Office docs on an iPhone?

[C201]

Weird for sure, but wholly underpowered.

Your life's ambition of trolling for pissing contests remains unfulfilled, I see. Good luck with that.

And MikeC, I'm surprised to find you in a rumor and innuendo thread about the iPhone. Really, I am.

 

[Pearl_Diva]

But you have argued unnecessarily also. You're quite condescending to others. You can state a point without all that!

 

[oalvarez]

oh my..... a whole lot of pots calling the kettle black...

pretty funny (with all those stupid goofy faces attached)

 

[C201]

But you have argued unnecessarily also. You're quite condescending to others. You can state a point without all that!

Not that anyone ever baits and eggs it on around here without anyone saying a word about their behaviour. Oh no!

 

[oalvarez]

especially not Lady Treo...or Phone Diva...or whatever.......just another day around this place

smiley face makes it all better....right?

 

[Pearl_Diva]

Many of the things I say are what I believe or my opinion. Not really meant to start an argument. But some of you have a need to respond with snide comments, all the time. So expect other people to get pissed off!

 

[C201]

Many of the things I say are what I believe or my opinion. Not really meant to start an argument.

And you're the only one who maintains that position?

Point is, my original post focused on the content of this thread and I maintained that until I was directly and personally attacked, if anyone actually bothers to follow the lineage. It also took into account experience with the thread's author [my reference to in toto], yet others made this about getting personal and choosing sides. That same original post was reported by the author to the mods/admin.

By using terms like integrity to characterize the strength or weakness of a question is fully viable and not in any way offensive if one bothers to understand the nature of the post. For those who might not make any consideration to the meaning of the terms used, I can understand the possibility of misunderstandings being formed. This, however, is beyond my control.

How about the focus simply be the topic of the thread and take any further personally directed off-topic remarks off-line? Isn't that the generally preferred path chosen by the site admin anyway? Fair enough? :thumbsup:

 

[Kupe#WP]

To the OP, for now there's no announced means for directly viewing Office documents on the iPhone. Having to download a file (via email attachment) and re-upload the file to an online viewer is simply a kludge - and at edge speeds, iPhone users will be even further inconvenienced. It would be fairly straightforward to create a "universal" viewer program/widget (a la some WM Smartphones), but editing capability would require something more involved.

Point is, my original post focused on the content of this thread...

Using your logic in toto, Blackberry should have failed years ago because it couldn't play MP3's for multiple generations.

Your first words in this thread were a derail and made no attempt to answer the OP. You might have considered answering honestly - an answer which, by your own admission, would be "I don't know." Therefore, since you effectively would've had no real answer to the OP's original question, not posting would have been your appropriate response. Instead, you attempted to stir the pot and drive the thread off topic with an unrelated answer which makes it seem odd, silly, and/or two-faced that you now complain about the backlash. So, which way do you want it?

blah blah blah...Fair enough?

TRANSLATION: Waaaaaaa!

Lucky us - you're maintaining your 15 posts per day average - with a fraction of a percent contribution.

 

[dstrauss#IM]

Back to the topic...

Even if it is not intended as a "business class" device, lack of even built in viewing support for Office attachments is a non-starter for a $600 device. And Kupe is right: download, re-upload, and then read is a work around kludge of the worst sort in the EDGE environment. I've used my Blackjack in 3G and EDGE, and the difference is night and day. I like the concept of the iPhone, but execution in the limited data universe of Cingular (AT&T) EDGE will become an Achilles heel for most users.

Viewing attachments will be an absolute must for even casual email users. Otherwise, they could just learn to "get by" with text messaging with even lower bandwidth requirements.

 

[oalvarez]

what i've have difficulty understanding is why apple didn't include some doc or spreadsheet functionality given that they offer it for all of their other computers that they manufacture....would seem like a given.

wait and see i suppose?

 

[Dieter Bohn]

glad to see we're back to topic, thanks dstrauss and oalvarez. I'm a little busy right now, but expect me to come back to the forums this afternoon for more moderation if needed.

 

[Malatesta]

what i've have difficulty understanding is why apple didn't include some doc or spreadsheet functionality given that they offer it for all of their other computers that they manufacture....would seem like a given.

wait and see i suppose?

Even assuming it's not in the first release, I couldn't imagine how they wouldn't later add it.

Via their server system and universal update option (1 network, no carrier approval?) they should easily be able to add that to the mix. I imagine they are doing a Foleo-type thing: wait and see what happens and build along the way (granted, they start off with more though). They must have a time-line for updates and add-ons and probably like iChat and other apps, they will easily get ported over. It's a static device for us, not for them.

 

[C201]

Back to the topic...

Even if it is not intended as a "business class" device, lack of even built in viewing support for Office attachments is a non-starter for a $600 device. And Kupe is right: download, re-upload, and then read is a work around kludge of the worst sort in the EDGE environment. I've used my Blackjack in 3G and EDGE, and the difference is night and day. I like the concept of the iPhone, but execution in the limited data universe of Cingular (AT&T) EDGE will become an Achilles heel for most users.

The problem with this concept of kludge goes back to my statement about Blackberry. Unless you're running your own mail server, your attachments will either

1. Sit on a 3rd-party server, risking security;
   OR
   
2. Limited viewing and/or non-existent Editing ability without costly and limited 3rd-party support.

Anyone who has ever used Blackberry on BIS on EDGE [common practice for years] knows that attachment handling, regardless of format, is a tricky hurdle which has yet to be made fluid. That's not exactly news. However, the reality also remains that no one even wants to d/l that 30-page PDF to any smartphone. Large files are simply dealt with on a pc or mac.

