AllThingsD » Microsoft Office

Apps Raise the iPad's Aptitude for Real Work

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 15 May 2013 01:08:44 +0000

There’s a popular myth that Apple’s iPad and other tablets are simply media-consumption devices, unsuitable for productivity applications. That’s just not so, and this week I tested a variety of office suites for the iPad for mini-reviews of their capabilities. In fact, I wrote and edited this entire column on an iPad using the most popular paid iPad app, the $10 Pages word processor by Apple.

[ See post to watch video ]

Not every productivity task is optimally done on tablet software, of course. Writing a plain text document like this one isn’t the same as creating a large, nuanced spreadsheet. For complex documents, I still recommend using a PC or Mac.

And then there’s the problem with typing on a tablet’s virtual keyboard. If you’re going to use your iPad for longer documents, I suggest using a Bluetooth keyboard. I used a physical keyboard to write this, though I usually am fine with the on-screen one.

Despite these caveats, iPads and other tablets are being used every day for productivity tasks once reserved for laptops. Every time you reach for your iPad to read, or tap out, a work-related email, that’s productivity. Every time you make or change a business appointment on an iPad calendar, that’s productivity. And there are way too many tailored productivity and business apps to list here, including apps for salespeople, contractors and doctors.

There’s a major gap, though: Microsoft Office. The software giant doesn’t yet offer a tablet-optimized version. So there are iPad apps that attempt to emulate the features of Office and can import and export files in Microsoft’s Office formats. They generally don’t offer all of the features of Office and don’t always offer perfect fidelity with PC and Mac versions of Office. But I have found they are fine for the basic documents most people create or edit. And all can open and edit Office-type files attached to email, using the iPad’s “Open In…” command. You just touch the attachment icon for a bit longer than usual and a grid of compatible apps to use for editing appears.

Here are my impressions of some of these apps, including AstralPad, from a three-person startup that launched a few months ago. I tested these by doing two things with each. First, I created an identical word-processing document, with text in various styles and a photo, and then exported it to Microsoft Word on a PC and Mac. Then I imported a 23-page PowerPoint file to see if it looked as it did on a PC and Mac.

iWork’s Keynote is built for touch.

iWork

Introduced by Apple at the iPad’s launch in 2010, the touch-version of the company’s office suite is now in its seventh revision. It’s the most touch-friendly of the products I tested and the most transparent about cases where it’s incompatible with Office. Apple even maintains a Web page disclosing incompatibilities. The suite consists of Pages, the Numbers spreadsheet and the Keynote presentation app, which are sold for $10 each.

iWork synchronizes documents as you type them with its cloud-based iCloud service, which can be accessed from any Web browser and can export the files in Office formats. You can email documents in Office format. But unlike many other iPad apps, it lacks built-in access to popular online storage sites like Dropbox and Google Drive.

The suite works well offline, as it stores documents locally as well.

Pages was fastest and easiest at creating my test document, but the document had a misaligned line when I viewed it in Word on a Mac and PC. On the other hand, Keynote on the iPad imported the presentation perfectly.

QuickOffice is fine for simple documents on the iPad.

QuickOffice Pro HD

This Office substitute has been around a long time on various platforms and is fine for simple documents on the iPad. It costs $20 for all three modules in one app. It stores files locally and integrates with many popular cloud-storage services.

However, I couldn’t insert the photo into my test document, and the presentation I imported was formatted wrong.

AstralPad

The newest competitor is merely a window into an office app running on a server. Since the server app is meant for PCs, it has many more features and in some cases, better fidelity, than apps that live on the iPad. It’s free for now, but will soon cost a few dollars a month for more than a limited number of documents.

AstralPad is merely a window into an office app running on a server.

However, the cloud-based program Astral uses isn’t even an actual version of Office, but an open-source clone. And because it’s meant for a mouse, I found it difficult to manipulate, even though Astral has added some touch controls and a virtual mouse.

In addition, it converts files in the current Office document formats into older formats before you can work with the files.

AstralPad has some nice features. It allows you to work with multiple documents simultaneously and to cut and paste between them. And it has video and audio calling for collaboration. It works with cloud-based services and local storage. But it can’t work offline.

It created my test file fine after the company fixed a bug that at first wouldn’t allow me to import a photo. But it didn’t display the presentation file correctly, with overlapping text and pictures.

I found AstralPad to be a work in progress.

CloudOn uses a real, remote copy of Microsoft Office.

CloudOn

Like AstralPad, this is just a window into a server and won’t work offline. But it uses a real, remote copy of Microsoft Office and is free. It was able to create my test document fine and to display my test presentation properly. It also integrates with cloud-based storage. But while it was easier to use than AstralPad, I still found it clumsy to use its PC software on a touch tablet.

Bottom line: None of these iPad office suites is perfect, but you can get basic work done on them that will translate to a computer with little or no effort.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Microsoft Offers Price Breaks

Eva Dou and Spencer E. Ante — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:31:44 +0000

Microsoft Corp. has recently been offering price breaks on its Windows 8 and Office software to help spur the development of small, touch-enabled laptop computers, people familiar with the situation said.

The Microsoft discounts are particularly tailored for portables with small displays that would likely appear this fall, these people said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Pinterest's Value, Microsoft's Mobile "Mistake" and Tesla's Proud Owners: The AllThingsD Week in Review 2/17/13 – 2/23/13

Eric Johnson — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 16:00:28 +0000

Hello, and happy International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day! If you really want to appreciate dog biscuits, why not try one? And while you’re thinking that over, here’s something much better to munch on — our Top 10 stories from the week of Feb. 18:

1.) This Is the Site Likely Responsible for the Recent Major Tech Company Hacks

2.) Yahoo CEO Mayer Now Requiring Remote Employees to Not Be (Remote)

3.) Microsoft Could Make Billions From Office for iPad

4.) Confirmed: Pinterest Completes $200 Million Funding at $2.5 Billion Valuation

5.) NFC: What You Need to Know

6.) I Love You, Man: Gates Lashes Himself to Ballmer Over Microsoft’s Mobile “Mistake” (Video)

7.) For $19, an Unlimited Phone Plan, Some Flaws

8.) Tesla Owners Hit the Road to Prove Long-Distance Can Be Done

9.) Why Google Made Its Own High-End Laptop, the Chromebook Pixel

10.) When Mayer Called Yahoo’s Mobile Revenue “Nascent,” She Wasn’t Kidding (And Here’s the Actual Number She Left Out)

For more of the week in review, you should follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

A New View on Windows

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:12:40 +0000

In Windows 8, what is the relationship between desktop mode and the start-screen mode with the new user interface? I find it confusing that, when opening a picture, it goes to the picture app in the start screen instead of opening in the regular Windows photo viewer. The same goes for videos.

I believe Microsoft sees the tabletlike start screen experience in Windows 8 as the future of Windows, the beginning of a long transition away from the traditional Windows desktop. That’s why Windows 8 opens in the start screen, why Microsoft is working to build up a large catalog of tablet-type apps that run only in the start screen, and why the traditional desktop has been relegated to a mode you reach by clicking on an icon on the start screen.

It’s also why the default behavior in opening photos and videos is to use the new full-screen viewers in the start screen mode.

However, I’d point out that Windows 8 gives you a choice the first time you open a picture or video of switching to the traditional desktop viewers.

And, even if you haven’t opted to do so, you can always right-click on a picture or video, choose “Open with” and use the traditional viewers.

Should I un-pair my cellphone from my rental car’s Bluetooth system when I’m done? Are there any data theft tracks I am leaving behind?

Every car-phone combination may be different, but in my experience, some cars can cache some information from the phone, including the address book and recent calls. It may be that rental cars don’t do this, but even so, I’d definitely un-pair your phone from a rental car.

At my office, I am given a choice between a Dell laptop and a MacBook Air. I’ve never run the Mac version of Microsoft Office and am a bit nervous about seamless compatibility with Windows versions of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.

Years ago, compatibility between the Windows and Mac versions was spotty. But today, with the latest editions, it’s very good. In most cases, a file created in Office on one platform will appear just fine in the other, and no conversion process is needed because both use the same file formats. However, there are exceptions. Some complex files created in Windows may not translate properly to the Mac.

Email your technology questions to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Surface Pro: Hefty Tablet Is a Laptop Lightweight

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 02:07:48 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Microsoft is introducing its second-ever personal computer. As with the first, it’s a multi-touch 10.6-inch tablet that has some of the attributes of a laptop, such as a USB port and snap-on keyboards. But unlike the first, this new tablet is capable of running full-featured Windows 8, though at a price — in dollars, bulk and battery life.

