“Mac users of Office who have felt left out in the cold by Microsoft (because the last version, Office 2011 for Mac, was released in October 2010) now have reason to be pleased: The preview of Office 2016 for Mac attempts to bring the suite out of the dark ages and into the modern world,” Preston Gralla writes for Computerworld.
“The preview runs only on Yosemite OS X and is available for free to anyone. Be warned: It’s a whopper of a download — 2.66GB worth,” Gralla writes. “Even so, I found installation to be exceptionally easy and problem-free.”
“With this version of Office, the Mac is no longer the poor stepchild in the Office world,” Gralla writes. “All versions of Office, whether on a Windows PC or a Mac, will look and work alike, and also resemble the Office you’ll experience on the Web and on tablets.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Too little, way too late. Don’t need it. Don’t want it. Won’t use it.
In our case, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Mail and their seamless continuity across all Apple devices leave absolutely nothing to be desired.
Microsoft left the Mac for dead. Turns out the Mac is very much alive. The best customers in the world invariably use Macs, iPhone’s and iPads. Therefore, Microsoft finds itself in desperate straits, scrambling to try to recover the users they drove away by ignoring them for many years. These are users, especially iPad users, who, thanks to Microsoft’s incompetent mismanagement, understand perfectly that no, you do not need Office in order to conduct business.
We wouldn’t use Microsoft Office if you paid us.
“All versions of Office, whether on a Windows PC or a Mac, will look and work alike….” This is very unfortunate. The ribbon UI is pitiful, an abomination, a step back into the dark ages of usability. Very unfortunate.
Nothing is more tortuous than trying to show someone on Windows a function that has been on the on the Format/Tools/Data menu on the Mac for over 20 years, but thanks to the ribbon has been buried in the interface god knows where.
A previous time Microsoft did that (make the PC and Mac versions “look and work alike”) was for Word 6. After the highly popular and “Mac-like” Word 5, Word 6 highly unpopular.
I completely agree that the ribbon is an abomination. I refuse to run a Mac app that thinks it’s a Windows app.
Hey, I just thought of something. It has traditionally been the case that Microsoft’s Mac developers are Mac people who work for Microsoft. As such they must have Mac sentiments, intelligent sentiments about the platform. Maybe somebody in the know could start a petition to request that they provide the normal Mac menu style as an alternative to that torn ribbon? Anybody know anybody in the know?
The only problem with iWork: format.
iWork can’t work with Office documents natively and when it exports documents from the respective iWork format to the respective Office format, formatting is often lost and the file size balloons up. Also, it’s easy to forget to export the document as an Office document. Fortunately, I don’t need to make spreadsheets or presentations too often. As for writing, I used to use TextEdit, but now I use Write 2 because it can set docx as the default format, has a word count, headers and it can put images in Word documents. Definitely worth $9. If only iWork was better about formatting in the areas I pointed out. iWork is nice for personal stuff, but you have to be able to use Office documents sans-conversions for work. Microsoft Office is the standard suite in the workplace, so you have to be able to work with Office documents natively, without switching formats.
The high download of Office for iPad indicates that Office is still the de facto standard although it’s hegemony is being chipped away.
I just hope the next big iWork update is a big one that restores key layout features of the previous Pages.
I am using the newest Office and it offers many improvements but Outlook still needs a lot of work for the corporate world. You have to download a user’s calendar before you can view it, there is no business card view of contacts, and you have to search the GAL (global address book), it does not display them by default.
But I love using it over Outlook 2011 and it looks like it was made for Yosemite even though it still has the Windows ribbon convention (which is silly in a world of widescreen monitors).
Happy to say (again) that I actually finally activated iCloud about 6 weeks ago now to use Pages. It wasn’t everything I wanted, but satisfactory, and I sure never want to use Soft&Limp software when I can help it (alas, at work, I must), but the best part was Find My iPhone! I had left it at a restaurant, where it hadn’t been found stuffed between cushions until I sent a sound to it. Let’s see Office do that!
