Following yesterday's leak of several screenshots from the next version of Microsoft's Outlook for Mac, Chinese site cnBeta now shares much more information [Google Translate] about the upcoming version of Microsoft's productivity suite for Mac.
The report shares several presentation slides outlining some of the features of the next Office for Mac, as well as a timeline showing a planned release sometime in the first half of 2015. Microsoft team members had previously suggested the suite would launch this year.
The slides point to four key focus areas for Microsoft during the development cycle of the next Office for Mac, including a modernized look with full Retina support to match the OS X aesthetic while still aligning the experience with Office for Windows, improved connectivity with cloud services including Office 365 and SkyDrive (OneDrive), significant improvements to Outlook, and the addition of OneNote, which appeared as a standalone release earlier this year.
(Click for larger)
Taking a quick look at some of the changes to the core Office apps, the slides address the addition of the Quick Access Toolbar from the Windows version throughout the upcoming Mac suite, improved organization of tools and formatting, new support for Excel 2013 functions, Threaded Comments and improved Presenter View for PowerPoint, and enhanced Reply Comments and "Expand and Collapse" paragraph view toggles in Word.
Microsoft Office for Mac has not seen a major update since late 2010, when Office for Mac 2011 was released as a comparable version of Office 2010 for Windows. But while Windows saw the release of Office 2013 early last year, no corresponding version of Office for Mac has yet been released. The next version of Office for Windows is similarly expected in the spring of next year.
Apple has ordered 22 million OLED panels from Samsung Display for the first foldable iPhone, signaling a significantly larger production target than the display industry had previously anticipated, ET News reports.
In the now-seemingly deleted report, ET News claimed that Samsung plans to mass-produce 11 million inward-folding OLED displays for Apple next year, as well as 11 million...
Friday December 5, 2025 9:40 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is about to release iOS 26.2, the second major point update for iPhones since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least 15 notable changes and improvements worth checking out. We've rounded them up below.
Apple is expected to roll out iOS 26.2 to compatible devices sometime between December 8 and December 16. When the update drops, you can check Apple's servers for the ...
Wednesday December 10, 2025 2:52 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Google Maps on iOS quietly gained a new feature recently that automatically recognizes where you've parked your vehicle and saves the location for you.
Announced on LinkedIn by Rio Akasaka, Google Maps' senior product manager, the new feature auto-detects your parked location even if you don't use the parking pin function, saves it for up to 48 hours, and then automatically removes it once...
Monday December 8, 2025 4:54 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is actively testing under-screen Face ID for next year's iPhone 18 Pro models using a special "spliced micro-transparent glass" window built into the display, claims a Chinese leaker.
According to "Smart Pikachu," a Weibo account that has previously shared accurate supply-chain details on Chinese Android hardware, Apple is testing the special glass as a way to let the TrueDepth...
Monday December 8, 2025 10:18 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today seeded the second release candidate version of iOS 26.2 to developers and public beta testers, with the software coming one week after Apple seeded the first RC. The release candidate represents the final version iOS 26.2 that will be provided to the public if no further bugs are found.
Registered developers and public beta testers can download the betas from the Settings app on...
Monday December 1, 2025 2:40 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
One thing worth...
Monday December 8, 2025 9:23 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's chipmaking chief Johny Srouji has reportedly indicated that he plans to continue working for the company for the foreseeable future.
"I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon," said Srouji, in a memo obtained by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Here is Srouji's full memo, as shared by Bloomberg:I know you've been reading all kind of rumors and...
Monday December 8, 2025 11:10 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple and Google are teaming up to make it easier for users to switch between iPhone and Android smartphones, according to 9to5Google. There is a new Android Canary build available today that simplifies data transfer between two smartphones, and Apple is going to implement the functionality in an upcoming iOS 26 beta.
Apple already has a Move to iOS app for transferring data from an Android...
Wednesday December 10, 2025 12:22 pm PST by Juli Clover
The next-generation low-cost iPad will use Apple's A19 chip, according to a report from Macworld. Macworld claims to have seen an "internal Apple code document" with information about the 2026 iPad lineup.
Prior documentation discovered by MacRumors suggested that the iPad 12 would be equipped with an A18 chip, not an A19 chip. The A19 chip was just released this year in the iPhone 17, and...
Apple today announced that Fitness+ is expanding to 28 new markets on December 15 in the service's largest international rollout since launch, accompanied by new language dubbing and a K-Pop music genre.
Apple Fitness+ will become available in Chile, Hong Kong, India, the Netherlands, Singapore, Taiwan, and additional regions on December 15, with Japan scheduled to follow early next year....
About damn time. Office for Mac was really getting long in the tooth. Unfortunately, no matter how much I love Pages, I just can't rely on it exclusively, because I can never ever be sure that if I finish something in Pages and export it to doc it will look like exactly the same in MS Word... and yeah, there are documents that you are kind of obliged to send in .doc (not in PDF), that is the sad truth... :(
As a Seattleite, I know one of the Microsoft Office for Mac team members. I get the impression that they are Apple devotees, working within Microsoft to bring out the best version of Office for OSX and iOS. Although Office for iPad is not perfect, it's pretty damn good, and it's definitely more an iOS8 app than a "Microsoft app running on an iPad." I expect the same from this team's next version of Office for OSX. Let's cut them some slack, guys, and give them time to do it right.
I just want it to work right. i.e.: work like the Windows version of Office. It doesn't have to look the same. Just work the same.
We have users that move from Windows to OS X. They like Mac OS X, they HATE Office for Mac.
Same with me. I spend most of the day in OS X. It does everything I want it to - except run the real Office. I have to load up a virtual machine or boot into Windows just to run Office.
Office for Mac has been Office in name, only so far.
"Outlook 2011" is just a misnomer for Entourage 14.0. And of course, every version of Entourage/Outlook for Mac never works like the previous version. 2011 doesn't look or work like 2008. 2008 doesn't look or work like 2004. Fonts work differently. Labels and colors work differently. Rules work differently. Nothing is consistent with "Office".
This can't come soon enough! I need Office for work, and this looks like Mac users will finally get what they deserve: a first class Office on Mac.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I think Microsoft is slowly turning in the right direction under Satya Nadella. It's a big ship and there's a lot of Ballmer to undo, but I am hopeful.
I'm very happy to see more concrete evidence of an update! On a side note, did anyone else chuckle when they saw the "support for new Office 2013 features and capabilities."? I guess "new" is completely in the eyes of the beholder....
