Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is of late known more for his contribution to fighting real-world problems and illnesses in developing countries alongside his wife Melinda. The richest man in America has committed the majority of his time to the eradication of diseases such as malaria and polio, providing vaccines and clean water, and even the improvement of basic sanitation by revolutionizing the toilet. However, he’s recently become more involved within Microsoft to assist newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.
According to an interview with Bloomberg TV, the ex-chairman apparently believes that Microsoft’s Office productivity suite is in need of dramatic improvements, and that it should be the software giant’s top priority to make that happen. He noted that “that’s the kind of thing that I’m trying to make sure they move fast on”, noting at his involvement in the effort.
No details were revealed about what exactly the company will do to improve Office, or the types of features we can expect to see, but if we had to guess, it would be touch optimization and maybe a complete re-write of Office Mobile, which still lacks basic editing features. While there is very little news at the moment regarding the next major version of Office, although it could come sometime next year at the earliest.
Since Satya Nadella took seat as Microsoft CEO, and having implemented his ‘mobile-first, cloud-first’ strategy, Office has already seen some improvements. We saw fairly decent version grace both the iOS and Android app stores as part of Microsoft’s Office 365 subscription. We also learned that the company is taking the software suite on mobile devices seriously considering the lack of a ‘designed for touch’ version of the Office Suite.
You can watch the full interview with Bill Gates below, where he noted that Microsoft should also work on a similar or better implementation of Apple Pay.
Further reading: Bill Gates, Microsoft, Office
