Office for Mac 2016 takes the “cloud first, platform second” approach of Microsoft’s other Office 365-compatible apps. In addition to being sandboxed and fully Cocoa rather than Carbon, each new app is optimized for Retina displays, features full-screen modes, and cloud syncing between platforms. As promised, Microsoft is today releasing the public beta of Office for Mac 2016 including all new versions of the company’s go-to productivity apps. Microsoft moved Office from a paid upgrade approach to a cloud subscription model, saw its CEO Steve Ballmer retire and buy a basketball team, appointed Satya Nadella as head of the company, and even released Office for iPad and iPhone.įor the Mac, though, the most capable versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel have only been available as Web apps-not native-until now. Office for Mac 2011 was actually first released in October 2010. Before today, the latest versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for OS X came with Office for Mac 2011, a suite of productivity apps which you can tell from the name included dated software without many modern features Mac users expect.
