Microsoft launches $70/year Office 365 Personal for Mac, iPad

The new Office 365 Personal subscription includes access to the service through one Mac or PC, as well as one tablet, including Apple's iPad. Previously, the cheapest option was Office 365 Home, which is priced at $99.99 per year with a one-year commitment.

While the Home plan, which still remains, includes access on 5 Macs or PCs and 5 tablets, the new Personal subscription is limited to one of each. Both plans come with smartphone access, and the ability to access the online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

The new Office 365 Personal plan also comes with offline storage, 27 gigabytes of online storage for one user, and 60 world minutes of calling per month to 60+ countries with Skype.

For those who don't want to commit to a full year, Office 365 Personal access can also be purchased for $6.99 per month, while the Home plan runs $9.99 per month.

Microsoft's industry leading Office suite debuted on Apple's iPad late last month. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are all free-to-download applications that come with the ability to view documents, while editing and saving requires a subscription to the Office 365 service.

Users can even subscribe to Office 365 through the official iPad applications, granting Apple its traditional 30 percent cut of all in-app and App Store purchases.

Downloads of Office for iPad hit 12 million units in the suite's first week of availability. The applications go head-to-head with Apple's own Pages, Numbers and Keynote for iOS.

As for the Mac, Microsoft has signaled that it is planning to release a new version for Apple's OS X platform later this year. The suite was last updated on the Mac in 2010, and subsequent updates have not arrived because Microsoft disbanded its Mac business unit soon after it launched.