While I’m sure most of use would like to ditch MS Office, power users simply cannot. Keynote exceeds Powerpoint in capabilities, but Pages and Numbers are simple programs for simple uses. Neither software comes close to the capabilities of Word and Excel.
I’ve tried NeoOffice in an effort to avoid Microsoft, but while NeoOffice has most of the capabilities of MS Office, it’s interface is rather ugly.
So until Apple develops a serious competitor to Word and Excel, many users, even Apple fanboys like myself, must continue to use Office.
And probably only 20% of Office users are actual Power Users that could not get by with something much less complex.
I’ve been able to move away from Word and PowerPoint to Pages and Keynote, but there just isn’t a replacement for Excel (especially in a business world full of customized programs written in Excel (most of these won’t even run on the Mac version of Excel or their authors won’t revise them for the Mac).
For years, I hoped that Apple will improve Pages to the level that MacWrite Pro was at in the early 90’s. MacWrite Pro actually had easier and more powerful merge capabilities than Word has today (and worked perfectly with FileMaker Pro), but I’ve given up on that… Apple just keeps re-writing their programs every few years, losing features and compatibility in the process… Say what you will about Microsoft, but the old documents created in them can still be opened and worked on.
in the 90’s… before the great 1DTenT migration from… well you know
Good. While Pages and Numbers are fine for simple, pretty, documents it is impossible to imagine that anyone at Apple uses these apps for real work. Not being able to paginate a financial worksheet in Numbers is just silly and the rework of these apps to run on iOS and the cloud means features have been lost. I have recently signed up for Office 365 which I once vowed I would never do.
Oh and thanks MDN for the tip about Microsoft Mail – the creaky old Apple Mail was never much chop.
Apple aren’t very good with application software really – I use Final Cut Pro on a Mac Pro, but it’s a horrible app to use – I think there are over 20 pages of keyboard shortcuts to memorise and, like a lot of Apple software, in its effort to be like iMovie (easy) it hamstrings the editor and makes some things almost impossible. It’s truly awful unless you are making a simple home movie.
Oh and Try writing a manual in Pages with numbered paragraphs and sections. The old version of Pages could do it, but now you need MS Word. I wonder what app is used to write Apple’s manuals.
Apple has manuals? 🙂
I don’t give a frak if Word and Excel are “standards.”
After all the network issues MS Office has given me over the past two years, I am transitioning everyone in our office to Pages and Numbers.
Go F yourself MS, goodbye, good riddance!
If you can switch everyone in your office to iWork, that’s great. Most of us just don’t have that option because nearly everyone in the business world uses Microsoft Office, so it’s important for us to have compatible documents. That’s why I like TextEdit and Write 2.
Bearing in mind that Carphone Warehouse & Currys/PCWorld (of John Browatt fame) are now part of the same group of companies, I would think that Apple’s decision not to ‘shag’ a premium product to a mass market box-shifter makes a lot of sense,
A necessary evil. Thank god the menus function like windows! Like what the MS Mac unit did, but being different from Windows caused a lot of problems on my end. Not using Office cause I like it, but to help out those who are doing everything on it.
No MS on any of my Macs…….I’m just fine with Pages & Numbers. Keynote simply blows PowerPoint out of the water. Don’t want Office, don’t need Office…don’t care if they’d PAY me to take it.
I agree wholeheartedly. Until I have to turn in a presentation or a spreadsheet. In the meantime, I just have to do text-based documents, so I can just use TextEdit and Write 2. The only trouble with iWork is that it doesn’t use Office format, so when you turn in your work, you have to convert it to Office format, and you’ll lose some formatting in the process. If you just need to present a Keynote presentation, you can always convert it to Quicktime, just make sure there aren’t any typos since you won’t be able to fix them in the Quicktime version, otherwise you should keep from using special 3D effects which won’t transfer over to Powerpoint. I don’t know how well the conversion process works with Numbers. I haven’t actually had to submit a spreadsheet so far.
