As promised, I said I would let you know when Docs To Go finally worked. I waited for the last update to be out for awhile, finally installed it myself and have been using it for a week. I’m happy to note that it is now working just fine for me. Note that I say for me! As with any software update, your mileage may vary.
There are a few things to note, however…
First – and most important – is if you already have the Premium upgrade originally made as an In-App Purchase, make sure you upgrade using the Standard version! It should recognize your upgraded status when you run the program. If not, go to the store and re-enable it there as you have had to do on previous purchases.
The changes are, more than anything, cosmetic. In particlar, it is more iOS7 friendly. That means a lot of tools get shifted around. In particular the menu is now down the top right side of the display on the iPad. Menu items have also been shifted around, so expect to do a bit of looking around. Of course, this is not unusual for many apps that are updating to the iOS7 format.
One important change of which you should be aware is that documents now open in a View Mode as the default. You have to tap the fountain pen nib icon in the top write corner to get into the editing mode of old. This can be disabled in the settings if you don’t like this behavior.
Just as a few initial impressions, the general performance does seem snappier. However, beyond that, it seems mostly the same editing engine as before. In one respect, this is good; Docs2Go still has the best compatibility of any iPad word processor on the market. It still handles large documents better than any other editor, as well. It handles complex formatting in documents just fine, putting a place-holder for those parts it cannot handle. I still haven’t gotten an error opening a document in Word after it has been edited in Docs2Go as I’ve commonly had happen with QuickOffice. This is probably due to DataViz taking the trouble to provide native support for the Microsoft formats rather than basing it on an XML translator.
Unfortunately, they still have not added the features people have most requested. There still is no WYSIWYG editing mode or preview. Word documents still cannot display or edit embedded graphics. You still cannot print to .PDF format. There is no native spell check – it still relies on the iOS native spell checker. The last is not that big a deal, in my opinion, but the others are really harming the product in this competitive market.
So, go ahead and update – especially if you plan on going to iOS7. It shouldn’t break on you, but do expect to adjust to the new interface.