Both machines are called Surface and at first glance, they look similar. But there are big differences. The original Surface, launched in October, uses a limited version of Windows 8 called RT and runs on the type of processor common in rival tablets and smartphones. As a result, while it can fully handle Windows 8’s new Start Screen tabletlike interface and apps, it can only run four standard Windows desktop programs — Microsoft’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. You can’t install other desktop software.

The new Surface, called Surface Windows 8 Pro, is powered by an Intel processor typically found on laptops and uses the high-end Pro version of Windows 8. So it can run a vast array of standard Windows 7 desktop software. That means you could theoretically use the new tablet as a full replacement for a Windows laptop — if you used one of Microsoft’s thin keyboard covers.

The Surface Pro looks like the Surface RT, but it has a much higher screen resolution. The Pro also comes with a pen that makes navigating on the desktop much easier and allows for jotting notes or annotating documents.

Microsoft views the Pro as a new kind of PC, a sort of hybrid of a tablet and a laptop that spares users the hassle of carrying two devices. It goes on sale Saturday.

The Surface Pro starts at $899 — $400 more than the base model of the biggest, newest iPad or the base Surface RT. To be fair, this entry-level Surface Pro has 64 gigabytes of storage, four times what the base iPad offers. But an iPad with the same 64 GB is $699. A higher-end Surface Pro model with twice the storage costs $999, but an iPad with the same amount of storage is $200 less.

Not only that, but the keyboard covers cost extra — $130 for the one with movable keys, which brings the price to over $1,000.

As with the original Surface, the Pro is solidly built, with the same innovative metal kickstand that keeps it upright on a desk or table. It ran all the software I threw at it — both the new type and the old desktop type — speedily and well. I was able to install and run the full Windows 7 desktop versions of such popular programs as Microsoft Outlook, Google Chrome, Apple iTunes, Adobe Reader and Twitter’s TweetDeck.

The Pro has a much higher screen resolution than the RT. It comes with a handy pen, not included or usable on the RT, that makes navigating on the desktop interface much easier and allows for jotting notes or annotating documents. And it has corporate-friendly security features not found on the RT.

But the Pro has some significant downsides, especially as a tablet.

The Pro is thicker and heavier than the RT, which makes it clumsier to use as a tablet and on your lap as a laptop with the snap-on keyboard.

The Surface RT

I like the original Surface and see it as a tablet with the extra benefit of some Microsoft Office programs. However, I am less enamored with the Surface Pro. It’s too hefty and costly and power-hungry to best the leading tablet, Apple’s full-size iPad. It is also too difficult to use in your lap. It’s something of a tweener — a compromised tablet and a compromised laptop.

The Pro weighs 2 pounds, which is light for a laptop but anvil-like for a tablet. That is almost 40 percent heavier than the weightiest iPad and over 40 percent thicker. I found this bulk made the Surface Pro even clumsier than the RT is to use on my lap with the keyboard cover, even with the kickstand, which works far better on a desk than on one’s knees.

In my tough battery tests, where I set the screen to 75 percent brightness, turn off power-saving features, leave the Wi-Fi on and play locally stored videos until the machine dies, the Surface Pro did pathetically. It lasted just under four hours between charges — less than half the stamina of the iPad on the same test and three hours less than the Surface RT. In normal use, you might stretch that to five or 5½ hours, still poor for a tablet.

Also, as on the RT model, the Windows 8 system files take up a huge chunk of available storage. Of the 64GB of solid-state storage on the entry-level $899 model, only 30GB of that is free for the user, according to Microsoft. On the $999 model, 90GB of the 128GB total is available for the user. Microsoft notes you can add more storage via a flash memory slot.

And unlike the RT, the Pro doesn’t come out of the box with Microsoft Office. That costs extra, just as on most laptops. Unlike the iPad and some Android tablets, neither Surface can be ordered with built-in cellular connectivity, though the Pro can accept extra-cost plug-in cellular modems and, like competing tablets, it can be wirelessly tethered to a cellphone or stand-alone cellular modem.

When used on a desk, table, or airplane seat tray, with the kickstand holding the screen upright and the keyboard cover with movable keys, the Pro is a serviceable laptop, especially since, unlike on an iPad or Android tablet, you can use full-fledged PC programs.

But just as the Pro is compromised as a tablet, it’s compromised as a laptop. You get fewer ports and less storage than on many laptops and a keyboard that can’t compare with those on many laptops.

Some users may not mind the price or bulk of the Surface Pro if it frees them from carrying a tablet for some uses and a laptop for others. But like many products that try to be two things at once, the new Surface Windows 8 Pro does neither as well as those designed for one function.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

A Fresh New Office Finds a Place in the Cloud

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:02:33 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Tablets and smartphones may have taken over people’s lives, but Microsoft has managed to maintain a hold on the way many people use their PCs with one product: Trusty Microsoft Office.

Microsoft’s newest version of Office, available starting Tuesday, is a radical change from the past. For starters, Office 365 has a surprising new price model: It is available as a subscription that can automatically renew each year, if you choose. This new system constantly updates program features year round. Every time you open a program in Office, you will be running the latest version.

With Office 365, any PC can be activated or deactivated in one step.

It’s also more closely tied to the cloud, saving documents to Microsoft’s SkyDrive storage system by default, so your documents and personal settings are remotely accessible. With that, Microsoft aims to stave off Office challengers like Google Drive, which gives people a way to create and store documents online, as well as share documents and edit with multiple people.

What’s more, Office 365 gives people a centralized spot online where they can manage their account, showing them where they have Office installed so they can deactivate unused computers with one click or completely cancel subscriptions. And files are still accessible to download even if subscriptions expire.

Along with these broader features, there are significant changes to Office 365’s programs, which include Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access. It does a nice job of bringing to the surface some features that were too far buried in menus for people to use. It also packs in many new features, some of which were made for touchscreens and new devices designed to run the touch-centric Windows 8. And Microsoft has updated its Office Web Apps, stripped-down programs that offer free editing, via a Web browser, of files stored online.

I tested Office 365 Home Premium, which costs $99 a year and can be installed on up to five computers, including Windows 7 and Windows 8 PCs as well as Macs running Apple’s OS X version 10.5.8 or later. Office 365 University, which costs $80 for a four-year subscription, is available for college students, faculty and staff. Office 365 for businesses will be released on Feb. 27; subscription rates will range from $4 to $20 monthly.

Traditional, non-subscription versions of Office are available for one-time fees, including Office Home and Student 2013 ($140), Office Home and Business 2013 ($220) and Office Professional 2013 ($400). These new suites still receive security patches, as they always have, and can only be installed on one machine and upgrades require installing whole new versions. Like Office 365, these versions of Office also now save to SkyDrive by default, tying them into the cloud.

I installed Office 365 Home Premium on two devices: A Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T, which had a touchscreen and was running Windows 8 Pro, and a MacBook Pro, which was running OS X version 10.8.2. I also looked at and edited documents on computers that didn’t have Office 365 installed by using Microsoft Web Apps. And I set up Office 365 on a Windows Phone to access and edit documents on the go.

The new version of Microsoft Word lets people have integrated conversations in editing comments.

To install on the Windows 8 PC, I used a product key given to me by Microsoft for pre-release testing, otherwise you would have to go to Office.com to buy a subscription and get a product key. (A free 30-day trial is available.) The Windows 8 PC install took about 20 minutes, and a helpful introduction walked me through key points of Office 365. One screen asked me, “How would you like your Office to look?” And I scrolled through a handful of patterns and chose a background that looked like rings on a tree stump.

When I installed Office 365 on the Mac, I just went online to office.com/myaccount, selected an option to sign into an existing subscription and entered my username and password. The download on the Mac took about 30 minutes and then I saw on my Mac the familiar tree-ring background. The version was Office: Mac 2011 because the new Office for Mac typically ships after the new Office for Windows.

The My Account Web page is a big plus for people who have had computers die and take copies of Office with them. Now, in one step on My Account, any PC can be deactivated and a new PC can be activated.

The cloud-based structure of Office 365 takes some adjustment, but users can still save files to the PC. In Word, when I wasn’t connected to the Internet and opened a document, I saw a notification reminding me that the version of the document I was reading was an offline copy. This notification also told me when the document was last updated and saved online. Each Office 365 account comes with 20 gigabytes of free storage, but all SkyDrive users get seven gigabytes each, so a person using Office 365 could potentially have 27GB of storage.

