24 ms·

Office 365 is now on Mac App Store

239 points by markwhiting 8y ago

ghshephard 8y ago
The million (10 million? 100 Million) dollar question that I haven't seen addressed yet (but I'm sure will be, if it hasn't already) - is what % cut Apple is getting from the subscription revenue.
- freehunter 8y ago
  Does Apple let developers negotiate their fee? I thought it was a flat 30% for the first year and 15% after that?
  - andyfleming 8y ago
    I think large players have some room to negotiate even if Apple never states it publicly.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    If you are large enough, anything is negotiable.
  - pkamb 8y ago
    They don't let "developers" negotiate their fee, but Microsoft and Netflix certainly do.
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      Netflix doesn't anymore. They stopped allowing new in-app purchases. Existing subscriptions done through iTunes, Apple still gets their cut; but from now on, Netflix subscriptions must be done through the website.
  - r0fl 8y ago
    Microsoft isn’t just another developer
- andyfleming 8y ago
  More specifically, I wonder if this is an intentional move to try to regain back some market share by showing that this is where software publishers are and should be selling.
- excalibur 8y ago
  > Users can also purchase a subscription for Office 365 from within the apps, so they can get up and running instantly. This would tend to suggest that Apple isn't getting a cut. Normally when they take one, it's on the basis of funds being transferred via their store, which doesn't appear to be the case here. 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.
  - jclardy 8y ago
    They are listing in-app purchases directly through the app store. My guess is they did get some kind of deal though (Like the supposed 15% deal that Netflix had before they pulled their IAPs.)
  - cpmsmith 8y ago
    They take a cut of in-app purchases/subscriptions as well, for apps distributed via the store. That's not to say there isn't likely a special deal in place, though.
  - eridius 8y ago
    Apps distributed on the Mac App Store can use platform-provided APIs to do IAPs, including subscriptions, just like on iOS.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    No, I think Apple will get a cut, but only a marginal one - probably a "better than Netflix" % deal, and definitely not the standard 30%. Favorability in negotiation terms usually tend to be proportional to the size of the parties involved.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    Keyword in your quote is "also". An in-app subscription billed through iTunes is explicitly written in the document as supported, so Apple will be getting a cut.
- paxys 8y ago
  These apps have already been on the iOS App Store for a while, and you can purchase a subscription in-app, so I don't think this will be any different.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  On this note, Apple's 30% flat tax is a poor decision. I wonder how much of a hit Apple would take if the first $5000 per year per app was rebated. There's a long tail of mild-moderately successful apps that provide value to some, but may not be economic to continue. With this system, devs could re-invest ~50% more funds into their early-stage product if they could. It may pay for itself in future success and better products. It's like a VC: You're small and a small amount of money means a lot to you. We'll give it to you in exchange for 30% of your future sales. The system works. Netflix does it. AWS does it. GCloud does it.
  - dirtae 8y ago
    I agree. I wrote a proposal for how this could work: https://blog.anylist.com/2015/02/open-letter-to-tim-cook-regarding-app-store-revenue-split/ https://blog.anylist.com/2015/02/open-letter-to-tim-cook-reg...
  - npunt 8y ago
    Agree, it doesn't adequately capture the full range of business models in the software market.
  - jonathanstrange 8y ago
    If you include all the factors like market share, cost of hardware, flat tax, ecosystem tie-in, development costs, then it becomes doubtful whether it makes sense to support MacOS anyway. I'm pretty certain that for most smaller companies MacOS support is a money sink and they just don't calculate the development costs correctly or they want to support the platform for strategical or ideological reasons.
    - markonen 8y ago
      The Mac has an installed base of 100 million. If you think about the addressable market for a "smaller company", that's plenty. Saying that the Mac is too small for smaller companies to bother with is like saying that Germany is too small to run a small business in. It's demonstrably false. Or are you arguing that other platforms have a better developer ROI? That's intriguing. Which ones, and why?
freehunter 8y ago
Is this the mobile version of the apps, a wrapper around the web version of the apps, or actual full-fledged desktop Office?
- Tomte 8y ago
  Desktop Office. Microsoft has been offering a "real office" on Mac for many, many years now. The news is not that Office is on Mac, it's that it is distributed through the App Store.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    I knew they've had full Office since forever. I just didn't know if the App Store version itself was full Office or a mobile/web Office like on the iOS App Store.
    - phs318u 8y ago
      According to this post [0], Microsoft use a "shared Office codebase for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android". Before the individual iOS Office apps, Microsoft had an "Office mobile" app which may well have been a web app (though I can't find anything on that either way). [0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Shared-Office-codebase-for-Windows-Mac-iOS-and-Android-means/ba-p/150291 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Share...
