The author claims MS failed to "take seriously" the iPad, but that's simply not true. He must be confusing them with Blackberry (RIMshot!). MS created Office 365, a completely web-based build of Office that is surprisingly standards-compliant and cross-platform. Furthermore they are planning to release a native build of Office for the iPad in 2012. I'm not sure how much more you can ask from them, especially considering (as others have noted) that these devices are designed for consuming content, not creating it.
I work with people who use Excel 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. There is no competitor to that product. Google Docs doesn't even scratch the surface. And, as much as I hate Word and think it's a poor authoring tool as well as a poor document layout tool, most people want one app that is a mix of both. For them, there is no competitor to Word.
Pivot tables (though I believe Google Docs has added this to some degree), the ability to cleanly import messy text data, the ability to select non-contiguous cells, keyboard short cuts, better charts, spell check. I'm sure there are a million more - Excel is actually a very impressive product.
I work with people who use Excel 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. There is no competitor to that product. Google Docs doesn't even scratch the surface. And, as much as I hate Word and think it's a poor authoring tool as well as a poor document layout tool, most people want one app that is a mix of both. For them, there is no competitor to Word.
Welcome to the real world!