Microsoft says the software is now a “first-class citizen” in the Office world. PowerPoint in the new Office for Mac 2016 Microsoftįrom the point of view of feature parity and user-interface consistency, this is a good thing - especially for the 75 percent of Office users who Microsoft claims use it on both Windows and Mac. To emphasize the point, the naming has advanced five years from the last Mac version - Office 2011 - to match the forthcoming Windows desktop version, Office 2016, due later this year. Microsoft brought out Office 2016 for Mac last week, and it’s essentially a clone of the Windows desktop version of Office. But it was typically behind its Windows cousin in features, and was on a different update cycle from Office for Windows. Until roughly two years ago, Microsoft had deployed a separate, independent, Apple-focused team to handle Office for Mac, with development help from Apple, and the product had a Mac look and feel. For many years - even when the rivalry between the two companies was at its hottest - Microsoft has produced a native version of its Office suite for Apple’s Macintosh computers, something Apple has welcomed.