      - zapzupnz 8y ago
        I believe it was indeed a web app. The efforts to get a shared code base began in earnest after Nadella took over as CEO at MS, and Office stopped being a means to sell copies of Windows and rather a chargeable service unto itself - I believe the shared codebase first started to surface in the apps for iOS and Android. Well, I say that. Really, the Windows and macOS version had been sharing code for ages, but plenty of it was still bespoke for macOS. I think their rewrite to Cocoa, which I believe happened around the same time as the iOS apps started being developed, helped to bring further parity.
walterbell 8y ago
Can you pay to use the app for only one or two months? Or does it requiring subscribing and cancelling?
- tomnipotent 8y ago
  Office 365 offers month-to-month or annual subscriptions.
- xattt 8y ago
  Some universities offer basic Office 365 (Word, PP, Excel) when you are a registered student.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    And some non-tertiary (primary/elementary, secondary/high) schools, too.
- thought_alarm 8y ago
  You have to purchase a subscription, but you can cancel at any time. If you purchase an in-app subscription through the App Store with your Apple ID, the only option is a yearly subscription. If you purchase a subscription directly from Microsoft's website, you can purchase either a yearly or monthly subscription. The yearly subscription costs the same in both cases, and is cheaper unless you only want to use the app for a few months.
  - judge2020 8y ago
    > The yearly subscription costs the same in both cases, Is this through in-app purchases? It would seem counterintuitive to let Apple take 30% from the yearly subscription if they've gotten away with distributing outside the app store for so long. (but they may have a special revenue share agreement)
    - thought_alarm 8y ago
      That's how it has always been. If a company acquires a new subscription through the App Store then Apple processes the subscription and takes 30% the first year and 15% of each subsequent year. Apple doesn't claim any percentage of subscriptions acquired outside of the App Store. If Microsoft acquires a new user and subscription through the App Store then Apple is entitled to their cut. If Microsoft acquires a new subscription organically outside of the App Store then Apple is obviously not entitled to a cut. If Microsoft doesn't want the ability to acquire new subscriptions through the App Store (and pay Apple for it) then that's their prerogative, but right now that's not the case.
killion 8y ago
I'm wondering if it's worth uninstalling Office and reinstalling. If it uses the App Store update mechanism instead of Microsoft Autoupdate I would prefer it. Autoupdate presents a window almost every time a launch an Office application.
- TMWNN 8y ago
  Microsoft AutoUpdate used to pop up, but lately the updating has happened in the background and I haven't seen any window. Because of that I don't want to install the App Store version, because it seems like any obtrusive update (one that requires my attention) is more likely to occur in that venue.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    If you have the App Store set to allow automatic updates, you should never see anything - it will always happen in the background.
- nicky0 8y ago
  And half the time Autoupdate just wants to update itself!
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    s/half/nearly every time Then again, Apple's not immune to this. Nine times out of ten, Software Update for Windows has an urgent update for Software Update for Windows.
    - coherentpony 8y ago
      Yep. It only happens when the date changes.
  - acranox 8y ago
    I went so long between using Word that auto update couldn’t update itself anymore. I guess the old version wasn’t compatible with whatever happened in the last year. So I had to go manually download an update package for the AutoUpdater so that I could find out there wasn’t any updates for Word. Awesome.
krembo 8y ago
Office was available for Mac for many years. The news here is that Office is now in the Mac App Store, not that big of a news. Anyhow, worth noting that the Mac versions of Office are no near to the Windows versions. They are thin clients with only a portion of the win capabilities, and those which exists are buggy, to say the least. If I had a Mac, I would go to G Suite, which gives better capabilities for 99.9% of the users, and if I was on the .1% I would go and buy a PC. * BTW- Wine 4 was released this week, and they also don't support any of the O365 apps, especially not their 64bit versions.
- tphan 8y ago
  I use both Office for Mac and Windows all the time and Office for Mac is pretty reliable IMO. They pretty much have feature parity. Which features are you missing?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - krembo 8y ago
    Have you tried using PowerQuery for instance? It's only one of the things available in Windows only. Same if you try to work with the Data Model. (I'm not sure for Macros & VBAs but can guess they are also mostly not functional) Again, not very common for the 99%, but if you are an Excel power user you should know about those, especially about PQ.
  - peteretep 8y ago
    Is MS Access still missing?
    - sigzero 8y ago
      Yes, I believe there are no plans to get Access to work on macOS.
      - innocentoldguy 8y ago
pkamb 8y ago
Is it sandboxed?
- willio58 8y ago