I enjoyed using new touch features, like five small squares on the far right of the Inbox screen in Outlook that made it a cinch to quickly sort through my inbox. These small icons enabled replying, moving, deleting, marking as unread and flagging for follow-up. I wrote this column in the new version of Word, automatically saving it to SkyDrive and easily opening and editing it on other computers and a Windows Phone.

Excel spreadsheets are now smarter than ever thanks to auto-fill features. I tested one that felt like it was reading my mind as it filled in names of people who had appeared in an earlier column because it detected the same name pattern. PowerPoint presentations now include special CliffsNotes-like tools that only the presenter can see.

Office 365 feels grown up and ready for the fast pace of the Web. It’s custom made for people who use many devices, including desktop PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones. If potential users can wrap their brains around its new subscription system, Microsoft has a winning program on its hands.

Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Can a Touchscreen Replace a Mouse?

Walter S. Mossberg — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 21:42:47 +0000

I’ll be buying several new Windows 8 PCs this year, all with touchscreens. Touchscreens are new to me. When using spreadsheet and word processor programs, does the touchscreen completely replace the mouse?

If you are thinking about Microsoft Office programs, I’d say no. While the forthcoming 2013 version of Office is designed to allow the use of touch instead of the mouse and keyboard, I have found in my tests that the icons and text are too small for that to work comfortably, at least on a desktop or laptop, and I still prefer the mouse and keyboard. In fact, this is a key reason Microsoft itself makes keyboard covers for its Surface tablet.

Does the new Google Maps app for Apple devices work on the iPod touch? Can I download maps in advance on my touch for use offline?

Though Google says the app is “optimized” for the iPhone 5, it also says it will work on the third, fourth and fifth generation iPod touch, as well as on the iPad and on older iPhones. Note, however, that turn-by-turn navigation likely won’t work because Google says that requires GPS, which the touch lacks. As for downloading maps for offline use, Google hasn’t made this feature available yet for Apple devices.

My father gave me several hundred slides that we’d like to scan and convert to digital format. Would you be willing to suggest a couple of reputable companies for this service?

One good choice is PeggyBank, which I reviewed recently here: http://tinyurl.com/bmkqdav.

Another I have tested successfully would be YesVideo, at http://tinyurl.com/aeqjng7.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Seven Questions for Google Enterprise Chief Amit Singh

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 15:40:46 +0000

It’s been a big year for many things related to the Enterprise business at Google. For one thing, it launched both Google Drive and its cloud computing platform.

Then there’s Google Apps, the suite of Web-based office applications that compete directly with Microsoft’s Office. More companies have embraced Google’s approach, and Microsoft earlier this year launched a competitive response called SkyDrive. All this made the end of the year seem a good time to check in with Amit Singh, a Google VP and head of its Enterprise unit. My first question was one I’ve asked repeatedly about Google Apps in one way or another for the last few years.

AllThingsD: So, was 2012 the year that Google Apps went mainstream in the Enterprise?

Singh: I’ll give you an update on customers and the product. This was the year where we broke the barrier and got large-scale customer adoption. There are others we haven’t announced, and you’ll be surprised by some of them. But Roche and BBVA — you wouldn’t consider pharma or banking customers to be early adopters. We also announced some large retailer customers, like Dillards, Kohl’s and Office Depot, and in the quarter before we announced them, we announced Costco. So these are big customers.

What’s making them cross the Rubicon and switch?

Its a combination of things. In this industry, once you see others going for it, you do it. However, there have been some confidence-building measures. People ask if you can deliver cloud applications at scale better than they can internally. The answer is yes. Is your security comparable to theirs? Yes. Can you comply with the regulatory environment they face? Last year, the answer was no. Now we’re able to do that at scale. It’s a combination of things. People are seeing others switch. We’re adding features. We’re building confidence. The more our customers get out there, the better people feel about it. People don’t listen to us. They listen to our customers. … Then we started Drive. Then we launched Google’s Cloud Platform, which was a big inititiative to open up our infrastructure for developers everywhere. The largest companies in the world are seeing what they can build using Google’s scale. And we launched the next generation of Chromebooks. Each of the things we’ve done, the investments we’ve made have given people reasons to take a serious look at us in a ways they might not have done before.

How do you view the competitive landscape now? Microsoft certainly responded with SkyDrive and a new version of Office. What threat do these represent to your plans?

Whether we like it or not, there’s massive change going on in the Enterprise. We started doing Gmail and Chat for your domain in 2005, when it really wasn’t very sexy. We extended and wrapped it with enterprise controls. We’ve since built up a lot of enterprise processes and support. Microsoft bought Yammer, and it’s a total consumerization type of play. Users adopt technology and then they bring it to the Enterprise, whether it’s welcome or not. A lot more things wil be built on things like Amazon Web Services, or hopefully more on Google, because it’s a lot faster and cheaper and better than what they can get internally from their own data centers. And that’s only going to accelerate. Regarding competitors, Microsoft has seen its market share decline somewhat. Enterprise is the place where they are holding on. People are showing up at the office and bringing their own devices and expecting their employers to support them. And with Windows RT, there is no backward compatibility with all the apps. That’s the first time that has happened in Windows. The Windows 8 move, they have done what they need to do, but it’s fairly disruptive. SkyDrive is coming. SharePoint needs to integrate with Yammer. So, change is coming whether you like it or not. We think we offer an alternative that is pure and proven.

What do you have that they don’t?

We used to compete on just cost. But that’s changed. On the cloud, over time you shouldn’t have to charge more money to get cloud services. Overall, your costs should go down. We’ve been at the $50 price point for apps for some time, while increasing the depth and breadth of our solution. On the other hand, the way they are incenting their customers to move is by charging them more. That is their strategy, and they are entitled to do what they want. Devices are going to proliferate, and Web services are now being delivered at scale. Then the question becomes whether you want to build around the desktop, or whether you want to build around Web services and devices being connected together. And, frankly, they don’t have the credibility to deliver Web services at scale. That’s just not what they do. They learn, hopefully, over time.

And yet you have to coexist with the desktop Office Client when the time comes, right? How is that now?

In the last year, if you look at the depth of where we’ve gone with Docs, both in the core features and in the desktop fidelity, we’ve made tremendous progress. Our goal is to get to the 90 percent of users who don’t need to have the most advanced features of Office. Sheets does tables graphing, etc., out of the box. In Q3, if you import from Excel into Sheets, you won’t be able to tell the difference in Sheets. We know the gaps between our features and theirs. We’re improving them week by week. We’re going to get to the the 90 percent. If you need the last 10 percent, you’ll want to use the desktop. The next thing is the import from PowerPoint to Slides. That’s where QuickOffice is going to help us a lot.

Talk a bit about the state of the ecosystem. We saw, for example, Backupify embracing a role as the backup for Google Apps users recently. I imagine there must be many secondary and ancillary services that operate within and around Google Apps. How is that evolving?

The way you look at a successful business is its ecosystem. For us at Google, it’s all about the ecosystem and developers. We have Android developers working on Enterprise applications now. The Android ecosystem for Enterprise is getting better, now that we’ve added things like encryption, and the same is happening on Chrome. On Apps, the top enterprise marketplace apps have all been acquired by larger companies. The top apps are getting a lof of distribution through Google. As Google Apps gets wider and stronger, the ecosystem is getting strong, as people want to extend its capabilitles. There’s Backupify; there’s Cloud Log for audits. There’s Smartsheet. We’re seeing the natural evolution, but you can expect us to spend more time cultivating that in the coming year. There’s also a strong ecosystem around implementation and support of Google Apps. We’ve gone from 3,000 partners to 6,000 in one year. So now there’s this massive distribution.

So what’s the big theme for 2013?

“Work the way you live.” Consumerization is here. It’s time to really embrace it. We’re doubling down on the Enterprise. It’s an increasingly important part of Google, and a place where we plan to invest and to support our customers.

Smartsheet -- Spreadsheets Reimagined -- Lands $26 Million From Insight and Madrona

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:23:27 +0000

If your idea of collaborating with colleagues on a spreadsheet can be described as “emailing attachments,” you’ve probably wondered more than a few times if there was a faster and smoother way.

Collaboration tools are all the rage in office applications these days, and they come in many forms. There are platforms through which one can share and collaborate on many kinds of files. Box comes to mind. Then there are the cloud applications like Salesforce.com and Workday, all of which are collaborative. Social enterprise apps like Jive and Yammer are built expressly to encourage collaboration. Google Apps has recreated a solid set of core office applications, all accessible directly from a browser, and all of them allow multiple editors on documents.

