Longtime Mac users may be acquainted with DataViz, founded in 1984, which in the years before OS X offered great utilities for the Mac. Its flagship product, MacLink Plus, allowed one to transfer and translate files of different file formats between Macs and PCs. Its technology was even licensed by Apple via Claris to open a wide range of obscure file formats right from the Open and Save dialogs in its apps. In mobile, the company began jumping in with software for viewing and producing office documents.before much of it was acquired by Research in Motion. Documents to Go was one of the handful of great apps — mostly first-party — for the BlackBerry PlayBook. Under RIM’s ownership, there may have been concerns that the company would neglect other platforms, including those that go back to its roots.
But, perhaps now because BlackBerry 10 is out the door, DataViz has turned its attention back to the Mac for a major update of DocsToGo for iPad. The mobile office had fallen behind QuickOffice, which has also been in something of its own limbo since being acuired by another mobile OS vendor, Google. Both suites had cluttered, cartoony designs, but the DocsToGo refresh has a great, clean look and feel that looks like a modern Google app while integrating nicely with popular cloud storage services. It’s a little slow going through file lists on those cloud services, but perhaps that will become more optimized. There’s even a store for more funcitonality. Wouldst that Blogsy looked this inviting.