  What did office do before that would have required a non-sandboxed implementation? One pro-sandboxing point for office would be not allowing any sort of auto-updates if the user doesn't want them (and no repeated bugging of users about it).
- abrowne 8y ago
  My question exactly: did MS change Office to get in the Mac App Store rules or did Apple change the MAS rules to get Office in?
  - dg246 8y ago
    Neither. The existing Office desktop apps are already sandboxed.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Apple has allowed Microsoft Office quite a few exemptions that are not normally handed out.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Apparently, though it seems to have been granted quite a few exceptions: $ codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/Microsoft\ Word.app/ Executable=/Applications/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>com.apple.security.cs.disable-library-validation</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.developer.aps-environment</key> <string>production</string> <key>com.apple.security.assets.pictures.read-only</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.sbpl</key> <array> <string>(allow file-read* file-write* (require-all (vnode-type REGULAR-FILE) (regex #"(^|/)~\$[^/]+$")) )</string> <string>(deny file-write* (subpath (string-append (param "_HOME") "/Library/Application Scripts")) (subpath (string-append (param "_HOME") "/Library/LaunchAgents")) )</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.app-sandbox</key> <true/> <key>keychain-access-groups</key> <array> <string>UBF8T346G9.*</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.apple-events</key> <array> <string>com.microsoft.outlook</string> <string>com.microsoft.lync</string> <string>com.microsoft.skypeforbusiness</string> <string>com.filemaker.client.pro12</string> <string>com.thomsonresearchsoft.endnote</string> <string>com.dessci.mathtype</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.assets.movies.read-only</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.automation.apple-events</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.shared-preference.read-write</key> <array> <string>com.microsoft.autoupdate2</string> <string>com.microsoft.office</string> <string>com.microsoft.shared</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.application-groups</key> <array> <string>UBF8T346G9.Office</string> <string>UBF8T346G9.ms</string> <string>UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost</string> <string>UBF8T346G9.OfficeOneDriveSyncIntegration</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.scripting-targets</key> <dict> <key>com.apple.mail</key> <array> <string>com.apple.mail.compose</string> </array> </dict> <key>com.apple.security.print</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.application-identifier</key> <string>UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.Word</string> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.home-relative-path.read-only</key> <array> <string>/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.mach-lookup.global-name</key> <array> <string>com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.helper.port</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.shared-preference.read-only</key> <array> <string>com.ThomsonResearchSoft.EndNote</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.absolute-path.read-only</key> <array> <string>/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist</string> <string>/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.files.bookmarks.app-scope</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.developer.team-identifier</key> <string>UBF8T346G9</string> <key>com.apple.security.network.client</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.personal-information.addressbook</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.assets.music.read-only</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.cs.allow-unsigned-executable-memory</key> <true/> </dict> </plist>
npunt 8y ago
Big move. I see this potentially as groundwork for the eventual integration of Mac and iOS App Stores, which you have to imagine is something Apple wants in the years ahead as platforms converge on common software stack and UX. It's also a signal that the App Store team may now be willing to do the deals necessary to attract MacOS apps back toward this larger strategic initiative (vs just trying to maximize revenue). From Microsoft's perspective, now that Windows is sidelined, Office is their primary consumer platform and that means UX outweighs any strategic tax of trying to make the Windows version better. 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. Coupled with the poor autoupdate UX on Mac [1], and it's almost like Microsoft doesn't want you to have Office on Mac. I think the issue finally reached a breaking point there and they shifted to UX > control. This is a positive shift for them, since being on the App Store means features ship faster and users see value in their Office subscription. Aside from update UX this is obviously a way to bump their Mac Office numbers. Seems like a good play from both Apple & Microsoft's perspective. [1] Right now Microsoft's autoupdate UX is pretty terrible at keeping things up to date. When I visit my parents, they're almost always several versions behind, and as another commenter pointed out, a decent part of that is the autoupdate needing to update itself. They have automated updates but its 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.