Office for iOS will be out next year. I think, however, without integrated pointing device support, productivity apps lack that certain... productivity. Productivity apps written for PC interfaces, including keyboards, mice, and other pointing devices, most certainly will suck on the Surface, much as they would suck on any tablet, unless you connect the keyboard thing, in which case the big innovation is that you've moved the guts of the computer out from under the keyboard and stuck them behind the monitor.
Word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation applications could certainly be redesigned for touch environments. I would say that's a high-value opportunity in the market right now, of which I'll readily admit Apple hasn't completely taken advantage.
If you make them all pointer/menu driven, you're just recreating the PC experience on a tablet. The fact that the Windows UI formerly known as Metro exists is proof that Microsoft understands that as well as Apple does. But then they build this Surface tablet that really doesn't do anything useful until you attach the keyboard and use it as a PC.
To further screw things up, Microsoft then decides they have to bolt that interface - one that is a startlingly innovative piece of work for Microsoft - onto a PC, making you use a pointing device and keyboard to use it. And OK, maybe people could get used to that. But then they have to go and leaving the desktop underneath. And yes, they have to, because none of these gazillion legacy apps Microsoft has been lugging around for the past twenty years can exist within the Metro environment.
So what are developers supposed to do? Turn all their apps into WUIFKAM tiles? Or build something that actually works on Windows 7, XP, and even the Windows 8 desktop environment, too. Gee, that's a tough choice. |
