How the cloud is failing mobile workers [Video]

Smartphones and iPads are made for use in the cloud, but the business cloud apps are unusable for mobile workers

Credit: Shutterstock / Lightspring

Microsoft claims its forthcoming Office 365 cloud-based collaboration and productivity suite is aimed at mobile users, with “access to e-mail, documents, contacts and calendars on nearly any device.” Google last week also made noise about updating Google Docs to work with iPhones and Android smartphones. Don’t believe either of them — my testing of both offerings shows they are not usable on iPads, iPhones, Android smartphones, or BlackBerrys.

What doesn’t work in Office 365

For Office Web Apps (the cloud version of Office in Office 365), the practical result is that the iPhone’s and iPad’s mobile Safari browser can only view documents in Office Web Apps. iPhone and iPad users can download documents to the Preview app in iOS, then open them in an editing program like Apple Pages, Quickoffice, or Documents to Go, but they can’t upload them back. …