Maybe I assumed too much with the analogy statement about Blackberry, but it's still true. You can't get blood from a rock. The rock can only be considered less than it should be if it ever claimed it could deliver the blood. IOW, Version-1 of the iPhone is what it is. And at this moment in time, that cannot be fully explained to anyone's complete satisfaction.

 

[braj]

Apparently you can view PDFs on the iPhone (but who would want to do that, right?).

Lots of other interesting details about the (purported) browser capabilities there as well:

Apple listed what the iPhone offers for websites:

- the page view feature lets you look at multiple websites and documents by scrolling thru them one after another
- Full PDF support
- double tap for zoom in
- one finger as a mouse used to
-- pan page
-- press and hold to display the information bubble
- two fingers as a mouse used to
-- pinch content to shrink - zoom out
-- pan page
-- scroll wheel events
- new telephone links allows you to integrate phone calls directly from your webpage. remember this is only on safari.
- built in google maps client for integrated mapping from your website

A few iPhone size limitations / restrictions are noted in developing for the iPhone:

- 10MB max html size for web page
- Javascript limited to 5 seconds run time
- Javascript allocations limited to 10MB
- 8 documents maximum loaded on the iPhone due to page view limitations
- Quicktime used for audio and video

The notes confirm that there is no Flash and no Java support, and Apple recommends the following design considerations:

- separate html and css
- use well structured and valid html
- size images appropriately dont rely on browser scaling
- tile small images in backgrounds, dont use large backgroung images
- iPhone supports both EDGE and WiFi. EDGE pipe is smaller than WIFI pipe so think about bandwidth when developing.
- XHTML mobile documents supported
- stylesheet device width:480px
- apply different css for the iPhone. For example displaying a one column page for iphone vs a 3 column page on a desktop.
- there are no scroll bars or resize knobs. the iphone will automatically expand the content
- Avoid framesets, scrollable frames are automatically expanded to fit the content
- iPhone User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A538a Safari/419.3
- Video: H.264 baseline profile level 3.0 up to 640??480 fps

 

[Golgo 13]

when you get a doc file, you will save it at google.com and use safari to read it/edit it.

what else you need?

well maybe a high speed internet connection. Have fun using google on a plane.:shake:

Some things just need to be client side

 

[Kupe#WP]

Even assuming it's not in the first release, I couldn't imagine how they wouldn't later add it.

Which, in turn, makes you wonder why they didn't just add something like Picsel Viewer which has become defacto software on most new WM Smartphones and PPC devices. Perhaps they were afraid this non-Apple software might bring down the entire wireless phone network!!!

 

[mikec#IM]

?

C201...sorry to burst your bubble...attachment handling has been just fine for several years with Picsel and Doc2Go and similar apps.

If your frame of reference is a Blackberry, then is sucks.

But many of us have been viewing, editing and sending attachments with relative ease for a while now.

 

[nyc_rock]

Using your logic in toto, Blackberry should have failed years ago because it couldn't play MP3's for multiple generations.

Yet, another false dichotomy

If there is any integrity to the questions you pose, you must be consciously aware that they cannot and will not be effectively answered until the device is released plus time to fully exhaust its possibilities. Otherwise, this is just another innuendo and rumor thread. The internet needs more of those, right?

Blackberry, if you havent noticed, is now releasing products that do everything specifically becuase they would go away if the relied on thier business model only. If your convoluted, cumbersome and time consuming scenario is correct, the Iphone will be dead for the Corp world.

 

[dstrauss#IM]

I would tend to agree with mikec on this one. Between docs-to-go, picsel viewer, and even mobile office, document viewing has been seamless for most users. I can't speak to the Blackberry experience, and since we use Exchange 2003 SP2 for push I don't have to worry about unencrypted attachments sitting on a third party server, but even on EDGE email and attachments have worked fine (except those big 330k + spreadsheets). I just feel that even non-business consumers are going to want more than jpg support on attachments.

And that brings me back to the core concern. A web based solution of ANY KIND is going to be a failure for that Jazzy interface on EDGE. It is better than GPRS was, but it cannot handle the throughput necessary for heavy web lifting. Look at ALL of the demos out there - they are all using a WiFi connection. Stateside, free WiFi is a rare animal easily found (a lot of snooping will be necessary). This leads me to wonder about what AT&T has up its sleeve. We have their DSL service and local/long distance. for a few bucks more per month (can't remember if $2.95 or $4.95) you get unlimited access to their WiFi access points, such as Barnes and Noble. Is that where AT&T plans to drive this engine, since they are obviously not into WiMax and falling behind Verizon and Sprint in building out 3G capacity?

As an aside, we ought to start a poll, even in this geek heaven, of how many users ever really heavily edited a document or spreadsheet on a handheld device - converged or not. I've argued for the need for it for years, BUT have rarely ever done it. View them - yes - all the time, but even the best of keyboards (HTC Hermes IMHO) and largest screens (Axim) are too small for editing more than a few paragraphs without going cross-eyed and thumb tied. So Apple's quick salvation could be in integrating a version of Picsel for viewing.

 

[llarson]

Editing that Million dollar pitch document on your phone?

Which, in turn, makes you wonder why they didn't just add something like Picsel Viewer which has become defacto software on most new WM Smartphones and PPC devices. Perhaps they were afraid this non-Apple software might bring down the entire wireless phone network!!!

I usually get out my laptop and work on documents when I am on the plane.

Editing documents on a cell phone has always been a last ditch "I am screwed and have no other way of doing this" alternative. Many times I have downloaded an attachment a beamed it to my laptop to edit.

Of course this is how I work others might be different.

The thing to remember is many want to use their smartphone in place of a laptop. I use mine in conjunction with my laptop.

If I can at least view docs on an iPHONE I will be tempted to switch.