Macworld Hands-On: First Spreadsheet Editing App for iPhone

Macworld Hands-On: First Spreadsheet Editing App for iPhone
[10-01-2003]

Quickoffice has gone piecemeal, having decided to release an Excel and Numbers-compatible spreadsheet app for the iPhone, called MobileFiles Pro.

To date, the iPhone has lacked the ability to edit Microsoft Office documents. But now it has edged one step closer due to a new app from Quickoffice, the mobile document editing software company. In a break from its past, QuickOffice has decided to stick with just Excel for now, in lieu of a complete office suite that handles Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files—but at a much lower price.

That may turn out to be a shrewd move. We first got a glimpse of QuickOffice for the iPhone back in September. Now it seems that the company – perhaps in a nod to recent customer tastes, which lean toward free or 99-cent mobile apps – has abandoned its prior, more expensive pricing model. Traditionally, the company's pricing has ranged from around $39 for a typical version of its slick Quickoffice Premier Symbian and Palm-based mobile office-editing suite, to all the way past $100 for the old, creaky, DynoPlex-developed eOffice for BlackBerry. (Quickoffice acquired DynoPlex in 2008, and wisely slashed the price of that app several times since.)

Fast forward to today. MobileFiles Pro, Quickoffice's new spreadsheet-editing iPhone app, costs just $9.99. It lets iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod touch owners edit Microsoft Excel and Apple iWork documents over Wi-Fi from any desktop computer, or through MobileMe, using its iDisk online sharing tool). The app can synchronize changes and upload new files to iDisk. It also offers a password-protect function, in a nod to business users struggling to integrate the consumer-friendly iPhone into their corporate networks.

In any case, I felt I could do some real work with this app. Even die-hard Palm OS users used to a stylus could find Quickoffice on the iPhone a worthy, higher-resolution alternative. For more information on MobileFiles Pro, check out the company's Web site, or purchase and download the app for $9.99 from the Productivity section of the App Store.
Source: [PC Magazine via Yahoo! News]

Posted under: IPHONE SOFTWARE - IPHONE AT WORK - IPHONE INTERNET TOOLS