Microsoft Office 365 now available on the Mac App Store

Yesterday, the team at Microsoft announced that Office 365 is available on the Mac App Store for the first time. Mac users can now download Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote and the whole suite of Microsoft’s popular apps. It is also possible to purchase a subscription for Office 365 from within the apps.

With Office 365 on the Mac App Store, these apps can be easily distributed to the employees using Apple Business Manager, a central dashboard where IT can deploy devices, apps and licenses. Users can now work with their Office tools across Mac, iPad and iPhone. Also, few new features are designed specifically for Apple devices.

Jared Spataro, corporate vice president at Microsoft, said, “We are excited to announce that today Office 365 is arriving in the Mac App Store. We have worked closely with Apple to provide Mac users with the very best productivity experience — one that offers everything they know and love about Office through an experience uniquely designed for the Mac.”

Office 365 for Mac has been designed for supporting features such as Dark Mode and Continuity Camera in macOS and MacBook Pro Touch Bar and Mac’s industry-leading Trackpad.

Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple, said, “We are excited to welcome Microsoft Office 365 to the all-new Mac App Store in macOS Mojave. Apple and Microsoft have worked together to bring great Office productivity to Mac users from the very beginning. Now, with Office 365 on the Mac App Store, it's easier than ever to get the latest and best version of Office 365 for Mac, iPad and, iPhone.”

Users have given mixed reactions to this news. Some of the users are happy with this news. One of the users commented on HackerNews, “I use both Office for Mac and Windows all the time and Office for Mac is pretty reliable IMO.”

This also looks like a big move for both the companies. Users are now looking at this bigger picture where both Mac and iOS app stores will be integrated together. This could possibly be a step closer to a better UX (for Microsoft). Another comment reads, “Have you tried to download Office from their website? It's a horrible, braindead experience. You have to log in to your Live account, then go to a particular page to manage your existing Office installs that is super confusing.”

There is also a discussion going on with regards to App store updates and Microsoft autoupdate. A comment on HackerNews reads, “If it uses the App Store update mechanism instead of Microsoft Autoupdate I would prefer it.” Another comment reads, “Right now Microsoft's autoupdate UX is pretty terrible at keeping things up to date. They have automated updates but it's hard to trust that process won't result in issues when documents are open, and it presents a lot of cognitive load to users on top of the OS & App Store updates.”

Few of the users are wondering if Apple will get its share from the subscription fee of the Office 365. But on the whole, users are on the go that there is some mechanism via which both the companies will benefit. One of the users commented, “But this is a massive deal between two of the ecosystem's biggest fish, and I'm sure an arrangement has been made to give Apple a piece of the pie somehow.”

Users’ biggest question is if Microsoft has changed Office 365 in order to get in the Mac App Store rules or has Apple changed its rules to get Office in? Or is it very well sandboxed?

Well, only time will answer these questions!

To know more about this news, check out the official announcement on Apple’s newsroom.