In a surprise move, the U.S. online Apple Store now presents Microsoft Office 365 as a recommended iPad accessory when you buy the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro. It’s unclear when this started happening, as The Verge notes that it also appears when purchasing the iPad Air 2, iPad mini 2, or iPad mini 4, but some readers report having seen it for a couple of weeks or more.
The move is surprising for two reasons …
First, that Apple is recommending competitor productivity software over its own iWork suite of Pages, Numbers and Keynote – all provided free. Second, that Apple is offering an Office subscription to iPad buyers when the apps are already available free of charge for viewing and basic editing – though 12.9-inch owners miss out.
After years of promoting iWork apps as a serious alternative to Microsoft Office, Apple now appears to be tacitly suggesting that if you want to really do productive work, you need the real thing.
The recommendation is not currently showing up on the UK site.
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It’s been doing that for a week now!
Actually now that I think about it, I saw it do that a couple weeks ago.
I remember seeing it there when I originally ordered my iPad Pro 12.9 inch months ago. Pretty sure it was there for about 6 months now.
Well, they know what’s what. They do this with Macs, too, don’t they?
And using the apps on any iPad under 10″ doesn’t count as a device on your Office 365 subscription.
I’ve seen this for months now. It’s nothing new.
Take what we know from both Microsoft and Apple:
Apple: Want businesses to use iPads
Microsoft: Have said they want to focus on their software
Why give the milk for free when you could profit off of your competitors milk sales?
It signifies to me:
1) They’re doing everything they can to increase sales/profits, and Office is an obvious easy thing to promote and get a chunk of money from with little to no effort.
2) Apple has all but given up on Pages etc.
It’s going to be interesting to see how much more development work goes into the iWork suite for sure.
They would have to massively improve Numbers to get me onboard. Pages and Keynote I could live with
I think it also has something to do with the whole PC replacement narrative they’re trying to sell. The pathetic losers that own 5 year old PCs probably aren’t willing to switch to iWorks straight out the gate. If it takes them over 5 years to upgrade their sad computers then it’ll probably take them just as long to consider iWorks.
Given how has effectively ditched investment in iWorks – look at the iPad pro and microsoft office – I can’t blame anybody
Ditch all this. Sorry. Just saw your comment on WordPress and couldn’t recall which these it was related to!
There’s a glaring mistake though: they’re offering Office 365 PERSONAL and showing a box image of Office 365 Home (which has a more liberal licensing policy – with up to 5 PCs/Macs + tablets. Personal doesnt do all that)
Scotch that – I see on the actual page it shows the three. Its just the 9to5 crop)
Why not?
If Apple wants to pick a fight with everyone, they will lose all.
This is no surprise.
Let me remind you Apple had Microsoft demonstrate Office product ON STAGE when introducing the 12.7 iPad Pro.
Yeah, that was no surprise – the 12.7-inch model was largely aiming to compete with the Surface, but it’s more surprising on the smaller models.
Not surprising for two reasons.
A) Microsoft invested money in Apple when Apple needed it.
B) Surface Pro/Book sales.
Think it’s also weird that they’re suggesting the Microsoft office suite days after saying get an iPad. It’s great for those sad folks on 5 year old windows PCs… Make up your mind.
It’s not weird at all… it makes perfect sense. If you’re trying to woo Windows users who are more than likely tied to Office, placing a free copy of Microsoft Office next to the new iPad Pro can only help sales.
Ordered the iPad Pro this morning in the UK and it showed as a recommendation for me. I wouldn’t necessarily call it surprising considering how they pushed it at the original iPad Pro keynote
Its also showing on the UK site.
A lot of “Pro” Users unfortunately need PPT files and full capability – even if Keynote is nicer.
Word&Excel are by far superior than their iWorks counterparts – at least if purchased through apple, they get a cut.
It also promotes that business users don’t need to compromise.
This is a very good thing. Microsoft and Apple are no longer at war. Office 365 IS an essential addition for work. I love the new Microsoft on my Macs and IOS.
Well, not for me
My company tested O365 a couple of years ago. Kludgy, buggy, unreliable. After three months we ended the test and went back to local copies of Office. Company policy now states that O365 WILL NOT be used on company equipment.
