Why I don't Care About Microsoft Office for Ipad

     Microsoft Office came out for Ipad, and I don't care! 5 years ago that sentiment would have been much different. 5 years ago, I was a teacher who was almost completely dependent on Microsoft Power Point. In the 5 years since, I have completely bought into the Apple ecosystem. Pages, Keynote, and Numbers to me are just better. They are easier to manipulate, and frankly eliminate some of the most annoying features of Microsoft Office. Does this mean I can eliminate Microsoft Office completely from my life? Not a chance.  It's the formula and preferred mode of communication for many schools and businesses, and no matter what position I take in the future, I am going to have to use it.
     My journey with Keynote, Pages, and Numbers did not even start with my first Macbook Pro. When I purchased my first Macbook Pro, I was still so entrenched in Power Point that I spent the ridiculous amount of money (I think it was almost $300) to have Microsoft Office on my Macbook Pro. It was the conversion of my wife to the Apple world and the purchase of her Macbook that brought me to iWork. I thought, "Why not load it and give it a spin". If it was good enough for Steve Jobs presentations, it was good enough for me. 
     What I found was software that addressed everything that pissed me off about Microsoft Office. I had used Microsoft Word for years, and there were several things I really hated about it. First, manipulating tables was painful. It was painful to put in titles, to move tables in the document, and manipulate the size and scope of them. Pages went and answered all of those. It had pre-made titles spaces where all you had to do was type, it allowed you to move the the table like an image, and there were easy spaces to manipulate the size and scope. I also hated working with images in Microsoft Word, and ages fixed that by allowing me to move the image like it was a presentation. I found Keynote to be a sleek easy to use presentation software, that made presentations look more professional than Power Point. Excel had never been a program I used frequently, but I found numbers to be easier to manipulate in both titles, formulas, and adjusting the size of the tables
     This brings me back to my opening statement. Office came out for Ipad, and I don't care. Pages and even Google Drive have been on Ipad for a number of years, and now Microsoft wants me to switch back. Well its a little late for that! Microsoft also wants me to pay monthly in order to edit these documents using their cloud service. That's just plain laughable. 
     Apple and Google have left Microsoft in their dust. The company continues to operate solely on the strength of their Xbox ecosystem and the corporations that still favor it. Office will never be my favorite mode of communication, but the need for it will remain for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, as the younger generation takes over, Microsoft will either innovate the product or put it out to pasture.

---