The Office 15 crystal ball just got murkier

Microsoft’s been teasing Office 15 for some months now, with occasional fleeting flashes during Windows 8 demos. Some lucky journalists who attended the Windows Surface announcement two weeks ago in Los Angeles had a chance to actually use the new Office on a Windows RT Surface machine – albeit for just a few minutes.

Shortly after the Surface announcement, I posted an analysis of What we don’t know about Microsoft Surface. Although much remains unanswered about the two Surface tablets, one small detail about Office 2013 slipped. As I described in that blog, Microsoft posted an official “Video Gallery” about the Surface tablets, which included an interesting revelation, in small print, down at the bottom of the page. It said that the Windows RT Surface “ships with Office Home & Student 2013 RT Preview.”

It’s hard to read much into that name, but at least superficially it would appear that there’s a different version of Office for Windows RT as opposed to Windows 8. It would also appear that there’s a Home & Student version of the new Office, and that Microsoft is planning on shipping Windows RT Surface tablets with a “Preview” of that version. Whatever that means.

I dropped by the same site a couple of hours ago, and ventured down to the bottom of the page again.

Now, the same page, in the same place, says, “Surface for Windows RT includes Office 15 Apps.”

That’s a considerable backtrack from what was originally announced. I wonder what it signifies?