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Comment by ekc | Hacker News Reader

Office on iOS is free.

On the iPad Mini and "iPad." The iPad Pro/Air requires Office 365:

> The suite of apps is free of charge for consumers with devices smaller than 10.1 in (26 cm), but business customers need to purchase an Office 365 subscription to take full advantage of the suite on larger screens.

You need to sign up for a Microsoft Account either way.

Damn. Microsoft still convoluting matters with their "editions" and tiers for everything like it was still the 1990s. This is yet another mess that I'm glad to have left behind in the Windows world.

The 10.1" seem carefully chosen so that on Android, most tablets and phones are covered by the "free" edition while Chromebooks (that can run Android apps) are not.

A more sane approach would be to have a "Lite" version for completely free and a paid "Pro" version or something with all features without restrictions on device size, which is an arbitrary metric because a tablet's marketed size sometimes increases when they reduce the bezels around the screen, without increasing its physical dimensions, as with recent iPads.

That's not arbitrary. The metric is always screen size.

If I'm currently using a "9.7 inch" iPad, and I decide to upgrade it to a newer model with the same physical dimensions (because of space in my bags/compatibility with existing cases etc.), but it's now marketed as a "10.5 inch" or whatever, will I lose access to my current [free] MS Office tier?

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