Microsoft declined to comment on the user experience of Office Web Apps now on iPads. A quick check by IDG News Service of Office Web Apps on an iOS 6 iPad using Safari indeed shows a marked improvement in the interface and user experience, compared with the prior version.

Although Microsoft has released iOS applications for OneNote and Lync, it hasn't ported the full-featured Office suite to Apple's mobile operating system, and it has been criticized for this.

Microsoft probably wants Office to be a selling point for the upcoming Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets, including Microsoft's own Surface device. However, critics point out that keeping Office away from iPads could end up hurting Microsoft more than Apple, since there is no shortage of vendors providing office productivity applications for iOS.

Thus, with this new Office Web Apps version, Microsoft could still protect the competitive edge of the new Windows 8 and RT tablets, while also meeting some of the demands of iPad users, many of whom use the Apple device for both personal and work tasks.

Office Web Apps, launched in 2010, offers a subset of the features found in the PC-installed Office version and is intended primarily as a complement to it, not a replacement. It contains online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.