If you read the app description, its for working with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Anything else is outside its domain. Its not a replacement for Google Docs for working with Google Docs native formats.
> If you read the app description, its for working with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.
Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of-choice.
"No no no, if it's a Word file you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green circle to edit it, if it's a native google document you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green hexagon to edit it."
"You don't know what type of document it is? No problem, you can tell by... Open it up in one of the two apps and tell me what the file extension is. The file extension. The three of four letters at the end. Wait a sec, forget that, native google docs documents don't have file extensions."
["Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square." - I was wrong about this, word files do have a different icon]
"Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one."
> Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of-choice.
"If you need to edit things in Drive, use the Drive app."
There are some use cases where the QO app makes sense, but its solving a fairly narrow problem that doesn't apply to most users.
> Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square
What are you talking about? The icon for Word files in both the QO UI and the Drive app UI is a big blue W on a white square, and is nothing like the 3-long-1-short white lines on a blue square icon for Google Documents.
> Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one.
The Drive edits Doc/Docx files; if for some reason you don't like using the Drive App to do that, you can switch to QO from the document opened in Drive by using the "Open in..." menu from Drive to open a document in QO.
I've just tried it, and no, it can't. On the webapp, editing is done by converting to google docs format; that option doesn't seem to be available on mobile. It can't even view them natively, if QO isn't installed it appears to show them in a web viewer. Only quickoffice can edit .doc/.docx's. But you're right you can open a .doc in QO from drive (assuming it's installed, it'll register an intent), which does alleviate the problem.
But it's still silly, and confusing for non-technical users, to have two similarly-designed office apps, published by the same company, which can each edit a mutually-exclusive set of document formats. And that using intents to edit works one way but not the other. I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.
On the other hand you're right about the icon. My mistake, I'll correct my post.
> I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.
I would be too; it worth noting that doing separate things in overlapping-but-not-identical domains and then merging them over time (especially when one is an acquisition, like QO) isn't really unusual for Google (and increasing the overlap on the way to merger isn't unusual, either.)
QO's been around for quite a long time, and is a fairly recent acquisition. Its not a new offering, the news here is that its just been made free.
if i click on a docx in the google drive app, it uses the intents system to open in quickoffice. its only if i try to open a google drive document in quickoffice that it has a problem. So if you have a technologically inept relative, the solution is simple - just tell them to use google drive for everything, and never use quickoffice.
which i'm sure is exactly what google wants. they want you creating documents in their format, not in microsoft's format. quickoffice exists to tick off the "MS Office compatibility" checkbox on spec sheets, not because google loves that file format so much. and office documents don't get the realtime collaborative editing or chat interface or any of the other stuff that drive documents get, so to reduce confusion about why some features are unavailable, it makes sense to keep it as a separate app.
i think they will too, but i think the point is that they don't want to. Microsoft office support in Drive is like SMS support in Hangouts. They know people want it, but it's an outside-the-ecosystem technology that they want to die, and they're hoping that if they hold off supporting it for long enough demand will go away.
Beyond the downvote to my comment, I think the same complain will be amplified by a lot of people beyond if it's in the app description or not. Currently, with hundreds of applications installed on the PC and mobile devices nobody reads every app description, they just assume certain features. You can't RTFM for every application installed.
> I installed Quickoffice acquired by Google to read documents. I don't assume that I need to read any description.
QuickOffice was always a MSOffice formats editing tool for mobile devices. Its never been a generic document reader. You assumed, for no discernable reason, that it was.
Maybe you should re-evaluate your assumptions about the need to read descriptions of apps before you install and run them.
Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of-choice.
"No no no, if it's a Word file you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green circle to edit it, if it's a native google document you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green hexagon to edit it."
"You don't know what type of document it is? No problem, you can tell by... Open it up in one of the two apps and tell me what the file extension is. The file extension. The three of four letters at the end. Wait a sec, forget that, native google docs documents don't have file extensions."
["Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square." - I was wrong about this, word files do have a different icon]
"Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one."
"Hold on, I'll drive over..."