Google muscles in on Office space

AFTER Microsoft in late March launched Office software for the Apple iPad, it didn’t take long for rival Google to reply.

AFTER Microsoft in late March launched a long-awaited version of its Office software for the Apple iPad, it didn’t take long for its biggest rival, Google, to reply.

The internet giant last week launched a version of its Google Docs not only for iPad, but for other iOS-powered devices including iPhones and — to the surprise of some — the natty iPod Touch.

The iPod Touch is not to be confused with the tiny, screenless iPod Nano, which is hardly a candidate for Office-style work. The Touch looks like an iPhone, with a similar 4-inch Retina touchscreen, but is somewhat thinner and lighter, can be used as a music player, photo library or messaging machine — and now, however unlikely, can also be used for creating or editing business documents.

There are, alas, catches to both the Microsoft and Google offerings. In the case of Microsoft, to create or edit Office documents on an iPad, you’ll need to (a) download separate apps for Word, Excel or PowerPoint, which are free; and (b) sign up for a subscription to the Office 365 online service, which isn’t.

An Office 365 subscription costs $9 a month for a single user, or $12 a month for a family using up to five PCs, Macs or iPads. The subscription comes with up to seven gigabytes of otherwise free online storage on Microsoft’s OneDrive service; users can buy more storage if they need it.

It’s a bit the same with Google Docs for iPad or iPhone — Google insists that you have a Google Drive online storage account. It costs nothing to join and you do get more free storage than Microsoft’s meagre offering: the first 15GB comes without charge.

There’s an app to be installed from Apple’s App Store, after which you can create, view, and edit documents, which can include most Microsoft Office files as well as Google documents and spreadsheets — the latter called Sheets in Google-talk.

Support for Slides, the Google Docs presentation software, is promised for the near future.

The apps are a bit rudimentary compared with MS Office, or Apple’s jazzy iWork suite of Pages, Numbers (spreadsheet) or Keynote (presentations).

The iPad versions of these now cost $12.99 each after Apple quietly eased the price up from the previous $10.49.

By contrast, the Google apps are free and, given that most folk using a mobile device do only pretty rudimentary work, many users should find them acceptable if unexciting.

Unlike with some other versions of Google Docs, iPad or iPhone users don’t need to be connected to the internet to create or edit Google documents; they are available offline — a blessing if your iPad is beyond the reach of WiFi or 3G/4G.

Google Docs is, natch, also available on devices powered by Google’s Android operating system; Microsoft Office is not at this stage, though Android versions are said to be on the way.

The firm went for the iPad first because, it argues, there are many more business users with iPads than with Android devices.

If neither Office nor Google Docs appeals — and Apple’s asking price of close to $39 for its three iWork apps is a bit rich for your e-wallet — there are several office-style alternatives available at the App Store.

Surprisingly they include another suite from Google, dubbed QuickOffice Pro, developed by a firm of the same name, which flogged it to Google in 2012.

It can create, open and edit Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, and you can zoom in and out on any page with a two-finger pinch-or-­expand gesture.

We can’t really recommended it over Google Docs: despite its moniker, and a clean, good looking interface, it can be slow and clunky — backspacing, for instance can take one second per letter: backspacing over “presentation”, for instance could take an unbearable 12 seconds.

And it costs $15.99. With Docs now available free, it wouldn’t surprise if QuickOffice is destined for a quick death.

Another and possibly more useful alternative, available for both Apple iOS and Android devices, is the venerable Documents To Go suite from Dataviz, at $10.49. It’s zippier than QuickOffice, but it does show its age with an interface that has not been optimised for tablets — many commands that should require a simple click on an icon are buried in layers of menus.

A more recent arrival is the better designed HopTo, which is simple, free and cloud-based: users do need a subscription to Google Drive, Dropbox or Box.

HopTo allows users to have multiple documents open simultaneously, and copy and paste information between them.

Whatever office-style software you use, if you plan to use it often, it’s well worth investing in a full-sized plug-in keyboard, rather than pecking at an on-screen board.