[rwc]

Understand your "meh" reaction, but I think this is an exciting announcement for people outside the ecosystem. Office has been unattainable for a huge set of PC users for a very long time... it was rare to find affordable PCs with Office pre-installed. Anyone remember Microsoft Works?

Now, it's post-PC. This is opening up Office to a whole new generation of users who have found their home in tablets.

[sheetjs]

The problem is that for the subset of features supported on mobile, other tools like Numbers are comparable and have been available for free for a long time. The features that make Excel and other office products shine, including automation and macros, are not supported.

While it is a solid move for Microsoft, that whole generation of new users wont see much of a difference between 2014 office for ipad and numbers.

[chez17]

LibreOffice has been available and does 99% of what 99% of users need.

[jonathansizz]

You don't even need to go that far. Google Drive does 99% of what 99% of users need, and has second-to-none collaboration features to boot.

I bought my wife a Chromebook as a stopgap when her last Windows laptop died, and although she still has to use Windows for work, she now swears by Drive for working on shared documents.