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  > which you have to imagine is something Apple wants in the years ahead as platforms converge on common software stack and UX I don't think we have to imagine that. Apple's been against that sort of thing for a long time, and I don't see that changing any time soon. They don't target the lowest common denominator. I suppose that the Marzipan project, of iOS frameworks on macOS, should prove me wrong but I still don't think so. The few apps that Apple has given us are ... kinda bad. Their non-nativeness screams out: they don't respond properly to gestures, many macOS Services don't work in them, and the user interfaces are laggy. Yes, I suppose things will change with the next version of macOS, but there's no real way to avoid the fact that UIKit on macOS doesn't make proper macOS apps --- and developers will have to decide what matters more; time to market or customer satisfaction. I'm fairly sure Marzipan is a stopgap, not a platform unto itself. Get your iOS apps running on macOS, and slowly move them to native macOS paradigms. I'm actually hoping that things like Office 365, Lightroom CC (and perhaps the other Adobe apps), BBEdit, etc. help developers see the potential of proper macOS apps (I'll take these big developers' emulations of Cocoa over UIKit-on-macOS any day), and smaller developers will follow suit. (And if their code is MVC-compliant in the Cocoa way, that should't be too big an issue; you can mix and match views and controllers from AppKit and UIKit!) > Have you tried to download Office from their website? If you have an Office 365 account, all you need to do is go to office.com, sign in, and there's a big friendly "Install Office" button right there. But I do generally agree that there is too much friction getting this "must-have" piece of software; I don't care for Office much, but denying its influence and widespread usage is a task best relegated to those who think everybody should write in LaTeX.
mark_l_watson 8y ago
There are some services that are so worth the money that I am happy to pay for: Office 365, Dropbox, and GSuite. I am as much of a cheapskate as the next guy, but it makes sense to pay for services that help get work done and/or make life easier. I am curious if Microsoft is paying Apple a 30% cut, or if they got a better deal.
- taftster 8y ago
  How many licenses of GSuite to you maintain? One license, $5 / month. Seems reasonable. I have six family members. $360 / year for GSuite, that's untenable to me.
  - wp381640 8y ago
    I paid $400+ a year for personal accounts since GSuite went premium. I just switched over to another provider because I reached a tipping point of not being able to tolerate GSuite support - it is horrible. horrible. horrible. horrible. Took 1+ and 3+ weeks to resolve the only two minor issues we've ever had. Support replies were a series of unrelated prefilled replies, it seems whoever is on the other end is just keen to reply with whatever asap (phone is no better) I don't think i've ever given Microsoft a dollar in my life but i'm strongly considering purchasing their email hosting based on feedback from companies I know using it. I don't mind paying for things, I hate paying for things and then not getting what was advertised.
    - shimms 8y ago
      Have you checked out Fastmail? Whilst I use and pay for Office 365 for business, my personal email is on Fastmail (migrated from Gmail after a decade with them) and very happy with it.
      - taftster 8y ago
        $5/user/month with a custom domain. It's the same pricing as GSuite. Just doesn't reflect the right price point for me. By the way, how is Fastmail's spam filtering? Gmail/GSuite is probably the best, and one of my concerns would be going back to the days of seeing enlargement products in my inbox.
w323898 8y ago
>yo dawg, I heard you like botnet so I’m letting you install botnet through a botnet #UNIX
dstroot 8y ago
I uninstalled and then used homebrew and mas to install. Now I think 100% of my software is installed via homebrew. Nice!
misterbwong 8y ago
PSA: iTunes gift cards can usually be had for a discount (generally 15%, maybe more) so you can save some $ with this move.
- swarnie_ 8y ago
  Are you saying you can buy $100 iTunes gift cards for $85 dollars? That's kinda sketchy....
  - dewey 8y ago
    There are a lot of deals like that from time to time and it's not sketchy. https://www.imore.com/thrifter-deal-score-50-itunes-gift-card-40-best-buy-right-now https://www.imore.com/thrifter-deal-score-50-itunes-gift-car...
    - swarnie_ 8y ago
      Thanks, i had no idea. I assumed this was similar to Amazon cards in the UK ie a great way to quickly move money off a stolen credit card with only a 20-30% laundering cost.
deca6cda37d0 8y ago
This very good for Mac admins of any kind of organisation that uses MDM. Finally just push those apps to the users from the server. If Adobe Creative Cloud could be downloaded from the Mac App Store it would be perfect. Now I use homebrew to install lots of software and fonts internally.
quattrofan 8y ago
Poor Mac users
- voxl_ 8y ago
  You spelled "Windows" wrong. Why poor? Why post something like this without an explanation? Does it make you feel good? Maybe you didn't know that Mac has had office for more than a decade.
fock 8y ago
Just after some random outage in Europe yesterday. Wonder why this get's up the front page today...
tr33house 8y ago
Big question is, when is it coming to Linux
intopieces 8y ago
Very pleased to be able to download just Microsoft Word from the store. It does seem snappier than the previous version. Sidenote, I use MS Word for one thing only, and that's Chinese homework. Are there any other word processors that do Pinyin well? I'll pay.

