During Apple's MacBook Pro keynote last October, Apple briefly mentioned that Microsoft was working on introducing support for the new Touch Bar across its suite of Office applications.
While Microsoft has yet to officially roll out the support, Office users can opt to test the new Touch Bar features by becoming an "Office Insider", which is basically a public beta program.
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In Word, Touch Bar users will be able to activate the distraction-free Focus Mode to remove the Ribbon, and access text formatting and font style options.
In PowerPoint, the Touch Bar will show a graphical overview of all slides in a deck, and offer the ability to reorder slides. Excel is set to get the most useful Touch Bar features though, bringing recently used functions, color cells, and chart options to the MacBook's OLED strip.
Lastly, Outlook brings a today view to the Touch Bar, allowing users to see calendar appointments for the day, while recently used documents will display when composing emails, for quickly attaching files. Skype call functions are also set to be available from the Bar.
Office users interested in testing the Touch Bar functions in the beta program – along with any attendant bugs/issues – can sign up to become an "Office Insider" here.
(via The Verge.)
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Microsoft - The company that gives more attention to the competitors OS than their own,
Yeah we are all waiting on Surface touch bar support. :rolleyes:Honestly, I'm still not convinced about the touch bar. Still gimmick in my opinion. Seems an interface that is a not as intuitive compared to direct input through touch on screen.
I hope that was a figure of speech and not an attempt to undermine any credibility you spent an essay building.
It wasn't a shot at you personally if that's what you're asking. I think there are a lot of people who would agree that Apple has gone from making some professional level products, to making some prosumer level products, to mass marketing average stuff that isn't cutting edge in any way, other than cost. And I think Apple now designs products around what young kids who use their computers to watch Youtube might like. I personally don't find the need for dongles to be as annoying as I thought it would be, as the thinness and weight offset the dongle issue. But the huge trackpad and touchbar seem to be gimmicks and not as effective as the hardware on the last iteration of the machine. And, FWIW, I've been waiting for this update for a long time and am coming from a 2008 MBP, and it's shocking how similar the experience is and how little improvement there has been in nine years...well, the negatives are that the ports are all gone and I can no longer upgrade the memory or the SSD, I've got a huge trackpad that doesn't work as well as the smaller one, and my function keys have been replaced with a touchbar that I have to look at, which is more expensive, and which takes many more key strokes to accomplish the same task. The plus is the screen is better, and given how huge and clunky the OS has become, I had to get a better processor just so it wouldn't lock up trying to run the OS. I can see where the touchbar could be useful if implemented in such a way that I could lock one particular group of menu items in it, such as the grouping and alignment tools in PowerPoint. But I really don't see that happening, especially when Apple has already applied it in a way that favors the "Gee doesn't it look cool with the little images" form over the "but it takes an extra three key strokes to do something really simple" lack of function.Hehe, doesn't matter if apple finds a cure to cancer, they will still be hated here..
That's not really true. All apple woudl have to do to not be hated here is make the MBP a bit thicker in order to improve battery and add necessary "legacy" ports, like, oh, say, ethernet and USB. Spec update the Mac Mini. Spec update the Mac Pro.Donezo.