This from Microsoft-watcher Mary Jo Foley, <http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-office-universal-to-be-free-on-windows-10-phones-small-tablets/>.
Important Confirmation: The Universal Forms of Microsoft Office Windows 10, the touch-first versions (only for Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel), will be available on all forms of Windows 10 (Windows Phone, Windows Tablets, and Laptops/Desktops with or without touch) and at least Android in some form. It will be wild to also be able to manipulate those applications in the air via the "holographic" visualizations, although I don't think that is the driving appeal for the HoloLens product, although this kind of visual collaboration may have more take-up once this kind of capability becomes more of a commodity. That may happen much more rapidly than it looks from now. Previews of the Universal Office apps will be available in February and we can see more of how those will be working, especially the level of format-feature fit. It is not known what the tie-in to Office 365 subscriptions will be for full functionality of these and with respect to which platforms. There is also going to be Office 2016. The full-featured Desktop office for Windows and Office 365 will be available some time in 2H2015 and preview prospects are not known at this time. There is a private beta that I have no information on. MY TAKEAWAY 1. This ecosystem is obviously important both for mindshare and a source of power users and developers. How that is bridged from a mainly-*nix orientation to developer project remains to be navigated. 2. ODF is an important albeit limited differentiator here. The bar is going to be set as far as Office-format interoperability is concerned and now the issue is the quality of transposition to ODF and the level of interoperability with ODF across the three major supporting products (Microsoft Office, Apache OpenOffice, and LibreOffice). For me, because ODF is at the center of my itches about these projects, I believe the profiling work that is part of the Corinthia scope is very important and needs to be of highly-reusable professional quality. That's painful work, and finding the kind of super-users who take to it will also be a challenge. Addressing interoperability around ODF and ODF-OOXML means giving up a bunch of political folklore and posturing that does not go well if one wants to serve the largest body of users out there. There is also going to have to be better expectation-setting with users while also earning their respect for the care for them being demonstrated. This could also be an useful area for collaboration among interested parties involved with any of the key products. I think there is mutual interest in ODF users being served consistently and with clarity on the mutual and Office-related interoperability considerations. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2015 10:04 To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Keeping an Eye on Microsoft: The Windows 10 Reveal Today The Microsoft Office team just did a reveal on what it will mean to have the Microsoft Office Universal apps on Windows 10 (available on the desktop of you want, as well), along with the fact that the full-up desktop Office 2016 is also underway. As far as I know, Universal apps are also amenable to porting to Android and iOS, depending on what the native dependencies might be when built for Windows alone. Is it not valuable to pay attention to all of this in determining feature parity and, in particular, how the standard formats are limited (or not) in cloud interchange and use of web applications and Universal apps? - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2015 16:51 To: [email protected] Subject: Keeping an Eye on Microsoft: The Windows 10 Reveal Today [ ... ] Beside the Universal Apps and the various ways to take them onto multiple platforms, the following information was made available today: 1. Xbox One will run Universal Apps and Xbox Live comes to Windows 10 in more ways 2. Cortana will be on Windows 10 and available to Windows Apps, so this includes text to speech, speech to text, text commands, and probably translation (with help from Skype). 3. There will be Universal Apps of Outlook (Mail and Calendar), and Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel (in addition to Web Apps and the desktop apps). 4. The holographic imaging and viewing is available to Universal Apps. This may be very important as we come to grips with how to deploy Corinthia-based apps into the Windows ecosystem. - Dennis