239 points by markwhiting 8y ago

The million (10 million? 100 Million) dollar question that I haven't seen addressed yet (but I'm sure will be, if it hasn't already) - is what % cut Apple is getting from the subscription revenue.

freehunter 8y ago
Does Apple let developers negotiate their fee? I thought it was a flat 30% for the first year and 15% after that?
- andyfleming 8y ago
  I think large players have some room to negotiate even if Apple never states it publicly.
- scarface74 8y ago
  If you are large enough, anything is negotiable.
- pkamb 8y ago
  They don't let "developers" negotiate their fee, but Microsoft and Netflix certainly do.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    Netflix doesn't anymore. They stopped allowing new in-app purchases. Existing subscriptions done through iTunes, Apple still gets their cut; but from now on, Netflix subscriptions must be done through the website.
- r0fl 8y ago
  Microsoft isn’t just another developer
andyfleming 8y ago
More specifically, I wonder if this is an intentional move to try to regain back some market share by showing that this is where software publishers are and should be selling.
excalibur 8y ago
> Users can also purchase a subscription for Office 365 from within the apps, so they can get up and running instantly. This would tend to suggest that Apple isn't getting a cut. Normally when they take one, it's on the basis of funds being transferred via their store, which doesn't appear to be the case here. 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.
- jclardy 8y ago
  They are listing in-app purchases directly through the app store. My guess is they did get some kind of deal though (Like the supposed 15% deal that Netflix had before they pulled their IAPs.)
- cpmsmith 8y ago
  They take a cut of in-app purchases/subscriptions as well, for apps distributed via the store. That's not to say there isn't likely a special deal in place, though.
- eridius 8y ago
  Apps distributed on the Mac App Store can use platform-provided APIs to do IAPs, including subscriptions, just like on iOS.
- r00fus 8y ago
  No, I think Apple will get a cut, but only a marginal one - probably a "better than Netflix" % deal, and definitely not the standard 30%. Favorability in negotiation terms usually tend to be proportional to the size of the parties involved.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Keyword in your quote is "also". An in-app subscription billed through iTunes is explicitly written in the document as supported, so Apple will be getting a cut.
paxys 8y ago
These apps have already been on the iOS App Store for a while, and you can purchase a subscription in-app, so I don't think this will be any different.
Scoundreller 8y ago
On this note, Apple's 30% flat tax is a poor decision. I wonder how much of a hit Apple would take if the first $5000 per year per app was rebated. There's a long tail of mild-moderately successful apps that provide value to some, but may not be economic to continue. With this system, devs could re-invest ~50% more funds into their early-stage product if they could. It may pay for itself in future success and better products. It's like a VC: You're small and a small amount of money means a lot to you. We'll give it to you in exchange for 30% of your future sales. The system works. Netflix does it. AWS does it. GCloud does it.
- dirtae 8y ago
  I agree. I wrote a proposal for how this could work: https://blog.anylist.com/2015/02/open-letter-to-tim-cook-regarding-app-store-revenue-split/ https://blog.anylist.com/2015/02/open-letter-to-tim-cook-reg...
- npunt 8y ago
  Agree, it doesn't adequately capture the full range of business models in the software market.
- jonathanstrange 8y ago
  If you include all the factors like market share, cost of hardware, flat tax, ecosystem tie-in, development costs, then it becomes doubtful whether it makes sense to support MacOS anyway. I'm pretty certain that for most smaller companies MacOS support is a money sink and they just don't calculate the development costs correctly or they want to support the platform for strategical or ideological reasons.
  - markonen 8y ago
    The Mac has an installed base of 100 million. If you think about the addressable market for a "smaller company", that's plenty. Saying that the Mac is too small for smaller companies to bother with is like saying that Germany is too small to run a small business in. It's demonstrably false. Or are you arguing that other platforms have a better developer ROI? That's intriguing. Which ones, and why?

freehunter 8y ago

Is this the mobile version of the apps, a wrapper around the web version of the apps, or actual full-fledged desktop Office?

