14 DAY TRIAL // Apple unveiled at its September 9 event earlier this month the brand new iPad Pro, a new device that’s pushing the company towards the productivity side of the market more than ever.
And because productivity also means working with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations at any given moment, Apple introduced the new iPad Pro as the perfect companion for Microsoft’s Office suite, which was specifically tweaked to run on the 12.9-inch device.
But despite the fact that some iPad Pro buyers expect to get the Office suite completely free, this isn’t going to happen. As Ars Technica writes today, an Office 365 subscription is needed if you want anything more than the basic document viewing capabilities.
Not surprising
Although this could really be bad news for some people, such revelation is not at all surprising.
Microsoft has a policy of offering Office free of charge only on devices with a display of 10.1 inches or smaller, which, according to the company, is what a mobile experience actually means. Anything bigger than that goes in the laptop or netbook category, so you’d have to pay for Office.
The same’s happening on pretty much every platform out there, be it Windows, Android, or iOS, and since the iPad Pro runs the third, it makes no exception to the rule.
This means that if you want the fully-featured Microsoft Office on your iPad Pro, you need to purchase an Office 365 subscription - the cheapest, which is the Personal edition, costs $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year. Otherwise, the free Office that you get from the App Store is only good for viewing documents, spreadsheets and documents, so you won’t be able to edit anything.
Redmond has already confirmed that new iPad buyers indeed have to pay for editing capabilities in Office, so for the moment, the Microsoft Office + iPad Pro productivity combo might not be so productive.