Smartsheet is essentially a spreadsheet application that’s built for the age of the cloud. Entire sheets can be shared with colleagues, or you can share only granular bits of data, like the contents of a particular row. Sheets can be published to the Web, and are also accessible via mobile apps on iOS and Android. It integrates with Box, Salesforce, Google Drive and Amazon Web Services.

So far, it has a million customers, including companies as varied as ESPN, MetLife and Toshiba. Many of those just found Smartsheet and started using it for a particular project or task, and its use grew virally within those companies. One of them was Insight Venture Partners. And, of course, you know where this is going. In a moment worthy of a Victor Kiam, they liked it so much they’ve bought a piece of the company.

Insight announced today that it has led a $26 million investment in Smartsheet, along with Madrona Venture Partners. Ryan Hinkle, a principal at Insight, will join Smartsheet’s board of directors. The funding will go toward accelerating sales and marketing, and to kick software development efforts up a notch or two.

Hardworking Tablet With PC Chops

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 01:02:54 +0000

I am writing this paragraph on a tablet in a coffee shop. That’s no big deal. As I look around, I see several people working on Apple iPads. But the tablet I’m using is very different — historic, actually. It’s the first personal computer made by Microsoft, a company determined for decades to make only the software driving others’ computers.

[ See post to watch video ]

With this device, called Surface, Microsoft is adopting the model of its longtime rival, Apple, which has always believed that the better way to deliver digital products is to build them end-to-end, including hardware, operating system and core apps, and an ecosystem of downloadable apps and content. That is what Microsoft is doing now with the Surface tablet, two and a half years after the iPad was born.

I have been testing the Surface almost daily for three weeks and I like it. It’s beautifully and solidly built and it’s the purest expression of Microsoft’s new Windows 8 touchscreen operating system which, like the Surface, goes on sale on Friday. The new operating system also works on laptops and desktops. It can be operated with a mouse or touch pad, but its dramatically different, touch-optimized user interface begs to be used on a touchscreen tablet.

This isn’t a cheap iPad knockoff. It’s a unique tablet, made of a type of magnesium with a feeling of quality and care. The Surface starts at the same $499 base price as the large iPad, albeit with 32 gigabytes of storage, twice Apple’s entry offering. Other versions cost $599 and $699. Unlike the iPad, the Surface is Wi-Fi only. It lacks a cellular-data option.

The Surface tablet with the Touch Cover — which uses molded keys, comes in bright colors and costs $120 — has a sturdy kickstand for typing on a desk.

Office and Keyboards

As fluid as the Surface is with touch and the tablet-like touch apps Windows 8 supports, Microsoft has given the tablet the ability to behave like a familiar Windows PC, at least in some scenarios. It comes with full versions of standard Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The three programs worked fine, in creating documents and in editing ones from older versions of the software.

Microsoft has designed two clever, very thin, optional keyboards that snap on magnetically and double as covers. These are better than any of the add-on keyboards I’ve seen for the iPad. And Microsoft has built in a standard USB port and a sturdy kickstand for typing on a desk. One keyboard, the Touch Cover, uses molded keys, comes in bright colors and costs $120. It’s bundled with the costlier models. The second, a rigid, black version with movable keys called the Type Cover, costs $130.

There is a downside to these keyboards: They are almost useless on your lap. There is no hinge to keep the screen upright and the kickstand works poorly on your legs. Despite that, these features make the Surface better for traditional productivity tasks than any tablet I’ve tested.

A Paucity of Apps

Still, there are rough edges to the Surface. The biggest is a paucity of apps for the new touch interface. At launch, Microsoft estimates there will be only about 10,000 third-party such apps available globally, of which about 5,000 will be available in the U.S. More important, many popular titles, like Facebook, will be missing. That’s a tiny number of apps compared with the 700,000 touch-operated apps that run on the iPad.

And there is more bad news about apps. This first edition of Surface uses a variant of Windows 8, called RT, that can’t run the vast array of traditional programs many Windows users rely upon daily, like Google Chrome, Adobe Photoshop, Apple iTunes or even Microsoft’s own Outlook. A second edition of the Surface, due in January, will run the full version of Windows 8, and most of these standard Windows programs. But it will be heavier.

Mediocre Battery Life

Surface, which is about as thin, but a bit heavier, than the full-size iPad, displayed much weaker battery life in my tests — about seven hours versus 10 for the iPad. That’s better than many Android tablets, but not what you’d expect from Microsoft’s pride and joy.

I tested the battery life using the same test I use on all tablets. I set the screen to 75 percent brightness, leave on the Wi-Fi to collect email in the background, and play videos back to back until the battery dies.

Screen and Cameras

The screen on the Surface is 10.6 inches, larger and skinnier than the big iPad’s. It was sharp and vivid in my tests, but inferior to the Retina display on the third-generation Apple tablet, which has much higher resolution. The cameras were a disappointment. They took only fair pictures. The rear camera has a mere 1 megapixel in resolution. Microsoft says it tuned the camera more for video, but in my tests videos were only okay.

Touch Keyboard

The touch keyboard is fast and easy to use. It can be switched among several styles — a standard configuration, a more cramped one with an added top row of number keys, and a split style, as on the iPad, for thumb typing. You can also summon a panel for handwriting input, though Microsoft doesn’t include a stylus.

Built-in Apps

Surface has the same built-in new-style apps as every Windows 8 PC, and the same app store. Like other Windows 8 machines, the Surface starts up in the new, radically different, tile-based Start screen.

The built-in apps include a touch version of Internet Explorer, an email program, and programs for social networking, instant messaging, photos, maps, videos, music and more. In addition, while Surface doesn’t run most old-style Windows apps, it includes some standard old Windows programs like the calculator, notepad and file explorer.

All of the built-in apps worked fine for me, except Mail, which lacks common features like a unified inbox, and an unread-mail folder. It also doesn’t support one of the two common types of consumer email systems, called POP. Microsoft concedes the Mail app needs to be improved.

On the other hand, the Music app, called Xbox Music, holds great promise. It lets users download songs like iTunes, organize them into “stations” like Pandora does, and stream them free like Spotify.

Third-party apps sometimes showed problems. Evernote took a long time to synchronize my account, and the Kindle app had to stop every few pages to fetch the next section of a book, even if the book had been downloaded. It also messed up some pages.

Bugs

I ran into a number of bugs while testing, some serious. All but one notable one were resolved by the time I wrote this review. It involves the inability of the Surface to authenticate with Microsoft services, like the app store, with some kinds of broadband modems and routers. Microsoft concedes this bug is known, but is still investigating. In my tests, this bug affected me in only one of my several test locations, but one is too many.

Bottom Line

Microsoft’s Surface is a tablet with some pluses: The major Office apps and nice optional keyboards. If you can live with its tiny number of third-party apps and somewhat disappointing battery life, it may give you the productivity some miss in other tablets.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com.

A Laptop for Light Work

Walt Mossberg — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 01:09:57 +0000

I’ve become a 100% user of Google Docs and use my computer only for browsing, email and cloud applications. I read your column recommending laptops, but was wondering what you might recommend for someone like me.

Assuming you are looking for a laptop rather than a tablet, the least expensive and best configured machine for your needs is likely a Google-developed Chromebook, built by either Acer or Samsung. Information about them is at http://bit.ly/TbdhlW. I reviewed the latest version of the Chrome OS, which powers the Chromebook, in June. You can find the review at http://dthin.gs/Lvc8mg. I rated it as inferior to Windows or the Mac operating system, mainly because those platforms can run many more programs. But given your needs, the Chromebook might have been designed for you.

I was wondering if Google’s Nexus 7 tablet allows the user to edit documents in Google Drive instead of just viewing them, as on the Google Drive iPad app.

As far as I know, the Android Google Drive app runs the same on the Nexus 7 as on other Android tablets. It does allow you to edit documents in Google’s own formats. But if you try to edit a Microsoft Office document, the app sends you to an Office-compatible app, if you have one. On the iPad, the Google Drive app lacks built-in editing, even for apps in Google’s formats. But it can send you directly to Google Docs in the Web browser to edit documents in Google formats. If you want to edit those in Microsoft formats, the app, as on Android, sends you to another, Office-compatible app.

