Microsoft today released an update for its suite of Office apps on Apple's iPhone and iPad App Store for users running iOS 8. The 1.6 updates bring, along with the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements, full support for saving and syncing documents via Apple's iCloud Drive service (via The Verge).
Microsoft says users of its most popular software like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint can now open, edit, and save their work to iCloud as a storage option in the "Places" section of each iOS app.
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The additional storage method doesn't require users to have an Office 365 subscription and comes as an alternative to Microsoft's own cloud storage option, OneDrive. As pointed out by The Verge, light restrictions on a few file types may hinder iCloud's usage on Microsoft's iOS apps, however.
There’s also restrictions on filetypes, so while you can see a thumbnail preview of text in a document created with TextEdit on a Mac (stored on iCloud), you can’t access the document or edit it. Overall, it’s a fairly basic feature addition, but one that will please (and possibly frustrate) those who use iCloud on a regular basis.
Microsoft most recently added a similar feature to flesh out its iOS offerings with a partnership with Dropbox that let users open, edit, and save their documents using the popular document-saving cloud app. The Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps launched on the iPhone in early November, bringing free document creation and basic editing to the service.
Microsoft Word [Direct Link], Microsoft Excel [Direct Link], and Microsoft PowerPoint [Direct Link] can all be downloaded from the App Store for free.
Top Rated Comments
You must be stoned, Jack.
...hello Office. Seriously, it's painfully obvious that MS has their sights once again on total domination in this space. Apple has done next to nothing for the iWork apps which IMO, were pretty nice on the iOS devices until MS released the current wave of Office for iOS apps. And given their recent actions in lifting restrictions on storage and use, I see iWork fading into oblivion unless Apple pulls a MAJOR rabbit out of their hat.
It's probably Apple's plan to fade into oblivion. I feel that a lot of the time when Apple makes free software, it's not because they want to make software, but because they want the other people making software to make better software.
Microsoft won't make a good web browser? Apple makes Safari. Google won't make a better maps app for iOS? Apple makes a maps app. Microsoft won't bring Office to OS X or iOS? Apple makes iWork.
Everytime it yielded the desired results. IE improved dramatically, plus Google made Chrome. Google dramatically improved their iOS maps app. Microsoft brought Office to OS X and iOS.
So I don't think Apple particularly cares about iWork or Apple Maps at this point. Safari... It's interesting that apple keeps updating it. I'm not sure why Apple hasn't just sat back and let Chrome take the lead.