You can now control PowerPoint for iPhone with your Apple Watch

Microsoft today updated its PowerPoint for iOS app with a rather bizarre update: remote Apple Watch support. You can download the new version now directly from Apple’s App Store.

We say this addition is “bizarre” because, well, why would anyone want to control PowerPoint on their iPhone from their Apple Watch? This PowerPoint app also works on the iPad, and we would argue it makes more sense to control a presentation on your tablet from your wrist than a presentation on your smartphone.

Here is the changelog so you can try to make sense of it yourself:

PowerPoint Remote for Apple Watch: control your slide show on iPhone with a beautifully simple app.

• Start your slide show and easily navigate to the next and previous slides.
• At a glance, see the elapsed time, the current slide number and total number of slides.

To be fair, Apple Watch apps are really just extensions of iPhone apps — it’s likely much harder for Microsoft to bring the functionality to the iPad. Also, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have much larger screens than their predecessors; maybe some will find it useful to practice PowerPoint presenting.

If and when Apple allows Microsoft to develop full-blown apps for the Apple Watch, it would be much more useful to see Office Remote christen the wearable. Back in November 2013, Microsoft released Office Remote for Windows Phone, a significantly more useful tool.

In short, Office Remote lets you control Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on your PC. Earlier this month, Microsoft released the same app on Android.

Today’s PowerPoint for iPhone update is interesting, but we suspect Apple users would appreciate a full-blown Office Remote for iOS app much more, and not just because it would support Word and Excel as well. Controlling PowerPoint presentations on your PC (or Mac!) from your Apple Watch, iPhone, or iPad just makes a lot more sense.