I use Microsoft SkyDrive because I’m grandfathered with 25 GB of free storage. I have not seen evidence that the sync of files from my hard drive to SkyDrive works, so I upload manually. Is there something I need to do to make this automatic?

It has always worked well for me, and yours is the first email I’ve received about this problem. I assume you have installed the SkyDrive app and that you are placing the files you want to sync in the special SkyDrive folder it creates. If you are and it isn’t working, I suggest you delete the program and then download and install a new copy. Also, Microsoft has a help site at: http://bit.ly/MYB6YH that includes a troubleshooting section.

Corrections & Amplifications

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Google-developed Chromebooks are currently built by Asus and Samsung.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Waiting for the Era of Post-PC Productivity? It’s Already Here.

Sarah Rotman Epps — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 19:22:52 +0000

One of the most popular questions clients ask me is, “When will tablets be used for productivity, rather than just consumption?” My answer: They already are, but in different ways than we have come to expect from the PC era. Microsoft’s launch of Office 2013 puts its productivity suite on Windows tablets and smartphones as well as PCs, but in many ways it’s late to the party. Software start-ups like WatchDox, as well as established software firms like Adobe, Brainshark and Cisco, have all created innovative products that exploit the productive capabilities of post-PC devices.

Tablets, smartphones and future devices like wearables are tools of a new era of post-PC productivity. The best productivity apps for these devices invent ways to be productive using limited input — that is, enabling input through touch, voice, cameras, sensors and other native capabilities of the device. For example, with Adobe’s Proto tablet app, users can design real wireframes in seconds by drawing shapes with a fingertip (e.g., drawing a triangle is a placeholder for a video asset) — it doesn’t require typing or precise designed-for-mouse menu navigation.

Combining the native capabilities of post-PC devices with cloud connectivity yields powerful new productivity scenarios that weren’t available in the PC era, such as:

On-screen, in-person presentations. With a laptop, the screen is a wall that divides participants; tablets enable participants to share a screen, and their lightweight, instant-on form factor makes spontaneous presentations possible in hallways or trade show floors — not just conference rooms. Pharmaceutical sales reps often use SlideShark on the iPad for one-on-one hallway presentations with doctors; they can send doctors the presentation as a leave-behind, which cuts the cost of paper collateral and also includes tracking and reporting features.
Scanning, processing and sharing from a single, portable device. The combination of a high-quality camera combined with the ability to annotate and share documents condenses document workflow. Bill Taylor, a product manager overseeing the PaperPort product at Nuance Communications, describes one such scenario: “We see lawyers sitting at the table next to a client, reviewing and marking up a document with the client, and having the client initial it right there. Instead of printing out the document and sticking it in a paralegal’s bin, he shares it through the cloud to a business partner who sends it back, accomplishing twice the work in half the time.”
Remote, anywhere document access, editing and sync. While a higher percentage of PC workers compared with tablet workers use word processing and spreadsheet applications, usage is still high for both of these applications on tablets: 60 percent and 53 percent, respectively, even though the most popular editing software, Microsoft Office, is not yet available as a native app on iPad or Android tablets. That gap has created a business opportunity ($30 million in revenue in 2011) for Quickoffice (recently acquired by Google), whose products allow users to remotely access, search, edit, sync and share documents across devices, platforms and cloud services.
Multimodal note-taking, ideation and mind-mapping. Note-taking and ideation are not new, but post-PC devices enhance these activities with dimensions they didn’t have on the PC. Evernote’s 30 million users take notes using multiple input modes, including text, voice, images from the camera, screen shots, location services, files and third-party data from other apps such as LinkedIn.

Post-PC devices — via their app stores — also mark a shift in the way productivity software is distributed and monetized. Selling directly to end users via app stores requires different strengths than selling to the enterprise or selling to retail stores where consumers bought software in the PC era — and it levels the playing field for small developers to compete. “Apple’s App Store has turned software development into a global cottage industry — there has never been a time in history when one person could build and distribute a product globally,” says Craig Scott, CEO of iThoughts. Andrew Sinkov, VP of marketing for Evernote, puts it this way: “Thank God app stores exist.” When Evernote started in 2008 on Mac, Windows and Windows Mobile, “It was almost impossible to download an app.” Now, he says, 80 percent of new users come through mobile app stores.

While app stores are a boon to start-ups, they disrupt the pecking order for established software companies. Jill Soley, group product manager of Adobe’s Creative Cloud and suite of touch apps, recognizes the threat from post-PC competitors: “If mature companies don’t recognize that the world is changing and change with it, you won’t last long.” Upstarts such as iThoughts anticipate that competition will bring prices down. “A lot of companies are going to have to adjust to software getting cheaper,” says CEO Craig Scott, noting that Mindjet, the leading mind-mapping software for the PC, is $300, while the iThoughts app is $10.

We’ve seen this pattern of digital disruption before, most notably in the media industries. Now software faces its disruptive moment. We expect to see new competitors steal share from PC-era giants. New power players will emerge, especially those like Box and Salesforce that create an ecosystem of apps that work together. And we expect great outcomes for workers, as software companies invent new ways for us to be productive in the post-PC era.

Sarah Rotman Epps is a Senior Analyst serving consumer product strategy professionals at Forrester Research. Follow her on Twitter @srepps. To learn more about this research, visit the full wearables research report here.

Microsoft Hits Back as Google Muscles In

Shira Ovide — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 03:05:04 +0000

Microsoft Corp. has publicly dismissed Web-based Google Apps as a competitor to its Office software suite. But, behind the scenes, Microsoft is stepping up its efforts to halt Google Inc.’s encroachment on its business-software turf.

In recent months, Microsoft has cut prices, boosted its commissions to resellers and changed how it pitches Office 365, a Web-based version of products including Microsoft Word, Outlook email and PowerPoint.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Enterprise Apps Worth $120 Billion This Year, Gartner Reckons

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:49:20 +0000

Spending by companies on enterprise software applications will amount to more than $120 billion, according to a forecast by the market research firm Gartner, which amounts to growth of about 4 percent over last year.

Bowing a bit to uncertainties brought on by the world economy, especially given the turmoil in Europe, Gartner revised the forecast downward a bit from its previous estimate.

Within that big bucket of spending are several classes of applications; the biggest by far is ERP, or enterprise resource allocation, which is the bread and butter of companies like SAP, Oracle and, in the cloud, Netsuite. Gartner says that’s going to be a $25 billion business this year.

After that is Office Suites, which is dominated by Microsoft Office, at $16.5 billion.

Business intelligence, a sector where there’s been a lot of start-up activity — companies like Domo, Birst and Good Data come to mind — is a $13 billion business.

That’s tied with CRM (customer relationship management) at $13 billion as well, most of it split among Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.com.

And speaking of Salesforce, Gartner notes that more companies are demanding applications as a service, which most people describe simply as “in the cloud,” which is why we’re seeing traditional on-premise players like Oracle and SAP shifting toward cloud-based offerings and buying up younger cloud software companies.

Even with all the hype the cloud companies get, they make up a relatively small portion of overall software spending. Gartner says cloud and software-as-a-service offerings will account for only 16 percent of the enterprise software business by 2015.

Gartner’s Tom Eid said that the increase reflects overall market demand, with more buyers evaluating their options during the current technology refresh cycle, and returning buyer confidence for enterprise software as the market slowly recovers and organizations resume investing in technology. SaaS and cloud-based services are forecast to grow in usage, expanding from 11 percent of enterprise application spending in 2010 to 16 percent in 2015.

Even With a Little Polish, Chrome OS Is Still a Bit Hazy

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 01:09:10 +0000

This year, Microsoft and Apple are both introducing new versions of their operating systems with important changes to their user interfaces, and with a flurry of publicity. A third major company is also overhauling its PC operating system, but you probably won’t hear much about it.

[ See post to watch video ]

Google redesigned its PC operating system, Chrome OS. While Google is a major rival to Apple and Microsoft in things like search, smartphones and browsers, Chrome OS hasn’t dented the competition in the year since it emerged. It was meant to be radically different than Windows and the Macintosh operating system, a refreshing change for a new era. But it had serious limitations, principally that it ran only apps inside a browser on a handful of special, low-powered laptops called Chromebooks and could do almost nothing when it wasn’t online.

The new version, which I’ve been testing, aims to address some of those issues and it makes some progress. But I still can’t recommend it over a PC or Mac for average consumers who are looking for the greatest versatility in a laptop. I still find it more of an evolving project than a finished product.

