Microsoft Launches Office 2016 For Mac, Office 365 Subscribers Get It First

Microsoft today released the new version of its productivity suite for Mac users with the debut of Office 2016 for Mac. The updated software is first being made available to Office 365 subscribers, the company says – meaning those who have either an Office 365 Home, Personal, Business, Business Premium, E3 or ProPlus subscription. A standalone version will not become available until September, notes Microsoft, and pricing for that option is not yet available.

With an Office 365 subscription, Mac users have a range of pricing plans available depending on their needs. Pricing for home users is $6.99 per month for Office 365 Personal, $9.99 per month for Office 365 Home, and there are also plans available for students who may be able to get Office 2016 for Mac for free or for a significant discount, Microsoft says.

New customers can purchase an Office 365 subscription at office.com/Mac while current customers can instead visit their account page at office.com/myaccount and follow installation instructions.

Office 2016 for Mac has been in preview testing – Microsoft’s form of a beta release – since March of this year. That program led to the company receiving over 100,000 pieces of feedback, it says, and over the course of the test period, Microsoft has updated the software seven times to improve its performance and stability. These updates also included new features like improved Mail Merge in Word, Propose New Time in Outlook and support for External Data Connections in Excel.

The suite, which offers new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, is now available in 139 countries and 16 languages. It includes the familiar ribbon interface and task panes, as well as features designed for Mac users like Full Screen view, multi-touch gestures, and Retina support. Its integration with the cloud allows users to switch between devices – including PCs, tablets, phones and the web – in order to continue editing or collaborating on files.

The release follows that of Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Android phones two weeks ago, and is just weeks ahead of the forthcoming launch of Office Mobile apps for Windows 10.

Going forward, the updated suite will receive quarterly updates, Microsoft says.

Comments

Visa confirms Coinbase wasn’t at fault for overcharging users

Yesterday, we wrote that Coinbase customers were being charged multiple times for past transactions. While some speculated that the erroneous withdraws were down to a Coinbase engineering issue, Coinbase issued a statement saying it wasn’t liable for the duplicate charges. The blame, instead, rested with Visa for the way it handled a migration of merchant categories for cryptocurrencies, Coinbase said. While you can read my post yesterday for an in-depth description of what happened, the basic gist is that Visa refunded and recharged (under a different merchant category) a month of old transactions. Many users saw the recharge come through before the refund processed, making it look like they were double charged. Honestly, the issue was likely exacerbated by existing payment rails — it’s normal for refunds to take multiple days to show up on credit and debit statements. But here’s where it gets weird — this morning Visa issued a statement to some publications shifting the blam...

Here’s how to keep track of Elon Musk’s Roadster and Starman in space

Elon Musk’s Starman, the mannequin driver of the Tesla Roadster SpaceX launched aboard its Falcon Heavy rocket, is taking a trip around our solar system, in a large elliptical orbit that will bring him relatively close to Mars, the Sun and other heavenly bodies. But how to track the trip, now that the Roadster’s onboard batteries are out of juice and no longer transmitting live footage? Thanks to the work of Ben Pearson, a SpaceX fan and electrical engineer working in the aerospace industry, who created ‘Where is Roadster,’ a website that makes use of JPL Horizons data to track the progress of the Roadster and Starman through space, and to predict its path and let you know when it’ll come close to meeting up with various planets and the Sun. The website tells you the Roadster’s current position, too, as well as its speed and whether it’s moving towards or away from Earth and Mars at any given moment. It’s not officially affiliated with SpaceX or Tesla, but it is something Elon...

Engineering against all odds, or how NYC’s subway will get wireless in the tunnels

Never ask a wireless engineer working on the NYC subway system “What can go wrong?” Flooding, ice, brake dust, and power outages relentlessly attack the network components. Rats — many, many rats — can eat power and fiber optic cables and bring down the whole system. Humans are no different, as their curiosity or malice strikes a blow against wireless hardware (literally and metaphorically). Serverless software deployment to the cloud, this is not. New York City officially got wireless service in every underground subway station a little more than a year ago, and I was curious what work went into the buildout of this system as well as how it will expand in the future. That curiosity is part of a series of articles I’ve written on an observed pattern known as cost disease, the massively inflating costs of basic human services like health care, housing, infrastructure, and education. The United States spends trillions of dollars on each of these fields, massively outspending sim...

How ad-free subscriptions could solve Facebook

At the core of Facebook’s “well-being” problem is that its business is directly coupled with total time spent on its apps. The more hours you pass on the social network, the more ads you see and click, the more money it earns. That puts its plan to make using Facebook healthier at odds with its finances, restricting how far it’s willing to go to protect us from the harms of over use. The advertising-supported model comes with some big benefits, though. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that “We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.” Ads lets Facebook remain free for those who don’t want to pay, and more importantly, for those around the world who couldn’t afford to. Ads pay for Facebook to keep the lights on, research and develop new technologies, and profit handsomely in a way that attracts top talent and further investment. More affluent users with more buying power in markets like the US, UK, and Canada command higher ad prices, effectively...

Montana-based mapping startup onXmaps raises a round of funding fit for Big Sky Country

A mapping startup based in Missoula, Mont., which allows users to download sophisticated offline topographic maps outlining public and private lands and a number of other features geared towards hunting, fishing and camping, has pulled in its first major outside funding. onXmaps has closed a $20.3 million Series A round led by Summit Partners. Bessemer Venture Partners, Millennium Technology Value Partners, Next Frontier Capital and NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke also participated in the round. The company is calling the fundraise one of the biggest ever among startups based in Montana. onX Hunt app This is impressively the first bout of outside funding that the 70-person startup has ever taken since being founded in 2009. The company’s founder and CEO Eric Siegfried, an avid outdoorsman himself, had created a more basic program to integrate these maps with his own Garmin GPS. After finding his friends were interested in having a product like this too, he put down $27k of his...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog