Here are examples of that unfinished quality in Office 2016. (Office 2016 for Windows desktops is due in September, and the Windows Phone version by 2016.)īut as Microsoft typically does on its Mac software, it cuts corners and sacrifices usability where it doesn't need to. Office 2016 is based on the solid Office 365 for iPad, which is also the basis for the capable Office for Android and the touch-oriented Office Mobile for Windows 10 tablet PCs released earlier this week. It's good that Microsoft is making the Office UI more common across its various versions.
Frankly, Office is a very mature product that doesn't need more features thrown at it, simply refinements and support for modern trends like cloud storage access. The good news is that the core of Office 2016 is solid - as it was in Office 2008 and Office 2003 before it. Maybe because it's been four years since Microsoft bothered to update Office for Mac (the stunningly unusable Ofice 2011, whose painful memory I long ago buried), and seven years since a serious update (Office 2008), people are grateful of anything. It's a marginal improvement over Office 2008, and it has issues that show it should still be in beta. I've been using Office 2016 for Mac as my everyday office productivity suite since it went into beta earlier this year, and I don't understand why so many reviewers are fawning over it.
