Roger Fingas
Microsoft on Tuesday launched standalone editions of Office 2016 for Mac for people who don't want or need an Office 365 subscription, which costs at least $7 per month or $70 per year.
The Home & Student edition costs a one-time fee of $150, and limits users to one Mac and 15 gigabytes of OneDrive cloud storage, versus the 1 terabyte assigned to 365 subscribers. Users can't fully unlock the mobile version of Office, and lack other perks like free tech support and Skype minutes.
A Home & Business edition costs $230. The only difference is the inclusion of Outlook.
For Office 2016 for Mac, Microsoft redesigned its apps with new interfaces in line with its flagship Windows software. Some features are still missing on the Mac, such as Quick Analysis in Excel.
The company released a Mac suite for Office 365 subscribers back in July. At the time it promised only that standalone software would ship sometime in September, leaving out pricing or what would be included.
Update: The article has been updated with information about the Home & Business edition.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
48 Comments
To me, 365 is worth it. $10 per month gets you five desktop licenses and five mobile licenses, as well as a terabyte of OneDrive storage. There are much worse things you could spend $10 a month on.
Pages really isn't an option unless you don't collaborate with anyone or only collaborate with people using only the latest version of Pages.
Not going back. Wiped MS Office from my mac, never regretted it.
1. What are the compelling new features?
2. How is MS enforcing the 1 Mac per license? How difficult is it to bypass the limit?
Still no OneDrive for Business client for OS X.
To me, 365 is worth it. $10 per month gets you five desktop licenses and five mobile licenses, as well as a terabyte of OneDrive storage. There are much worse things you could spend $10 a month on.
Pages really isn't an option unless you don't collaborate with anyone or only collaborate with people using only the latest version of Pages.
and what happens to YOUR documents etc if you can't afford the $120/year?
Say you lose your job? What if you couldn't update your resume because you MS monthly tithe has expired. Bang goes your next job then?
Tithe?
Yes. That is what is it. You pay them money for them to let you have the priviledge to access you information for another month.
I will never ever purchase a subscription for software where if I stop paying, it stops working.
I will pay for support but not where if I stop the software stops working.