Jim Merithew/WIRED
This is not Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft.
On Thursday, Microsoft released Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as three distinct apps for the iPhone. The company already offered an iPhone app called Microsoft Office Mobile—which combined those three classic applications—but this is different. The relaunch of the company’s most iconic software on its archrival’s most iconic mobile device marks a turning point. Instead of trying to cram mobile computing into a shape that fits its old model, Microsoft is reshaping itself to fit what mobile computing already has become.
The company also has released new versions of its three main apps for iPad and a preview version of Office apps for Android tablets, and it has integrated its iOS apps with Dropbox, as promised earlier this week. But there’s a larger point illustrated by these many announcements, and it lies with the operating system that isn’t part of the news: Windows.
This change in attitude, as represented by its mobile strategy for Office, could resurrect Microsoft’s fortunes as a consumer tech company.
During a recent meeting with WIRED, Microsoft Office director of product management Michael Atalla said new touch-optimized versions of the big three Office apps would reach Windows around the same time the company releases the latest incarnation of its flagship operating system: Windows 10. In the meantime, Microsoft is barreling ahead on iOS, a decision that effectively means that the most advanced versions of its mobile Office apps are only available on Apple devices. “They’re the best reflection of our mobile-first strategy,” Atalla said.
But that doesn’t mean Microsoft is bowing to Apple’s mobile primacy. Instead, Atalla said, Microsoft is seeking to make Office as uniform as possible across all devices, right down to creating a common code base—an acknowledgement that the most important change ushered in by mobile devices is the expectation that every screen should be a portal to the same information. “We want people to experience that unmistakeable Office look and feel everywhere.”
Office Props
The night of the midterm elections, some CNN anchors were spotted using their Microsoft Surface 3 tablets as stands to prop up their iPads. The nationally televised indignity pretty much summed up Microsoft’s (lack of) success in mobile so far.
Presenter View in PowerPoint for iPhone. Screenshot: Microsoft
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might have thrown a chair over the incident. But under new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has become much less uptight about how people want to use their own devices, and whose they want to use. This change in attitude, as represented by its mobile strategy for Office, could resurrect Microsoft’s fortunes as a consumer tech company.
The most striking first impression made by Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on the iPhone is how great they look on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. On these big, crisp screens, working on documents doesn’t feel like a kludgy compromise anymore. Microsoft’s designers have figured out how to minimize the intrusion of menus without dropping the functionality that desktop users take for granted. Cribbing from responsive web design, users can “reflow” documents to make them easy to read on the phone. At the same time, PowerPoint presentations on the iPhone screens are so vivid and legible that you could sit beside someone at a table, pluck your whole deck from Dropbox, and make your pitch—no projector or even laptop needed. Microsoft has seen the potential in a piece of hardware it doesn’t make or run and said, let’s make something really good for that.
Why Not Try?
Full disclosure: I’m an iPhone user, and I’ve hardly opened Office for years. But if that makes me biased, that should give what I’m about to say even more weight: Given what I saw, I might start using Office again. On top of the design itself, the apps are also free for basic authoring and editing. So I’m thinking, why not give them a try?
The way Microsoft is thinking about Office suggests a company no longer fixated on getting people to buy its devices or even its software, at least in the consumer market. Instead, Microsoft appears to be banking on the idea that you’ll use the new versions of Office so much that you’ll pay to make them more useful. While the basic apps are free, Office 365 subscribers get access to premium features like “track changes.”
Instead of treating users like pests who won’t get with the program, Microsoft appears to be trying to get them to actually like its products. That strategy won’t turn Microsoft back into the company that made Bill Gates the richest person in the world. But it could make Microsoft a company that’s relevant to consumers again in the 21st century.
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