When Apple introduced the original iPad in 2010, the company also unveiled its iWork and iLife suite of apps for the tablet. The apps were later made available for the iPhone. Apple initially offered the apps has a paid download and then made them free for every new iOS user.

As Apple’s iOS platform gained more and more popularity, it was turning out to be a lost opportunity for Microsoft to not offer its apps on the second most popular mobile platform. It’s clear that Microsoft initially must have struggled and hoped that Widows Mobile gains the same momentum as iOS or Android however, it hasn’t worked out like that as yet.

Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, the company launched Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint for iOS. The apps when launched required Office 365 subscription to edit and save files but remained free to view Office files. The company later removed the restriction of Office 365 subscription and made editing files a standard feature.

With the latest update to the suite of apps you can now save files to Apple’s iCloud Drive. Microsoft has added support for open, edit, and save work to iCloud in the “Places” section of each iOS app. iCloud Drive upload and save feature has been added in addition to existing cloud services such as DropBox and Microsoft OneDrive.

You can download the apps for free from the App Store: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Having access to important documents on your iOS devices has proved to be one of the key factors that has lead to the growing adoption of iPhone and iPad in business. Apple understands the importance of having powerful business tools and as a result they’ve been aggressively marketing iWork suite of apps for iOS.

If you often use MS Office for creating documents, presentations or spreadsheets then iWork for iOS might not be the best solution. Even though you can import and export MS Office docs using iWork you will often run into compatibility or formatting issues.

Polaris Office previously $19.99 and now $0.99 (for limited time) offers more than 230 editing functions and features  Microsoft Office document compatibility that will put your worries about editing documents on iOS devices at rest. The developers of Polaris Office are working on a new version 5.0 update that will enhance compatibility features and add more cloud services.

The app allows you to create documents in .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx and .txt format. The user interface is simple and easy to follow. Selecting an element and then tapping the inspector button will expand options in the keyboard area where all options are arranged in vertical tabs.

One of the unique features of the app is the ability to take photos within the app and then apply border, light and other effects. To help you with the creation process Polaris Office even features 15 templates, 18 2D/3D charts and 80 figures.

For those who can’t live without creating spreadsheets for budgets, shopping lists, or sales records, Polaris Office features over 300 functions. The list of features in this app is huge it almost feels like the entire MS Office was squeezed to a 4inch display (when on iPhone). If these features were not enough, you can even directly open zip files and in slideshow mode you can use pointers or even scribble on the slides.

The blogosphere has been reporting on rumours about Microsoft developing MS Office apps for iPhone and iPad, but you can buy Polaris Office for just $0.99 and your wait just got over.

Polaris Office has cloud based storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, cloud built in so you will never lose access to your files whether you created them online or edited on your iOS device.

Overall the app is robust in terms of the features it provides. The app has been downloaded over 400 million times and for a limited period the app is available at 95% off sale. If you’ve always been looking for an app that offers MS Office compatibility and editing features then get this app before the price goes up.

Late last year, in November, rumors suggested that Microsoft was working on Office for the iPad and the Mac App Store but no solid details surfaced during that time. On Wednesday, The Verge reported that a Microsoft product manager released comments to Czech site IHNED.cz [Google translation] that Microsoft is in fact working to bring Office to iPhone and iPad in March 2013. In its report, the publication noted a press release from the Microsoft’s Czech Republic team that confirms that Office for iOS will be arriving soon.

In addition to Windows, Office will be also available on other operating systems, Windows Phone, Windows RT, Mac OS, Android, iOS and Symbian,” says Microsoft, while separately noting that there will also be a new version of Office Web Apps too. […]

The press release also mentions that Office 2013 will be made available to businesses in December, with a consumer launch scheduled for the end of February 2013. “Office 365 services and other Office products for mobile (phones and tablets) will be released from March 2013,” says Microsoft.

Soon after the announcement, numerous people began to refute the claim, including Microsoft head of PR Frank X. Shaw who mentioned that the Czech statement was not credible.

The information shared by our Czech Republic subsidiary is not accurate. We have nothing further to share.

With all of the rumors popping up on the web since late last year, it is very likely that Office for iOS will be arriving in the March/April timeframe and Shaw is refuting the claims in order to contain the rumors about the arrival of the suite of software to the iOS platform.

{Via MacRumors}

On Sunday, Adobe prematurely released the Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad 2 app in the App Store, but soon pulled it, caliming that the app was scheduled for release on Monday, February 27th. On Monday, Adobe officially released the Photoshop app tailored for tablets, which is now available in the App Store for $9.99USD.

Transform images with core Adobe Photoshop features in an app designed for tablets.

Combine images, apply professional effects, share results with friends and family through sites like Facebook, and more – all from the convenience of your iPad.

As dominance of iPad 2 continues to rise, it is continuing to gain support for more desktop based applications, including the rumored Microsoft Office application. Adobe Photoshop Touch is one of the apps introduced by Adobe in a group of six which were announced last October.

The company has slowly been transitioning onto the iPad and other tablets, tapping into the mobile market. As tablets such as the iPad become more portable and more powerful, it is reasonable for Adobe to introduce apps to support it. The apps are not full desktop class, however, will likely build as time progresses and the iPad gains more processing power.

Adobe’s initial plans for the iPad app was to run a full desktop version, but the company scaled back to include only a handful of image editing features. This is only the beginning of the high powered apps on the iPad, and Adobe will likely add more features over the coming months. The Adobe Photoshop Touch app is currently available in the App Store but only for the iPad 2 running iOS 5.

