A brief primer on Microsoft Office for iOS rumors

We can now safely say that rumors that Microsoft was working on a version of Office for Apple's iOS platform weren't false. They were just early.

But boy has it been a long road to Friday, when Microsoft made it official by releasing its Office Mobile for iPhone app -- which is officially dubbed "Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers" in the iTunes Store.

Reports that Microsoft was aiming to bring a version of its productivity software to Apple's mobile platform date all the way back to February 2010, just a few weeks after the the iPad was unveiled in San Francisco, and more than a year and a half after the debut of the App Store. Since then it's been a trickle of vague feature lists, misfires on release dates, and increasingly honed denials and no-comments from Redmond.

Here's a quick timeline on when this all started, and the turns along the way.

February 2, 2010
In a since-removed interview, a senior Microsoft product manager tells U.K.-based technology site T3 that the company is "looking at" bringing Office to the recently-announced iPad. No specifics on a timeline or feature set are mentioned.