Microsoft released its latest touch based version of office for the iPad recently. They are targeting a release to the Android platform next, and then following up on a release to the new Windows 8 operating system.
This is a new version of office that has been re-designed to make it work better in a touch based environment such as tablets and notebooks. Being the number one office suite on the personal computer it would make sense that office will have a big advantage on the tablet and notebook machines if the transition to the touch based gestures works well.
This prompts me to ask a few questions:
Why a different code base for all three platforms? Is the office code so reliant on the base operating system that it cannot be coded in one of the tools allowing porting of your software to multiple operating systems? What are the key features prompting them to make the choice for separate code bases?
There are a couple of observations as well. For example, observe the pragmatism of the Office team. They have targeted the largest user base for their products first. The Microsoft Windows 8 based tablets have not been out very long, and only have a small percentage of the tablet and notpad customer base. This is not new. Microsoft had the most popular tools on the Apple Macintosh in the form of Word and Excel before they even introduced it to work on the Intel PC. Microsoft may have an experience of deja‑vu again with this release to the tablet.
Get into the conversation. Share your impressions on this new product line from the Microsoft team by leaving your comment here online, or drop an email to btaylor@sswug.org to be included in a future editorial.
Cheers,
Ben