On Tuesday, The Daily reported that Microsoft is ‘actively working’ on their Office Suite of products for the iPad and the Mac App Store. With this new approach, Microsoft would be drifting away from desktop computers, and competing with Apple’s iWork products, which currently includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

According to sources, the tech giant is actively working on adapting its popular software suite for Apple’s tablet. With the iPad making up over 80 percent of the tablet market and millions of people worldwide using Office, that could mean big bucks for the tech giant based in Redmond, Wash.

In addition to an iPad-ready version, a new edition of Office is expected for OS X Lion sometime next year. The current version of the desktop package, Office 2011, officially supports [Mac OS X] versions up to Snow Leopard. A Lion version, likely available via the Mac App Store, is widely expected.

When the iPad was first introduced, many users complained that the iPad does not contain any reliable word processing program and that the Pages application from Apple was only restricted to the iOS platform and very hard to transfer to other platforms. With Microsoft working on a solution for the iPad, the $499 device may actually become a viable option for a laptop replacement for users still dependent on MS Office.

For users who are holding back on purchasing an iPad because of the lack of Word, PowerPoint or Excel it may now become more appealing. Microsoft commented during the initial release of the iPad, suggesting that they were working on Office for the iPad, but after the device was introduced, Microsoft said that they had “no current plans” for the iPad.

Office² (pronounced “Office Squared”) allows you to view and edit Word 97-2003 (.doc) and Excel 97-2003 (.xls) documents on your iPhone and iPod Touch. You can also view PDFs, and the app provides integration with Google Docs, iDisc and WebDav. Admittedly editing any document more ambitious than email on devices of this size can be painful at times, despite Apple’s great GUI. But “Office Squared” makes the process relatively painless.

Office2 fires up with a fairly sterile and business like front page with a settings and info icon, and an empty “Local Files” storage area.

The info icon takes you to a surprisingly verbose Help section with a massive array of instructional documents arranged in a kind of hypertext index. Sections are in there on everything from “Getting started” to “Creating a workbook” for Excel, to “Error codes” and “Product support”. If you can’t find the info you need there then you probably don’t need it! Each page takes a second or so to load, which is confusing at first because you think your touch has not been registered. But once loaded these scrollable pages are packed with info. Another small niggle is that the Back button doesn’t work on the index page of the help section to exit. Rather, you are supposed to use the Done button. The Back button only works when in an actual help document to get back to the help menu. However, it’s always visible. This is something the developers could, and should polish by simply turning that button off when it doesn’t do anything. Like I said, a small niggle, but there are a few things like this in Office2 that make it feel, well.. very like Microsoft Office!

In the settings screen are the options to enable sharing documents to and from your desktop computer, with Google Docs, your iDisk or a WebDAV server. All the web based options are as simple to use as plugging in your username and password and then returning to the main screen where an option is added to view your files online. From there you can choose to simply view them, or “move” or “save” them onto your device locally. Nice. However, here again certain options such as cancelling a transfer without choosing a destination are ignored. It would be far better if the buttons to do that were not there at all in the places the app chooses to ignore them. Sharing documents to and from your computer is done by typing the URL the application provides you with into any browser on a machine on your network, and then either clicking to download files onto your computer, or selecting files to upload to your iPod Touch or iPhone with a file selector. Simple.

Viewing and editing documents is great. You can touch them. Pinch zoom. Edit text. And a small subsection of the Office functions you would expect in each type of document are available on a scrolling menu bar at the bottom of the screen. You can do all of this in landscape or portrait mode simply by turning the device to the orientation you prefer as you work. It should be noted that you can’t edit PDF documents, but you can view them and pinch zoom them etc. With regards to my UI niggles I have to say I found the user interface trouble free when editing stuff.

You can also create new Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets in any of your document spaces. So that includes not only on your iPod or iPhone, but also on Google Docs online for example. There are also a wealth of options for what you can do with Excel spreadsheets, such as multiple worksheets with unlimited rows and columns, searching and sorting of cells, cell formatting, cell types, and pane freezing among other spreadsheet necessities. The iPhone’s touch screen is used effectively throughout, letting you tap and drag to change row heights and column widths, zoom, and tap cells to compose formulas. Really nice.

I herald from days in ancient computer history when getting any kind of Office document or PDF to view on even a Mac was a tortuous task. So it still seems neat to me to be able to work with these kinds of documents so easily. I certainly wouldn’t write a book, or manage my company accounts using “Office Squared”. But having documents I can make minor edits on with me on my iPhone feels great. Being able to plug into web based copies so easily is also cool.

Although the app costs the princely sum of $4.99. A small fortune in terms of iPhone software these days!! It’s well worth it, and I wish other developers would price their apps sensibly like this. Now all Byte Squared need to do is tidy up those UI niggles for me and this would be perfect.

If they ever get adventurous and add PDF editing as an option I’d pay considerably more for this app.

The Good

• Google Docs, WebDav & iDisc integration.
• Easy transfer of file to and from desktop computer.
• Ability to organise files into folders.
• Landscape and Portrait views with no fuss.

The Not So Good

• Some UI niggles that need polish.
• Help pages take a while to load.

Price: $4.99 (iTunes Store Preview)
Updated Feb 05, 2010
Reviewed Version: 3.0.1
Size: 2.6 MB
Languages: English, Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish
Seller: Byte Squared
© Byte Squared Limited
Rated 4+
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.