Personally I WILL NOT rent software. No O365. No Adobe Cloud. I do not want a missed payment to eat all of my work. I want copies of the software I paid for on my system locally. I may store backup copies on the cloud, but I won’t access an App on the cloud.
And lack of focus on iWork continues to be my biggest disappointment with Apple…you’re building such a strong, cloud-centric ecosystem but the work suite languishes in near obscurity?
Good move. I couldn’t understand how much effort they put on updating iWorks and putting it on the cloud.. Nobody wants iWorks!!! People know office is the best by far and I say that, being a big follower of apple products but it is a fact. Microsoft does things perfect with office.
I like iWork a lot, and it is getting better every time they update it. I love the way that they try to make it seamless. When they update the iOS versions, they update the OS X and Web versions as well. This is probably a big process. And it is a totally different strategy then they have before with the older versions of iWork.
I love how iWork works in comparison with Office. Things are way more fluid. You can see they it is being build from scratch. On the other hand, if you look at Office, they improve it yes and their backwards compatibility is great, but probably behind the scene is a bit older. EG: the collaboration features in the new Word 2016 which should be the same as real-time co-authoring in Office Online. But in the native version of Word, you cannot even edit the same paragraph. Therefore, it is not as live as it should and therefore the experience is not the same as say Google Docs, or iWork at iCloud.com or Office Online. To me this proves that the experience is not how it should be, which is a shame, especially in collaboration.
But don’t get me wrong. I still think that Office is really good but that is mainly because it is still the standard.
I take your point. Maybe my opinion is affected because I’m a very old office user and relative new in osx ecosystem but I find really difficult to work with iWork (I use office for working with pro tools). Anyways I’m still much more productive with office @windows than mac. But office 2016 is getting very close to the windows experience of office that in my opinion is the best
After 10 years of intensive dedicated research into the matter, it still cannot be fathomed why people insist that MS Office is a necessary product. OK, you can create your own functions with built-in Visual Basic in Word and you can use pivot tables in Excel, but fact research shows that 99.5% of users NEVER use these or many other so-called advanced functionality. Most users simply enter data, apply some basic formatting effects, some basic calculations in their spreadsheets and that is all.
Some customers want Office to integrate with their clients, vendors or coworkers. If Apple sells the Office subscription they capture a portion of the revenue.
I reckon this was part of a deal between the 2 companies.
Microsoft: “We’ll endorse your hardware on stage at your iPad pro unveiling”
Apple: “We’ll endorse your software on our website as a recommended product”
I couldn’t believe it when Microsoft appeared on stage at an Apple keynote. Now it makes perfect sense.
I would not conclude that Apple is tacitly suggesting. I would conclude that Apple is only displaying Microsoft Office as being available on iPad, as a way to have people see the transition to iOS easier (just because Microsoft Office is so popular).
365 is my go-to productivity suite. Once price / month and I get it on my Mac Pro, my Mac Book Pro, my wife’s mac Book Air, my daughter’s Mac Book, plus the iOS version on two of our iPads. I do not miss the day when every time I rebuilt a boot volume that I needed to re-register all the parts – and when I did buy an “upgrade” to a MS app I needed to put in all the keys (on all those devices). One username.password and everything is activated.
It’s actually very good value for money when you factor in the 1TB cloud storage you get for 5 people. 5TB of storage for £6.66 per month is pretty good and the software is a bonus. Despite what a lot of people say Onedrive works very well and keeps all my files synced across my MacBook, Workcraptop, iPad and two phones.
Libre Office for all the devices; when that day comes, we’ll all be better off.
I’ve been using OpenOffice on and off for the past five years. What’s the advantage of LibreOffice?
OpenOffice was effectively abandoned by Oracle, then palmed off to Apache. LibreOffice has been more active and works better across more platforms today. Lots of Linux distros also prefer LibreOffice. The license situation is much better with LO too. Perhaps you want to read this article:
http://www.howtogeek.com/187663/openoffice-vs.-libreoffice-whats-the-difference-and-which-should-you-use/
Not recent, but it does lay it out well for the time it was written.