DataViz reported on its Twitter stream and on its Facebook page that Documents to Go was submitted to Apple’s iTunes App Store for approval and should be available in a few days. As I’ve posted here and here and here, we don’t know much yet about the features, but presumably the app will allow you to view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on an iPhone and edit Word documents and perhaps also Excel and PowerPoint documents.
The price has not been revealed yet, although the company says on its Facebook page:
info until its in the store … I hope you understand … All I can say is I
think you’ll be quite happy with the price point.
And in response to a qustion on Facebook of whether there will be a discount for people who used Documents to Go on another platform such as Palm, the company says: “Its priced so well you won’t need a discount!”
I’ve been very happy with QuickOffice on the iPhone, although that app still needs some work, such as the addition of autocorrect, underline and footnotes. I’m very curious to see how Documents to Go stacks up to QuickOffice on the iPhone.
Having said that, I actually feel bad for both companies because these are both products that cry out for a copy and paste function that works across the iPhone so that you can copy from a webpage into a Word document, from a Word document into an e-mail, etc. This feature won’t be available until iPhone Software 3.0 comes out this summer, but I understand that both companies felt the pressure to release their apps now. It would also be great to be able to take a Word or Excel document that is attached to an e-mail and open it up in QuickOffice or Documents to Go. Again, that just isn’t possible with the current iPhone operating system.
I’m not only going to be comparing QuickOffice and DocsToGo when it comes out but also, for all the reasons you stated in the last paragraph, the Palm Pre versus iPhone 3.0 and the new hardware coming out in July. The new iPhone and firmware is going to have to be able to run more than one app at a time, like the Pre, in order to avoid converts. That feature seems to make the iPhone look archaic, as the lack of copy/paste makes Apple look slow in providing fundamental enhancements.
Not being able to run 3rd party apps in the background only helps Apple. That is why the iPhone always feels so snappy. You can run apps on the background, they just have to be Apple’s.
Not to split hairs but I’d never call the iPhone snappy. Although it lags at times, and there’s no excuse for it considering the processors available on the market, I can’t complain considering the heavy demands and usage I put it through. It’s still a marvel to me. It’s just that Apple’s insistence on holding back on features is really annoying. Even if I don’t buy one, I’m happy that the Pre seems to be annoying Apple, the Storm (rightly) sure didn’t.
A faster processor, like the one which is rumored to be in July’s new hardware, should leave them no excuse to run 3d party apps in the background. No excuse.
The excuse re: background apps is battery drain not processor speed.
Version 3.0 iPhone software has cut/copy/paste which works great (I have dev version).