By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Microsoft announced the newest version of its Office productivity suite Thursday.
In a blog post, the company detailed the new features of Office 2016 – a noticeable name change from the current version, Office 365.
Claiming that the new Office “will remain the comprehensive Office experience you’re long familiar with,” Julia White, Microsoft’s general manager of the Office product management team, noted that Office 2016 will be best suited for a computer with a keyboard and a mouse – meaning it hasn’t yet made an extraordinary jump to tablets and smartphones.
Microsoft is also releasing a series of Office “universal” apps that are optimized for mobile use.
These app versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and other Office software are built for touchscreens.
The apps “are designed from the ground up to run on Windows 10, built for touch and offer the unmistakable Office experience you know and love,” White explained. “As ‘universal’ Office apps, they truly are the same app across device size.”
The Office apps will be pre-installed for free on smartphones and smaller tablets powered by Windows 10 – which Microsoft claimed Wednesday will be given away for free when it introduced the world to its new operating system that features a new browser and holographic technology – an acute strategy shift considering how much revenue the Redmond, Washington, company pulls in from sales of its famed operating system.
White did not reveal any fundamental changes to the beloved Office programs in her post about the updates. Instead, she opted to point out incremental improvements, like a darker color palette which will be less straining on users’ eyes.
White wrote that Microsoft expects to release Office 2016 in the second half of year, while the Office apps will be made available in the coming months.
