app enables users to annotate PDFs and convert any document to PDF format with the click of a button as well. With iDocs users are also free to manage and view images, videos, music, PDFs, MS Office documents and other file formats. Not to be outdone, the app boasts file Zip and Unzip functionalities, a multi-file downloading program, and cloud storage options to ensure that users never run out of space to store and share the files the need and want.

Device Requirements:
* iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S and iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd, 4th & 5th gen) and iPad * Requires iOS 6.0 or later
* This app is optimized for iPhone 5
* 21.6 MB

iDocs for Office Word & PDF Documents 5.5 is $5.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Productivity category.

iDocs 5.5:
http://www.beleela.com/idocs-for-office-word-documents

Purchase and Download:
http://goo.gl/UzFbd