Tomte 8y ago
Desktop Office. Microsoft has been offering a "real office" on Mac for many, many years now. The news is not that Office is on Mac, it's that it is distributed through the App Store.
- freehunter 8y ago
  I knew they've had full Office since forever. I just didn't know if the App Store version itself was full Office or a mobile/web Office like on the iOS App Store.
  - phs318u 8y ago
    According to this post [0], Microsoft use a "shared Office codebase for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android". Before the individual iOS Office apps, Microsoft had an "Office mobile" app which may well have been a web app (though I can't find anything on that either way). [0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Shared-Office-codebase-for-Windows-Mac-iOS-and-Android-means/ba-p/150291 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Share...
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      I believe it was indeed a web app. The efforts to get a shared code base began in earnest after Nadella took over as CEO at MS, and Office stopped being a means to sell copies of Windows and rather a chargeable service unto itself - I believe the shared codebase first started to surface in the apps for iOS and Android. Well, I say that. Really, the Windows and macOS version had been sharing code for ages, but plenty of it was still bespoke for macOS. I think their rewrite to Cocoa, which I believe happened around the same time as the iOS apps started being developed, helped to bring further parity.

walterbell 8y ago

Can you pay to use the app for only one or two months? Or does it requiring subscribing and cancelling?

tomnipotent 8y ago
Office 365 offers month-to-month or annual subscriptions.
xattt 8y ago
Some universities offer basic Office 365 (Word, PP, Excel) when you are a registered student.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  And some non-tertiary (primary/elementary, secondary/high) schools, too.
thought_alarm 8y ago
You have to purchase a subscription, but you can cancel at any time. If you purchase an in-app subscription through the App Store with your Apple ID, the only option is a yearly subscription. If you purchase a subscription directly from Microsoft's website, you can purchase either a yearly or monthly subscription. The yearly subscription costs the same in both cases, and is cheaper unless you only want to use the app for a few months.
- judge2020 8y ago
  > The yearly subscription costs the same in both cases, Is this through in-app purchases? It would seem counterintuitive to let Apple take 30% from the yearly subscription if they've gotten away with distributing outside the app store for so long. (but they may have a special revenue share agreement)
  - thought_alarm 8y ago
    That's how it has always been. If a company acquires a new subscription through the App Store then Apple processes the subscription and takes 30% the first year and 15% of each subsequent year. Apple doesn't claim any percentage of subscriptions acquired outside of the App Store. If Microsoft acquires a new user and subscription through the App Store then Apple is entitled to their cut. If Microsoft acquires a new subscription organically outside of the App Store then Apple is obviously not entitled to a cut. If Microsoft doesn't want the ability to acquire new subscriptions through the App Store (and pay Apple for it) then that's their prerogative, but right now that's not the case.

killion 8y ago

I'm wondering if it's worth uninstalling Office and reinstalling. If it uses the App Store update mechanism instead of Microsoft Autoupdate I would prefer it. Autoupdate presents a window almost every time a launch an Office application.

TMWNN 8y ago
Microsoft AutoUpdate used to pop up, but lately the updating has happened in the background and I haven't seen any window. Because of that I don't want to install the App Store version, because it seems like any obtrusive update (one that requires my attention) is more likely to occur in that venue.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  If you have the App Store set to allow automatic updates, you should never see anything - it will always happen in the background.
nicky0 8y ago
And half the time Autoupdate just wants to update itself!
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  s/half/nearly every time Then again, Apple's not immune to this. Nine times out of ten, Software Update for Windows has an urgent update for Software Update for Windows.
  - coherentpony 8y ago
    Yep. It only happens when the date changes.
- acranox 8y ago
  I went so long between using Word that auto update couldn’t update itself anymore. I guess the old version wasn’t compatible with whatever happened in the last year. So I had to go manually download an update package for the AutoUpdater so that I could find out there wasn’t any updates for Word. Awesome.

krembo 8y ago

Office was available for Mac for many years. The news here is that Office is now in the Mac App Store, not that big of a news. Anyhow, worth noting that the Mac versions of Office are no near to the Windows versions. They are thin clients with only a portion of the win capabilities, and those which exists are buggy, to say the least. If I had a Mac, I would go to G Suite, which gives better capabilities for 99.9% of the users, and if I was on the .1% I would go and buy a PC. * BTW- Wine 4 was released this week, and they also don't support any of the O365 apps, especially not their 64bit versions.

tphan 8y ago
I use both Office for Mac and Windows all the time and Office for Mac is pretty reliable IMO. They pretty much have feature parity. Which features are you missing?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- krembo 8y ago
  Have you tried using PowerQuery for instance? It's only one of the things available in Windows only. Same if you try to work with the Data Model. (I'm not sure for Macros & VBAs but can guess they are also mostly not functional) Again, not very common for the 99%, but if you are an Excel power user you should know about those, especially about PQ.
- peteretep 8y ago
  Is MS Access still missing?
  - sigzero 8y ago
    Yes, I believe there are no plans to get Access to work on macOS.
    - innocentoldguy 8y ago

pkamb 8y ago

Is it sandboxed?