Outlook is found wanting… not by Mac standards (as it is the same in almost every respect). It will not let you manage pictures like it does in the WinBlows version. I uninstalled it because if you set a sort, and click on items in the list view it will reorder them to some mucked up way that is just infuriating. Bill Gates didn’t get the memo that for Microsoft to win, Apple DOESN’T HAVE TO lose. Basically it appears that their entire Mac development staff are total losers (probably) or they are actually being told to again water down the Mac version.
Microsoft sucks, always has, always will.
“They just do not have any class” – Steve Jobs
Too little, way too late. Do need it. Do want it. Will use it. There is no point in ignoring reality. I am a MAC person but I need to interface with the world and Office is the defacto standard. I have no intention to behave like an ostrich.
Office 2016 Preview is terrific. As Mac users we like best in class. While Apple’s offerings are okay, Office 2016 looks like it will be ready for prime time in the real world.
If it isn’t free, it will fail.
I am happy to pay but do not want to subscribe. If that is the only option then they have lost me as a customer permanently. For me as an infrequent power user I do need the features but will switch if forced. I only need Word and Excel so can leave the other programs.
Ever since I switched to Mac in 2006, I’ve been a Mac user. And a very satisfied one!
But… there is no denying that iWork is not what is being used in companies and schools.. While iPhone, iPad rule, MS Office is still the dominant office software. And I can understand that.
Word is okay, if you can get past the clumsy navigation. Pages doesn’t really compare, it feels more like a DTP thing. Powerpoint.isn’t bad, but Keynote is way better. Excel… I actually like that, and Numbers doesn’t even come close.
So, I stick with using MS Office, if only for cooperation and file format compatability with other users.
There is an obvious way for Apple to deal with this.. I would say, go on Apple, buy MS Office already !!!
Microsoft office finally catches up to the Mac? I thought this was an April fools joke
The only part of Office 2016 for Mac that may interest me is the possibility it includes the free add-in, Power Pivot. I doubt Microsoft has brought that feature over to the Mac version. But hey, why use Power Pivot when there’s FileMaker Pro!
I live in a pathetic environment where i need to be compatible with WinPC. I need msoft office just to be compatible with my university.
What if Bill Gates III wrote you a check for $2,000,000,000 USD? Would you sell your soul for a spot on Forbes 400 to use Office?
Word is a giant turd. But I have to use it at work. Nothing ever imports or exports to Docx correctly. And Windows people sneer and say Apple stuff is “proprietary.” Gawd, I hate Word. It’s bloated and sluggish – I never see as many spinning beachballs as I do using Word. Ugh.
Windoze free since 2003!!! 😀
Does M$ still ‘Clippy’ to assist? 😀
For many of us, who are tied to cooperate accounts and systems that require or run on a Win platform, Office 2016 is a breathe of fresh air that was long over due. Like someone else mentioned, Outlook is still lacking. I can’t add / delete users in AD/email groups like I can on the Win version. The calendar download issue is still there.
Then there is the matter of the still crippled OneNote. Many corp’s are tied to OneNote. Right now, the Mac version cannot sync with notebooks stored locally or on shared drives. Nor can it open SharePoint notebooks on SP’s that aren’t running the newest version of SP. It wants you to use the cloud and for most corp, that’s not happening unless it’s their own “cloud”, not MS’s.
For now, sure I’d love to not have to use MS Office, but the reality is that I must….for now…or use a WinPC (yuck!).
This sentence stands out the most for me “Mac is no longer the poor stepchild in the Office world”. It should never never been the poor stepchild in the first place. Apple got Microsoft into the desktop applications business, and they were a big customer for Microsoft in the early days. What did Microsoft do in return? They stole from Apple. Now that Microsoft is on its way down, I’m loving every minute of it.