If you're into a bunch of toys and need an ecosystem of stuff and have the time and inclination to learn all the secret flicks and jestures great, but to some of us this stuff is just plain simple tools.
I use one "gesture", a two finger tap for a right-click. I have to look up the rest most of the time. What are you rambling about?
Not tools we are professionals developing apps and stuff for, just tools we need to do our real world Luddite jobs for people who bought software last in 1995 and are not looking to upgrade soon.
You mean bought Office. Yep, Apple's not particularly interested in it. If you gotta do Office crap, you use a desktop/laptop. MS hasn't seen fit to support other OS's! Go figure. You don't grab a socket wrench to turn a screw, either. Duh. It's not the socket wrench's fault you misused it. Ha.
We don't want to have to go out and find solutions to cudge together. We want stuff that works out of the box and does what we need.
Well, Android ain't going to help any in that regard. If you're stuck supporting and using Office docs, Surface is going to be what you want if your boss's/customer's proprietary vendor of choice, ever gets around to releasing it.
Or a MacBook Air running a real copy of Office.
I bought the iPad primarily because playing Angry Birds on a phone was ****ing me off. Buying aviation software pack for it was a waste of money IMO. Netflix made it worth the money, now Zombie Gunship puts it in the black as an entertainment device, using safari for these boards is marginal but I think Tap a Talk sucks so I deal with it and it's ok except for putting in a pic and viewing some videos people post which don't work.
??? Mine does all those things fine. Not sure what you're missing.
As a work tool for us Luddites though, it fails as does Android. All us guys and gals who are Luddites and have to deal with Luddite companies who are not upgrading their software and require Excel and Word are really hoping that MS will come out with a tablet form solution that we can actually just use without having to become fans and join secret clubs and google up tricks on how to cobble up something that does just the basic crap we need simply which is what neither Apple or Google have given us.
The dumber older business world runs on Office. iPad and Android don't play well because MSFT doesn't support them. No big surprise there. You need Surface, which is vaporware at the moment. Hopefully it shows up for you sometime. Ask MSFT when it'll be done.
New businesses run on PDFs mostly. Or Google Docs in some cases. Spreadsheets, pretty much everyone's on MS. I try to avoid spreadsheets as documents. That's overkill.
I don't even attempt Office docs on iPad other than to pop them open and read-only them. Office is chained to desktop machines by its maker, that's their call. I fire up the MacBook Pro and use Microsoft's suite there.
Google does have one leg up here -- they allow anyone to use it. Including Apple folk... Google Docs will edit most MS proprietary document formats, I believe. Haven't messed with it lately.
iPad is definitely the wrong tool for the job if the job was dealing with legacy MS Office formatted stuff. It must suck to have to deal with that. Sorry your bosses chose those proprietary data formats that there isn't a supported tablet for, yet.
It'll be all better for you when Surface hits. I have one MS spreadsheet to deal with and I just grab the laptop for it. Might see if Office 365 will display it to a browser on the iPad sometime. Doubt it, but haven't tried.
I'm not much for wasting my time turning screws with socket wrenches.
I keep a real copy of Winderz in a virtual machine with Outlook and Office for the really Gung Ho Office docs that use unnecessary fancy formatting. Company pays for that silliness. They also get to WAIT until I'm back at a desktop/laptop if they're expecting me to edit one. They seem fine with that. So am I. You'd benefit from mobile convenience for your pay/time sheet I believe, was the spreadsheet you mentioned you'd like a tablet to edit, when and if MSFT ever gets around to deploying a tablet. A net book is probably the most portable option for that stuff right now, I'm guessing.
