Microsoft’s ‘Office 2016 for Mac’ and ‘Office Mobile app for Windows 10’ are out; free ‘Office 2016 for Windows’ Public Preview still available

Office 2011 for Mac

After a five-year wait since ‘Office 2011 for Mac’, Microsoft has finally released ‘Office 2016 for Mac’ to 139 countries and in 16 languages, on July 10th. If you’re already an Office 365 subscriber, just head on to http://www.office.com/myaccount, sign in, and follow the installation instructions. A Public Preview version of this has been in testing since mid-March of 2015.

As always, Office for Mac comes with five “first-class” applications — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote — but they have been redesigned to get a modern look, while retaining the familiar ribbon interface, and support Retina displays. Office for Mac is also cloud-connected, where you could conveniently save your documents to OneDrive, and pick up where you left off on your Windows, Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices.

Office 365 Home subscription is at RM299.99/year for 5 computers (Mac, Windows), 5 tablets (Android, iOS, Windows), and 5 smartphones (Android, iOS). Office 365 Personal subscription is RM219.99/year for 1 computer, 1 tablet, and 1 smartphone. We’ll get to the mobile version of Office for Windows tablets and phones in a bit. In Malaysia, Office 365 is available at all authorized retailers or at the Microsoft Store Online itself.

If you’re not the subscriber type, Microsoft said that Office 2016 for Mac can be acquired through a one-time purchase this September. Note that you’re actually only paying for four applications, as the standalone OneNote for Mac is now free.

In recent years, though the exact release dates varied, Office for Windows usually arrive a year after a major Windows release, and Office for Mac usually came a year following that. Windows Vista came in 2006, followed by Office 2007 for Windows, then Office 2008 for Mac. After Windows 7 launched in 2009, it was then Office 2010 for Windows, and later Office 2011 for Mac.

Microsoft is currently gearing towards unifying not only its apps (through the Universal App Platform) but also its branding, since Windows 10 for PCs and phones, Xbox, HoloLens, Surface Hub, and ioT devices like the Raspberry Pi 2, are all running on a single, unified Windows core. Even Office 2016 is getting the same treatment now, as it’s the same branding for both Mac and PC, resulting in a five-year wait for a new Office for Mac (because there was no Office 2014 for Mac).

Office Mobile apps for Windows 10

Speaking of which, Microsoft also just released ‘Office Mobile apps for Windows 10’ late last month. Just when you think the branding is getting more streamlined, you get this. As the name suggests, Office Mobile apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) are only available for Windows 10, where they’re Universal, touch-first Office apps with similar features to their counterparts on Android and iOS. While not as full-fledged as ‘Office 2016 for Windows’, the new ‘Office Mobile apps for Windows 10’ is also way better than the deprecated Office Mobile found on Windows Phone. Windows 10 Mobile will also ship with the new Office Mobile apps baked in, for free.

They way Microsoft differentiate between Windows 10 Mobile and the fully-featured Windows 10 variants is this — any new Windows device with a 7.99-inch display size or smaller must run on Windows 10 Mobile (ARM), while devices with displays from 8 inches and up must run on other Windows 10 versions (x86/64).

With that in mind, when it comes to the new Office Mobile apps, another line is drawn at 10.1 inches. Any device with a 10.1-inch-screen or smaller, is eligible to get the full features of Office Mobile apps. Anything with a 10.2-inch-or-larger display, Office Mobile apps will be in read-only mode, unless if you have an Office 365 subscription, where the full features will be unlocked.

Confused yet?

Office 2016 for Windows Preview

Meanwhile, ‘Office 2016 for Windows’ is still in Public Preview, available free for us to test it out, until the final release is generally-available in “Fall 2015”. I’m going to spare you the details of the Public Preview release, but you can read all about it here.

To join the Office 2016 for Windows Preview, visit this link right here. Even if you already have a running Office 365 subscription, you still can switch to the Office 2016 Preview track. But note that you will end up staying on this track until the public release of Office 2016, unless if you manually uninstall Office 2016.

I haven’t personally run it yet, as I’m sticking with Office 2013, but apparently the Preview notifies the user that it’ll expire in 180 days, upon running it for the first time. Fall or Autumn months are generally accepted to be September, October, and November, so the launch is near. It is still unclear at this point, but it’s likely that as long as you install and run the Preview before ‘Office 2016 for Windows’ launches, it’ll honor the six-month free trial, even after the stable version is released later this year.

For more on Microsoft Office, check out our earlier coverage here, or visit Microsoft’s own Office blog here.

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