willio58 8y ago
What did office do before that would have required a non-sandboxed implementation? One pro-sandboxing point for office would be not allowing any sort of auto-updates if the user doesn't want them (and no repeated bugging of users about it).
abrowne 8y ago
My question exactly: did MS change Office to get in the Mac App Store rules or did Apple change the MAS rules to get Office in?
- dg246 8y ago
  Neither. The existing Office desktop apps are already sandboxed.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Apple has allowed Microsoft Office quite a few exemptions that are not normally handed out.
saagarjha 8y ago
Apparently, though it seems to have been granted quite a few exceptions: $ codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/Microsoft\ Word.app/ Executable=/Applications/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>com.apple.security.cs.disable-library-validation</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.developer.aps-environment</key> <string>production</string> <key>com.apple.security.assets.pictures.read-only</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.sbpl</key> <array> <string>(allow file-read* file-write* (require-all (vnode-type REGULAR-FILE) (regex #"(^|/)~\$[^/]+$")) )</string> <string>(deny file-write* (subpath (string-append (param "_HOME") "/Library/Application Scripts")) (subpath (string-append (param "_HOME") "/Library/LaunchAgents")) )</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.app-sandbox</key> <true/> <key>keychain-access-groups</key> <array> <string>UBF8T346G9.*</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.apple-events</key> <array> <string>com.microsoft.outlook</string> <string>com.microsoft.lync</string> <string>com.microsoft.skypeforbusiness</string> <string>com.filemaker.client.pro12</string> <string>com.thomsonresearchsoft.endnote</string> <string>com.dessci.mathtype</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.assets.movies.read-only</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.automation.apple-events</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.shared-preference.read-write</key> <array> <string>com.microsoft.autoupdate2</string> <string>com.microsoft.office</string> <string>com.microsoft.shared</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.application-groups</key> <array> <string>UBF8T346G9.Office</string> <string>UBF8T346G9.ms</string> <string>UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost</string> <string>UBF8T346G9.OfficeOneDriveSyncIntegration</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.scripting-targets</key> <dict> <key>com.apple.mail</key> <array> <string>com.apple.mail.compose</string> </array> </dict> <key>com.apple.security.print</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.application-identifier</key> <string>UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.Word</string> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.home-relative-path.read-only</key> <array> <string>/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.mach-lookup.global-name</key> <array> <string>com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.helper.port</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.shared-preference.read-only</key> <array> <string>com.ThomsonResearchSoft.EndNote</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.files.absolute-path.read-only</key> <array> <string>/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist</string> <string>/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/</string> </array> <key>com.apple.security.files.bookmarks.app-scope</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.developer.team-identifier</key> <string>UBF8T346G9</string> <key>com.apple.security.network.client</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.personal-information.addressbook</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.assets.music.read-only</key> <true/> <key>com.apple.security.cs.allow-unsigned-executable-memory</key> <true/> </dict> </plist>

npunt 8y ago

Big move. I see this potentially as groundwork for the eventual integration of Mac and iOS App Stores, which you have to imagine is something Apple wants in the years ahead as platforms converge on common software stack and UX. It's also a signal that the App Store team may now be willing to do the deals necessary to attract MacOS apps back toward this larger strategic initiative (vs just trying to maximize revenue). From Microsoft's perspective, now that Windows is sidelined, Office is their primary consumer platform and that means UX outweighs any strategic tax of trying to make the Windows version better. 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. Coupled with the poor autoupdate UX on Mac [1], and it's almost like Microsoft doesn't want you to have Office on Mac. I think the issue finally reached a breaking point there and they shifted to UX > control. This is a positive shift for them, since being on the App Store means features ship faster and users see value in their Office subscription. Aside from update UX this is obviously a way to bump their Mac Office numbers. Seems like a good play from both Apple & Microsoft's perspective. [1] Right now Microsoft's autoupdate UX is pretty terrible at keeping things up to date. When I visit my parents, they're almost always several versions behind, and as another commenter pointed out, a decent part of that is the autoupdate needing to update itself. They have automated updates but its 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.

