“So, when I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don’t see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch up.”
– Frank Shaw, Microsoft VP of communications

I didn’t even think of it this way but he has a point. The Verge also noted:

“Surface and Surface 2 both include Office, the world’s most popular, most powerful productivity software for free and are priced below both the iPad 2 and iPad Air respectively,” Shaw writes. “Making Apple’s decision to build the price of their less popular and less powerful iWork into their tablets not a very big (or very good) deal.”

I’m not a big fan of Office, prefer the better collaborative Google Drive [who would have guessed?], but am definitely not an iWork fan as it is even less collaborative [unless you have friends/collaborators only with Macs] so I don’t have a dog in this fight but it is definitely an interesting perspective.

I initially did take this as a shot at Microsoft but Shaw makes some good points. What say you?