Microsoft Bashes Apple's iWork Software, New iPads
Microsoft's corporate vice president of communications, Frank Shaw, today took to the Official Microsoft Blog to denounce both Apple's revamped iWork software and the company's well-received decision to distribute it as a free upgrade for existing users.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's response extends a years-long effort to define the iPad competitively, from dismissing the original iPad in 2010 to laying out a marketing strategy against it in 2011. Apple’s decision to make the refreshed productivity suite a free upgrade turns software value into part of that device comparison.
iWork’s iPad history also included early user frustration over limited app capabilities, making Microsoft’s attack an argument over both the suite’s price and its practical usefulness.
First-order effects
- Existing Apple users receive the refreshed iWork suite as a free upgrade, while Microsoft publicly challenges whether that bundle and Apple’s new tablets deliver sufficient value.
- Frank Shaw’s post makes iWork’s capabilities a direct comparison point in Microsoft’s competition for productivity-oriented tablet buyers.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft’s tablet and productivity messaging must distinguish its offering on more than hardware specifications when Apple packages software upgrades with its devices.
- Apple’s free-upgrade approach raises the importance of app completeness and cross-device usability, the areas where the earlier iWork-for-iPad complaints had been concentrated.
Third-order effects
- The episode points toward tablet competition in which operating systems and productivity software are treated as hardware differentiators, rather than separate add-ons.
- If vendors keep using free software upgrades to reinforce device sales, public comparisons will increasingly center on the usable bundle rather than the tablet alone.
The trend: Tablet makers are folding productivity software into the device proposition, shifting competition from standalone apps toward integrated hardware-and-software bundles.