zapzupnz 8y ago
> which you have to imagine is something Apple wants in the years ahead as platforms converge on common software stack and UX I don't think we have to imagine that. Apple's been against that sort of thing for a long time, and I don't see that changing any time soon. They don't target the lowest common denominator. I suppose that the Marzipan project, of iOS frameworks on macOS, should prove me wrong but I still don't think so. The few apps that Apple has given us are ... kinda bad. Their non-nativeness screams out: they don't respond properly to gestures, many macOS Services don't work in them, and the user interfaces are laggy. Yes, I suppose things will change with the next version of macOS, but there's no real way to avoid the fact that UIKit on macOS doesn't make proper macOS apps --- and developers will have to decide what matters more; time to market or customer satisfaction. I'm fairly sure Marzipan is a stopgap, not a platform unto itself. Get your iOS apps running on macOS, and slowly move them to native macOS paradigms. I'm actually hoping that things like Office 365, Lightroom CC (and perhaps the other Adobe apps), BBEdit, etc. help developers see the potential of proper macOS apps (I'll take these big developers' emulations of Cocoa over UIKit-on-macOS any day), and smaller developers will follow suit. (And if their code is MVC-compliant in the Cocoa way, that should't be too big an issue; you can mix and match views and controllers from AppKit and UIKit!) > Have you tried to download Office from their website? If you have an Office 365 account, all you need to do is go to office.com, sign in, and there's a big friendly "Install Office" button right there. But I do generally agree that there is too much friction getting this "must-have" piece of software; I don't care for Office much, but denying its influence and widespread usage is a task best relegated to those who think everybody should write in LaTeX.

mark_l_watson 8y ago

There are some services that are so worth the money that I am happy to pay for: Office 365, Dropbox, and GSuite. I am as much of a cheapskate as the next guy, but it makes sense to pay for services that help get work done and/or make life easier. I am curious if Microsoft is paying Apple a 30% cut, or if they got a better deal.

taftster 8y ago
How many licenses of GSuite to you maintain? One license, $5 / month. Seems reasonable. I have six family members. $360 / year for GSuite, that's untenable to me.
- wp381640 8y ago
  I paid $400+ a year for personal accounts since GSuite went premium. I just switched over to another provider because I reached a tipping point of not being able to tolerate GSuite support - it is horrible. horrible. horrible. horrible. Took 1+ and 3+ weeks to resolve the only two minor issues we've ever had. Support replies were a series of unrelated prefilled replies, it seems whoever is on the other end is just keen to reply with whatever asap (phone is no better) I don't think i've ever given Microsoft a dollar in my life but i'm strongly considering purchasing their email hosting based on feedback from companies I know using it. I don't mind paying for things, I hate paying for things and then not getting what was advertised.
  - shimms 8y ago
    Have you checked out Fastmail? Whilst I use and pay for Office 365 for business, my personal email is on Fastmail (migrated from Gmail after a decade with them) and very happy with it.
    - taftster 8y ago
      $5/user/month with a custom domain. It's the same pricing as GSuite. Just doesn't reflect the right price point for me. By the way, how is Fastmail's spam filtering? Gmail/GSuite is probably the best, and one of my concerns would be going back to the days of seeing enlargement products in my inbox.

w323898 8y ago

>yo dawg, I heard you like botnet so I’m letting you install botnet through a botnet #UNIX

dstroot 8y ago

I uninstalled and then used homebrew and mas to install. Now I think 100% of my software is installed via homebrew. Nice!

misterbwong 8y ago

PSA: iTunes gift cards can usually be had for a discount (generally 15%, maybe more) so you can save some $ with this move.

swarnie_ 8y ago
Are you saying you can buy $100 iTunes gift cards for $85 dollars? That's kinda sketchy....
- dewey 8y ago
  There are a lot of deals like that from time to time and it's not sketchy. https://www.imore.com/thrifter-deal-score-50-itunes-gift-card-40-best-buy-right-now https://www.imore.com/thrifter-deal-score-50-itunes-gift-car...
  - swarnie_ 8y ago
    Thanks, i had no idea. I assumed this was similar to Amazon cards in the UK ie a great way to quickly move money off a stolen credit card with only a 20-30% laundering cost.

deca6cda37d0 8y ago

This very good for Mac admins of any kind of organisation that uses MDM. Finally just push those apps to the users from the server. If Adobe Creative Cloud could be downloaded from the Mac App Store it would be perfect. Now I use homebrew to install lots of software and fonts internally.

quattrofan 8y ago

Poor Mac users

voxl_ 8y ago
You spelled "Windows" wrong. Why poor? Why post something like this without an explanation? Does it make you feel good? Maybe you didn't know that Mac has had office for more than a decade.

fock 8y ago

Just after some random outage in Europe yesterday. Wonder why this get's up the front page today...

tr33house 8y ago

Big question is, when is it coming to Linux

intopieces 8y ago

Very pleased to be able to download just Microsoft Word from the store. It does seem snappier than the previous version. Sidenote, I use MS Word for one thing only, and that's Chinese homework. Are there any other word processors that do Pinyin well? I'll pay.