Office 2013 is going to be, for most users, a fairly minor evolution of Microsoft’s flagship productivity suite, except for one little thing: with Office 2013, Microsoft is pitching Office subscriptions to consumers.
The company has already been courting enterprise users with its Office 365 platform for a little over a year now. There are multiple price tiers, with enterprise users getting some combination of Exchange, SharePoint, Office Web Apps, and the desktop Office suite.
I’m not sure how many years ago it was that Alice and I brought Microsoft’s subscription plans to light (hasn’t the Hard Edge been gone for about 8 years?) but at the time MS poo-pooed the idea with excuses like, “That’s for our corporate customers,” or, “Only in Europe,” or some such.