The Office rumor mill has been running hot this week.
Office for Android
Plenty of rumors that Office for Android is coming soon, possibly in early November. If that’s the case it can’t come soon enough for Office users. If Office for Android is as good as Office for iPad then it will be a boon for Android tablet users.
Office 16 / Office 2015
Julia White, Microsoft’s General Manager for Office and Office 365 Marketing has said that the next Office for Windows will be in the back half of 2015. That’s the traditional desktop Office that we’re all accustomed to.
A separate release will be the much promised and long delayed Office touch/Metro/Modern version for Windows tablets. These will be separate Windows apps that will run in the Windows 8/Windows 10 touch enabled environment. We’ve given up tracking the moving release date leaks and promises for this very tardy product.
Behind all this is a lot of work on the basic plumbing of Office. The ‘core code’ for the fundamental features of Office is being rewritten so it works across all the many versions of Office on iPad, Android, Windows and Mac. This mostly unappreciated work is necessary so Office works the same way on very different devices.
As Mary-Jo Foley reports, the key date for Microsoft is May 2015 and their enthusiastically names ‘Ignite’ conference in Chicago. ‘Ignite’ is the new and frankly patronizing name for the TechEd conference (I suppose we should be grateful they didn’t add an exclamation mark – Ignite! ). Despite the silly name, Microsoft is looking to make a big Office splash at the conference … assuming the development deadlines are met.