Its fundamental limitations remain. Most importantly, you still can’t install your favorite programs, be they Microsoft Office or iTunes or Firefox—only a few thousand “Web apps” that run inside the Chrome browser. And it still only works on specific hardware: that laptop called the Chromebook or—new this year—a small desktop called a Chromebox. The only hardware maker producing the 2012 versions of these machines so far is Samsung, though Google says more are coming.

New Chrome OS allows for multiple windows and has a taskbar at the bottom like Windows.

Chrome OS does have some admirable qualities—especially its philosophy of simplicity and of being wedded to the cloud. For instance, because it’s designed to fetch your apps and documents from the Internet, you can replicate your entire computer by just logging in on any other Chrome OS PC. And, if you mainly use the Web and live in the cloud, it may be the ticket for you, especially as a second machine.

Last year’s inaugural version of Chrome OS was little more than a giant browser in which you ran only Web-based apps. The new redesign of Chrome OS, released late last month, represents something of a retreat from that dramatic strategy.

Now, Google is touting the new release for features that make it look and work more like a Windows PC or Mac—for instance, multiple, movable windows; a strip along the bottom that holds the icons of apps you use; a slightly greater emphasis on doing things offline; and greater focus on finding and launching apps. None of this is revolutionary for people used to traditional computers.

What Chrome OS is exactly can be confusing. While it looks and works a lot like the browser of the same name, Chrome OS is a full-blown operating system that, unlike the Chrome browser, can’t be installed on PCs and Macs. Also, Chrome OS is unrelated to Google’s best-known operating system, Android. The latter is meant to power smartphones, tablets and some other miscellaneous devices.

Chrome OS still only works on specific hardware: a laptop called the Chromebook or—new this year—a small desktop called a Chromebox.

I tested the redesigned Chrome OS on the new Samsung Chromebook, a model which Google claims has up to three times the performance of the original Chromebook. This laptop has a 12-inch screen, weighs 3.3 pounds and is about 0.8 of an inch thick. I didn’t run a formal battery test on it, but Samsung claims it gets up to six hours on a charge, less than the claims for the MacBook Air or the new Windows ultrabooks. In my tests, the battery easily lasted a full day in light to moderate use. The Chromebook is sold online and costs $450. A model that includes a slow, 3G cellular modem is $100 more. The Chromebox desktop is a small box that comes without a screen, mouse, or keyboard, and sells for $330.

Because it’s primarily meant as a portal to the Internet, the Chromebook has only about as much storage as a smartphone: 16 gigabytes, rather than the hundreds of gigabytes common in other laptops. And it has a wimpy processor, one of Intel’s entry-level Celeron models.

In my tests, the new Chromebook performed well and did everything it promised. Unlike in the first iteration, I was able to use multiple independent windows and to minimize them or resize them easily. I could store frequently used apps, which still run in browser pages, in the bottom strip, similar to the Windows taskbar or Mac dock—again, nothing new there, but a welcome addition.

I was also able to play music and videos, to view and edit photos, and to view (but not edit) Microsoft Office documents. These abilities are a good thing, but also have been long available on other operating systems.

In the next month or two, Google plans to automatically update Chrome with two important features: the integration of Google’s online file-storage locker, Google Drive, right into the Chromebook’s file system; and the ability to edit documents when offline. I was able to test pre-release versions of these features and they worked fine. Google Drive can already be installed and integrated into the Windows and Mac file systems.

In fact, all of the important features of the Chrome OS—which is still at heart just a big browser—are available in the Windows and Mac versions of the Chrome browser, including the ability to run Web apps, programs like Google’s office suite, or Web-based games. Google concedes this, but says that, by making the whole computer a browser, it has simplified the overall experience.

Google has big plans for the Chrome OS. It has built-in features it claims will work great with future touch-screen hardware.

But, overall, I’d say, if you only have the budget for one main computer, you’re better off with a Mac or a PC.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com.

What's This? A Mac Virus? No, Actually It's a Weakness in Java.

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:57:02 +0000

When a computer incident happens on Apple’s Mac OS X, it’s a headline-making event. When it happens on Windows, it’s just another day.

That remains the reality, even after a bunch of media reports on how a vulnerability in Java has led to the creation of a Mac botnet about 600,000 strong.

Today I’ve been getting calls from people who say something roughly in line with the following: “I thought you said Macs didn’t get viruses? What about this?”

No, I explain, I never said Macs will never get viruses or other Malware. But historically its record versus other platforms compares favorably. As is the case with investment instruments, past results are no guarantee of future performance, and let’s face it, there’s no such thing as a perfectly secured computing platform.

But let’s look closely at the facts around the Flashback Trojan causing all this consternation, and clear up what it is versus what it is not, and put the results of the incident in perspective.

Yes it’s true that some 600,000 Macs are confirmed to have been infected. The claim, first made by Dr. Web, an outfit I had never heard of, has since been corroborated by Kaspersky Labs, whose research and analysis capabilities are well-respected. More than half of the compromised machines are in the U.S., 95,000 in Canada, 47,000 in the U.K., and 41,000 in Australia.

The trojan targets a vulnerability in software that is not even an Apple product: Java. You’ll recall that Java is add-on software created by Sun Microsystems and now the property of the software giant Oracle. Rather common, it is no longer shipped as a default add-on to Apple’s Mac OS X beginning in 2011, when Apple first shipped Lion.

Through this hole in Java, certain Web sites are serving up malicious Java applets. Once inserted on the machine, the software then prompts the user to enter the password they use to run the machine. It attempts to trick the user by appearing as an update to Adobe’s Flash video and animation software.

If the user doesn’t fall for the trick, it tries something else. Here again it checks to see if there are any Microsoft Office applications on the machine, or Skype. If there are, it deletes itself.

Then it does something interesting. It scans the contents of the Mac’s hard drive to determine if certain applications are present, and if they are, it deletes itself. Among those applications are security tools such as Little Snitch, a networking security tool, or Packet Peeper, another security tool. It also deletes itself if it sees the user has installed XCode Mac developers tools, and any kind of anti-virus software.

Presuming it finds none of them, it proceeds to contact a command-and-control server for the purpose of downloading and installing more malware. That malware is being used to commandeer the Macs and generate Web traffic to boost revenue for some pay-per-click ads on Web sites, making money for someone who’s behind the scheme. Nothing surprising there.

Apple has issued a fix to Mac OS X that closes the hole in Java, and you can protect yourself by running Software Update from within your machine’s System Preferences. Today would be a good day to do that if you haven’t already. Once you’ve done this you’re no longer vulnerable to the attack.

If you’re among the 600,000 already compromised you can turn to third parties to help you remove it. F-Secure has some instructions here for determining if your machine is affected. If you’re comfortable running some commands in the Mac’s terminal program, there are also some good instructions here at ArsTechnica.

So what does all this say about the state of security on the Mac? Nothing that wasn’t true already. No system is perfectly secure, and this, along with MacDefender, amounts to exactly the second security incident worth mentioning to hit the Mac in about a year. The number of machines affected is less than 1 percent of the 63 million Macs currently in use around the world.

The conventional wisdom has often held that Macs are targeted by malware less often than Windows machines because of their relatively small market share. This still has some merit, but the fact is that Windows is also where the vulnerabilities are. Historically, Mac OS X has been substantially less vulnerable to this sort of thing than Windows.

Does that let Apple off the hook entirely? No, though to its credit, Apple had a fix ready within a week of learning of this vulnerability. That’s not exactly a pokey response, especially when the problem lies not directly within Apple’s software, but in Oracle’s.

Here’s a thought: Turn off Java in your Web browsers. You probably won’t miss it. Here’s some instructions for that.

Is the iPhone 4S Really 4G?

Walt Mossberg — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:37:52 +0000

In your recent article about 4G cellular networks, you didn’t mention the iPhone. Do you know if the iPhone 4S, which now indicates (on the AT&T version) that you’re sometimes on 4G, is actually 4G?

The AT&T version of the latest iPhone can take advantage of one of the types of faster networks that has been heavily advertised as 4G, by rival phone makers and by AT&T. It can theoretically download data twice as fast as the prior AT&T iPhone. But like many other phones, it’s using what is essentially a souped-up version of 3G.

When the iPhone 4S first came out, Apple announced it had this higher speed on the AT&T version, but didn’t label it 4G. Now, since a recent operating-system update, these iPhones say they are on “4G” when they are in an area covered by some of AT&T’s faster networks. But the software revision didn’t change the download speed of the phone, only the indicator.

