Used Sharepoint and it is garbage ... Never used Office 365 though.

As a software developer I deal regularly with "document sharing" and "collaboration" through the use of version control systems of source code, and using share-point for documents is a lot like using visual source-safe (from 2000) for source code; and if you're already used to something like SVN or GIT it makes it is painful to work with.

Funny, that's how I feel about Google and Android. 

I have several Apple products, but do not own an iPhone as I think that anyone who spends $100+ a month for a cell phone plan is nuts!  That goes for all the Android $100+ a month plans too. 

Now, if you truly believe that Apple hardware is manufactured at 1/8th the selling price, you need to do your homework.  Most people who are repeat Apple customer are so because they have an unmatched build quality and a hassle free ease of use (most times).

Well those figures were for the old iphone. The new one is  more expensive, but it still gives Apple a HUGE amount of money. According to this article, it costs Apple $168 to make an Iphone and they sell it for $649. That's still a very large profit mark up. Also, they make so much money from Itunes as well. 

LibreOffice

libreoffice{dot}org

It's a free, open source office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database) that does everything MS Office can do. It runs identically on MacOS, Linux, and Windows.  It can read/write MS Office files, plus the OpenDoc file standard. It can also export documents as PDF.

I have not had a need to run MS Office for several years and I don't miss it at all.

i often use open office. which great and free but i only use if i can get access to ms office. ms office just seems easier to use. I dont see apple being to compete with open office and ms office effectivly. I see this ending up like their map app, not working great, apologizing for the bad software and suggesting alternatives. Apple can't go through that again it will really tarnish their well polished image.

edit: not sure if any of the office suit compaines have done this yet, but addin great touch interface where you can use a fine tipped stylus to hand write instead of type would be great. I am personally far quicker at hand writing than typing not sure if that goes for most people though.

I'm an apple fan and I would say its not worth apples time to do it.
Google Docs is a lot better then iWork and MSOffice tbh

Seriously if there is one thing I've learned the last 4 months that I have been doing guides for Office(New project I have) it is that no one even comes close to the amount of things Office and Word/Excel in particular can do.

There is so much of a hidden value in getting Office than going for iWorks or OpenOffice. As an example my sister who is everything else than a tech freak got a new Mac and she happend to buy iWorks and guess what she told me 5 days later... "you have to find me a solution because I can't deal with iWorks" and there we have Office for Mac!

So in order for Apple to even be succesful at trying to compete with MS directly they would first have to scrap iWorks and start from the beggining and then think about competing with Ms Office.

There is a reason why the Business division at MS is the biggest one they have and that is simply Office!

Just how much of a grip do MS have on this?

Do they patents for all the needed functions, or could Apple just copy them?

Considering the fact that Microsoft owns well over thousands of patents around the globe(around 15000 in the US) we can already draw the conclusion that at least a lot of these are Office patents.

in your opinion.

SHOCKED you are defending god.. oh sorry i mean microsoft..