(Image source: The Daily)
BY EVAN THOMAS
ANCHOR NATHAN BYRNE
For a rumor, this one looks pretty solid: tablet magazine The Daily is reporting Microsoft Office is coming to the iPad — and soon.
The Daily says it got some hands-on time with a prototype of the software. Word, Excel and PowerPoint work, both locally and based in the cloud. According to The Daily, the Windows Metro-ish design is done and a launch could be coming within weeks.
But Microsoft says the images in The Daily’s article are bunk. Business Insider quotes its message to press outlets:
“‘The Daily's story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation. The photo is not a real picture of a Microsoft software product.’”
Of course, that’s not an explicit denial that Office is coming to the iPad. All Microsoft is promising is that it will clear everything up. Eventually. Here’s a tweet from Microsoft News....
“Great respect for The Daily but regrettably someone is giving them bad info, and that’ll be clear in the ‘coming weeks.’”
Maybe. But The Daily is sticking to its guns. Editor Peter Ha tweets back — the images of Office running on an iPad are real.
“...we did not fabricate either image. A working version of the app was demoed to us by someone at Microsoft.”
ZDNet says, if Microsoft is looking to keep Office for iPad under wraps, this would be a good way to do it.
“The motto of this post is a couple wrong tidbits don’t mean an entire story/post is wrong. But if Microsoft officials can get you to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to a story they don’t want out, they’ll go for it.”
But PCWorld says Office for iPad doesn’t make sense anyway. Microsoft has its own Windows 8 tablets to worry about. And it’s not about to give away prime real estate to a competitor, right?
“Microsoft surely knows that it has an uphill battle against Apple, which has sold 55 million iPads in just less than two years. Microsoft will need every advantage possible to win or even viably compete in the tablet wars.”
Those Win-tabs won’t show up until Windows 8 debuts, and rumors say that won’t happen until at least the fall of this year.