In your column explaining 4G, you called the LTE networks the fastest. But an engineering friend of mine says current LTE isn’t true LTE, and a faster version is in the works.

The United Nations standards body for telecommunications typically approves yearslong road maps for faster and faster versions of cellular networks and that’s true for LTE, which stands for “Long Term Evolution.”

There’s a future variant, often called “LTE-Advanced,” which is supposed to be much faster. But no U.S. carrier has deployed it yet. Indeed, the current version of LTE is still far from full deployment.

As for whether today’s version is “true LTE,” this is a nomenclature issue that mainly interests technical purists. All you need to know as a consumer, is that LTE today is typically much faster than any other cellular data network you can use.

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro and also bought Microsoft Office for the Mac, which didn’t include the Access database program. Is there a version of Access for the Mac?

No. Microsoft has chosen not to offer a Mac version. In fact, even for Windows PCs, the two consumer versions of Office, Home and Student and Home and Business, omit Access.

Only the costliest edition, the $350 Professional version, includes it. If you want to run Access on your Mac, you’ll have to install Windows.

Write to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Replacing the Ribbon

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 04:27:50 +0000

I’m not pleased with Microsoft’s Ribbon interface for Office. Any way to revert to the old menu format instead?

When Microsoft replaced the classic menus and toolbars with the tab-based “Ribbon” at the top in the 2007 version of Office for Windows, it didn’t offer an option to keep the old approach. It still doesn’t.

(Microsoft’s Mac version of Office is an exception: It lets you opt for the old interface.)

However, some independent companies make add-on products that restore the classic interface. I haven’t tested any, but you can find them by searching for “Office classic menu.”

I need to purchase a new MacBook to replace an aging machine. On the new machine I will need to run Windows. I was reviewing your article on Parallels Desktop for Mac. Will this application run adequately on a MacBook Air? Apple sales consultants suggest that it will not and that I should instead purchase a MacBook Pro.

In my experience, Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac, which allows you to simultaneously run Windows and Mac programs, runs perfectly fine on a MacBook Air. I have used it on an Air many times to run Windows programs like Internet Explorer, Quicken and Microsoft Office for Windows.

It used to be that leaving a phone plugged in too long supposedly damaged the battery. But with the newer devices, I have gotten into the habit of plugging it in before bed and leaving it plugged in all night. In general is this OK for today’s batteries or do I need to get up in the middle of the night and unplug?

I do the same thing with my phones and I don’t believe this damages the battery.

I have tested many, many phones in recent years and have never seen a warning against this practice. Some modern chargers and phones are designed to cut off the power once the battery is charged, both to protect the battery and to save energy.

You can check with the manufacturer to be sure.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Microsoft Disputes Report of Office for iPad

John Paczkowski — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:29:40 +0000

Microsoft may well be working on a version of Office for iPad, but it’s not the one detailed in a report today from The Daily. Nor will it soon be submitted to Apple for approval.

“The Daily story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation,” Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw told AllThingsD. “We have no further comment.”

Not the most hardcore of denials. Certainly, it doesn’t explicity debunk the idea that Microsoft might be developing a version of its popular office suite for the iPad. But it does punch a sizable hole in The Daily’s report.

But what of that photo accompanying The Daily’s story, the one that seems to show a touch-based version of Office running on an iPad? Sources close to Microsoft say it’s “not legit.” ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley is hearing similar things from her sources.

The Daily, for its part, is standing firm, as evidenced by Editor Peter Ha’s tweeted response to such talk:

(Image courtesy of The Daily)

Office for iPad? Not Likely. [Updated]

John Paczkowski — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:30:13 +0000

If you’re hoping Microsoft might someday release a version of Office for Apple’s iPad, prepare to be disappointed. Though it’s been rumored that Microsoft is adapting the popular office suite for the iPad, the chances that it will actually release a compatible version of the software are slim at best, says Nomura Research analyst Rick Sherlund.

Why? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? What better way to differentiate Windows 8 tablets from their rivals than by making them the only tablets that can run a touch-based version of Office?

“Don’t hold your breath for Office on the iPad,” Sherlund wrote in a research note to clients today. “If there were a tug of war of conflicting interest with the Office team on one end of the rope and Steve Sinofsky and Steve Ballmer on the other, we would expect there would be no Office on iPad anytime soon.”

Perhaps it’s time to resign ourselves to QuickOffice HD, OnLive Desktop and Apple’s iWork suite.

UPDATE: Looks like Microsoft may soon prove Sherlund wrong. The Daily, which claims to have had some hands-on time with Office for iPad, says Microsoft is preparing to submit the app to Apple.

Track Changes on an iPad

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:02:59 +0000

You recently reviewed an iPad app that lets you use Microsoft Office programs on an iPad. But does this support the “Track Changes” feature of Office, which I cannot find on any of the office-type apps I’ve tried on the iPad?

Yes, it does. And tracked changes are synchronized with your PC or Mac.

As I noted in the review, the new app, called OnLive Desktop, gives you the complete Windows version of Office on an iPad, via the cloud. So all features in the Windows version, including the tracking of changes, are available.

I am a new Mac user and would like to become a Quicken user. I read your February 2010 critique of Mac Quicken. Is there a new and improved version of Mac Quicken?

Intuit, the maker of the stripped-down Quicken Essentials for Mac I reviewed then, has improved the product. But more important, the company now says its last full version of Quicken for the Mac, called Quicken 2007, will soon be revised so that it runs with Lion, the latest version of the Macintosh operating system.

There was outrage from Mac Quicken users when Intuit earlier had declined to rewrite the full version to work with Lion.

Could you please tell me which smartphone today is a must if my last phone was the iPhone 4? Your review of the iPhone 4S indicated it wasn’t a “must” upgrade for iPhone 4 owners.

Changing to a different phone would only be a “must” for you if you were unhappy with your iPhone, or wanted one of a couple of key features only available on competing phones.

One would be a larger screen. The iPhone screen is 3.5 inches, but some newer Android phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, now have giant screens as large as 4.65 inches. Personally, I find that too large for comfort, but you might not.

Another important feature is LTE wireless capability. A number of Android phones, such as the Motorola Droid RAZR, support LTE, a fourth-generation wireless technology that is much, much faster at data downloads than 3G, though it also tends to use up your battery faster. No iPhone yet supports LTE.

Write to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com

Working in Word, Excel, PowerPoint on an iPad

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:04:34 +0000

Although Apple’s popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn’t a big hit with folks who’d like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.

[ See post to watch video ]

While Microsoft has released a number of apps for the iPad, it hasn’t yet released an iPad version of Office. There are a number of valuable apps that can create or edit Office documents, such as Quickoffice Pro, Documents To Go and the iPad version of Apple’s own iWork suite. But their fidelity with Office documents created on a Windows PC or a Mac isn’t perfect.

This week, OnLive Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is releasing an app that brings the full, genuine Windows versions of the key Office productivity apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—to the iPad. And it’s free. These are the real programs. They look and work just like they do on a real Windows PC. They let you create or edit genuine Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

I’ve been testing a pre-release version of this new app, called OnLive Desktop, which the company says will be available in the next few days in Apple’s app store. More information is at desktop.onlive.com.

The OnLive Desktop app stores documents in a cloud-based repository.

My verdict is that it works, but with some caveats, limitations and rough edges. Some of these downsides are inherent in the product, while others have to do with the mismatch between the iPad’s touch interface and the fact that Office for Windows was primarily designed for a physical keyboard and mouse.

Creating or editing long documents on a tablet with a virtual on-screen keyboard is a chore, no matter what Office-type app you choose. So, although it isn’t a requirement, I strongly recommend that users of OnLive Desktop employ one of the many add-on wireless keyboards for the iPad.

OnLive Desktop is a cloud-based app. That means it doesn’t actually install Office on your iPad. It acts as a gateway to a remote server where Windows 7, and the three Office apps, are actually running. You create an account, sign in, and Windows pops up on your iPad, with icons allowing you to launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (There are also a few other, minor Windows programs included, like Notepad, Calculator and Paint.)

In my tests, the Office apps launched and worked smoothly and quickly, without any noticeable lag, despite the fact that they were operating remotely. Although this worked better for me on my fast home Internet connection, it also worked pretty well on a much slower hotel connection.

Like Office itself, the documents you create or modify don’t live on the iPad. Instead, they go to a cloud-based repository, a sort of virtual hard disk. When you sign into OnLive Desktop, you see your documents in the standard Windows documents folder, which is actually on the remote server. The company says that this document storage won’t be available until a few days after the app becomes available.

