This week in mobile

I have zero intention of doing a mobile roundup every week, but it sure seems like there were a few noteworthy developments in the mobile field this week that are worth mentioning. So, here goes.

Microsoft releases Office for Apple IOS devices. Come now, you didn’t think I’d say they posted it to Cisco IOS, did you? It should surprise no one that I think it’s about time they did this–I said as much barely over a week ago–but I still think they did it wrong. It’s only for phones, not tablets, which is wrong. So what if it cuts into Surface sales? There are people who are going to buy Apple tablets whether they can run Office on them or not, so you might as well position yourself to sell them Office anyway. And people will use Citrix to connect to a Windows box to run Office on an Apple tablet in a dire emergency, so why not try to make the experience slightly more pleasant than doing your own taxes, entirely on paper, with no calculator?

Android 4.3. Android 4.3 will be yet another minor revision of Jelly Bean, and will appear on Google-designed Nexus devices first, and probably ship sometime this summer. But it will be short-lived because of…

Android 5.0, also known as Key Lime Pie. Android 5.0 will be coming this fall, and promises to run better in 512 MB of RAM than Jelly Bean does, so it will be a boon for low-end tablets, and a boon for multitasking on mainstream and high-end tablets. Most of the rest is rumor, involving support for specific types of hardware.

Now, how many of these updates will actually get to our devices is a question, which is why I always visit XDA-Developers before buying an Android device. I assume the manufacturer will abandon it eventually, but if the tinkerers are buying it and hacking on it, then it will have a longer life.

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