Google Docs delivers full desktop on iPad

Anthony Caruana
Monday, 13 December 2010 18:33

Your IT - Mobility

Google recently offered up an update to Google Docs on mobile devices. Now, the desktop version of Docs works on the iPad although it's not perfect.

About a month ago, Google made an update to the mobile version of Docs so that editing of documents, albeit with some limits, was now available on mobile platforms like Android and iOS. Over the weekend, some further tweaks appeared. Now, the desktop version of Google Docs can be enabled on the iPhone.

With the desktop switch flicked in Safari on the iPad, most of Google Docs' functionality is available. We were able to open documents, edit them and apply most of the formatting options. However, we did find that some of the commands we like, such as double tapping a word to select it, didn't work correctly. We also found that the selected text, once we'd managed to get it highlighted, wasn't clearly visible on the screen when the iPad soft keyboard was onscreen.

While we're fans of many of Google's services and always like stuff that;s free, the productivity application space is ripe with competition at the moment. Aside from Apple's iWork suite of apps there's QuickOffice, Docs to Go, Office2 HD and a swag of others to choose from. Many integrate with cloud services like Apple's iDisk, DropBox and other WebDAV cloud storage solutions. For our money, we'd prefer to spend the money and get a native app that wasn't 100% network dependent.

Most of those apps, combined with something like the Rubata Keyboard Case, make the iPad a compelling content creation solution, as well as a great data consumption device.