To get files into and out of OnLive Desktop, you log in to a Web site on your PC or Mac, where you see all the documents you’ve saved to your cloud repository. You can use this Web site to upload and download files to your OnLive Desktop account. Any changes made will be automatically synced, the company says, though I wasn’t able to test that capability in my pre-release version.

Because it’s a cloud-based service, OnLive Desktop won’t work offline, such as in planes without Wi-Fi. And it can be finicky about network speeds. It requires a wireless network with at least 1 megabit per second of download speed, and works best with at least 1.5 to 2.0 megabits. Many hotels have trouble delivering those speeds, and, in my tests, the app refused to start in a hotel twice, claiming insufficient network speed when the hotel Wi-Fi was overloaded.

The free version of the app has some other limitations. You get just 2 gigabytes of file storage, there’s no Web browser or email program like Outlook included, and you can’t install additional software. If many users are trying to log onto the OnLive Desktop servers at once, you may have to wait your turn to use Office.

In the coming weeks, the company plans to launch a Pro version, which will cost $10 a month. It will offer 50 GB of cloud document storage, “priority” access to the servers, a Web browser, and the ability to install some added programs. It will also allow you to collaborate on documents with other users, or even to chat with, and present material to, groups of other OnLive Desktop users.

The company also plans to offer OnLive Desktop on Android tablets, PCs and Macs, and iPhones.

In my tests, I was able to create documents on an iPad in each of the three cloud-based Office programs. I was able to download them to a computer, and alter them on both the iPad and computer. I was also able to upload files from the computer for use in OnLive Desktop.

OnLive Desktop can’t use the iPad’s built-in virtual keyboard, but it can use the virtual keyboard built into Windows 7 and Windows’ limited touch features and handwriting recognition. As noted above, I recommend using a wireless physical keyboard. But even these aren’t a perfect solution, because the ones that work with the iPad can’t send common Windows keyboard commands to OnLive Desktop, so you wind up moving between the keyboard and the touch screen, which can be frustrating. And you can’t use a mouse.

Another drawback is that OnLive Desktop is entirely isolated from the rest of the iPad. Unlike Office-compatible apps that install directly on the tablet, this cloud-based service can’t, for instance, be used to open Office documents you receive via email on the iPad. And, at least at first, the only way you can get files into and out of OnLive Desktop is through its Web-accessible cloud-storage service. The free version has no email capability, and the app doesn’t support common file-transfer services like Dropbox or SugarSync. The company says it hopes to add those.

OnLive Desktop competes not only with the iPad’s Office clones, but with iPad apps that let you remotely access and control your own PCs and Macs, and thus use Office and other computer software on those.

But, in my tests, I have found those tricky to use. They require you to leave your computers running and either install special software or learn to use certain settings.

Overall, I found OnLive Desktop to be a notable technical achievement, but it has so many caveats that it’s best for folks who absolutely, positively need to use the full, genuine versions of the three big Office productivity programs on their iPads. For everyone else, the locally installed Office clones are probably good enough, and simpler to use.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Microsoft Office on iPad

Walt Mossberg — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 23:37:09 +0000

Which app do you recommend for using on the iPad 2 for opening Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint?)

If you literally just want to open the documents to read them, you don’t need any apps. The iPad comes with built-in viewers for Microsoft Office files. However, for opening, storing and editing the files, I like two products. One is called Quickoffice Pro HD, which costs $20 and handles all three types of files you cite, and more. The other is the tablet version of Apple’s iWork suite, which is sold as three separate apps for $10 each—Pages for word processing, Numbers for spreadsheets and Keynote for presentations.

This also would be a good place to note that there are reports, unconfirmed by the company, that Microsoft is considering releasing an iPad version of Office itself. I have no evidence this will happen.

Do any of your recommended Ultrabooks run Office?

All Ultrabooks run Microsoft Office. While Ultrabooks are thin and light, they are full-blown Windows laptops running the latest Intel processors, and in my tests, they ran Office very well, just as well as many heavier, thicker laptops I’ve reviewed.

My son was told by an Apple phone representative that the iCloud service cannot handle our full iTunes library of 6,000 songs, and it will only sync with your hand-held, wireless devices.

That’s inaccurate. ITunes Match handles 25,000 songs and syncs with Macs, PCs (if they’re running iTunes), the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Walt is on vacation and his Personal Technology column will return Jan. 5. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

In the Future, Eyeglasses Translate and Creepy Music Plays Everywhere (Video)

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:40:42 +0000

While we’re on the subject of the computing needs of the future, I thought I’d remark on this Microsoft-produced video that recently emerged from its Office Labs think tank. The plot is an imagining of how we’ll get things done five to 10 years from now.

In the video you’ll meet Ayla, a working mother on a business trip to Johannesburg; Ayla’s daughter, Shannon, who needs help making something for a school bake sale; and a guy named Qin who — well, I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing, but he starts out waiting for a subway train.

These concept videos are always entertaining in the way they show us some slice of life from a routine day in some mildly utopian and antiseptic world of the future, one in which people don’t get stressed by business travel and don’t have hassles at the hotel check-in desks — and where hotel broadband networks actually work. There are lots of portable handheld screens, kind of iPad-like, really, on which people swipe and flick and make other interface gestures that we all intuitively understand now, thanks to — well, the iPad. Which is probably not the comparison that Microsoft is going for here. Ahem.

Also, in the future there are apparently smart windows in taxicabs, and these windows deliver some informative augmented reality, saying things like, “your meeting tomorrow is in this building.” How does the taxi know Ayla’s schedule? From her phone — which looks like a notecard.

Anyway, out of all the things that this video shows, the one thing I want is the eyeglasses that translate languages I don’t speak. Very “Star Trek.”

But when Ayla, the supermom of the future, finally goes to her meeting, it seems more like a meeting that’s held virtually than in person. If that’s the case, why did she even need to fly to Johannesburg in the first place — and why did she have to put on those incredibly cool but dorky-looking glasses? She could have done it all from her home in Redmond. Bonus: She’d have been home to help poor little Shannon with her bake sale in person. Siri, what is the cure for Mommy Guilt?

My weird observations aside, the video is interesting viewing. Hat tip to Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type blog, where I discovered it. Enjoy:

Exclusive: Aviary Launches iPad Extensions Today, Keeps on Pivoting

Drake Martinet — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:00:55 +0000

In a continuation of its pivot away from Flash, Aviary, the New York-based multimedia editing start-up, is launching an iPad SDK and several new API extensions today.

If the Aviary name rings a bell, you might be more familiar with the company’s last round of products, which brought Adobe-style media editing programs into the Web browser via — you guessed it — loads of Flash.

Though the SDK products are a huge departure from the company’s direction over the last three years, CEO Avi Muchnick said: “The overall goal has been about democratizing creativity — that hasn’t changed.”

But just about everything else has.

Muchnick said Aviary would no longer be actively adding to their impressive Flash-based editing suite, which includes tools for images, vector graphics and audio, among other things.

Today, rather than hoping you’ll drop an image into their in-browser editor, Aviary makes tools for iOS and Android app developers.

Specifically, Aviary’s kit allows app makers to quickly add image editing features like cropping, red-eye removal and filters into their existing iPhone, Android, and, now, iPad apps.

And as of today’s launch, Aviary’s iPad interface will be available in the Pic Collage iPad app, as well as inside an update to Flickr Studio, a third-party iPad app built on Yahoo’s Flickr API.

The turn-key image editing tools have a look and feel somewhere between Apple’s iOS itself and the old Aviary Flash apps.

But Muchnick is eager to please the new app developer partners Aviary is hoping to win.

“One of my goals was to make this customizable to fit the partner,” he said. “[Partners] can change colors to match their app, or grab just the features they want.”

The new focus on partnerships seems to be moving along well enough.

Aviary claims that mobile and API users edited over a million images last month, and the company has brought on former Microsoft Office’s Paul Murphy to be their VP of business development.

Prior to its new direction, Aviary had raised about $11 million total, most recently from Spark Capital and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Aviary is yet another company abandoning Flash, after Apple and Steve Jobs declared it persona non grata for iOS devices.

The company has cut virtually all of its Flash developers and hired mobile developers to build up its SDK offerings.

Massive organizational and directional shifts are tough on any start-up, but Muchnick says that the new direction is really not that at all.

“Aviary doesn’t need to be a destination anymore,” he said. “We want to power all the photo creativity that happens online, and apps are how that will happen.”