Earlier this week, Apple unveiled a new Mac lineup consisting of a new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini running on Apple's own M1 CPU. This is a major shift for Apple, which for years has used Intel CPUs in its Macs. With this pivot to its own in-house silicon, there will obviously be some changes to the way apps are developed for Macs.
The arrival of trackpad support on iPads ushered in a flurry of updates for apps that now leverage this feature, giving users a laptop-like experience with the portability of a tablet. In an announcement today, Microsoft said that it has updated several of its Office apps for iPadOS to take full advantage of this feature. Likewise, the company has also enhanced the apps' interface.
Microsoft has been known to be rather aggressive and unsubtle when pushing its products to people's consciousness. That was true back when it was pushing people to upgrade to Windows 10 and it's true now as it uses Windows' Start Menu as a home for advertising its own apps. Things seem to be coming to a head again as Windows users, both Insiders and regular users, start seeing what they thought were Office web apps automatically installed without their permission. It turns out, it's partly intentional and partly a bug.
You can almost do anything on smartphones these days, especially if you connect a large display and peripherals. Even more so on tablets with their large screens and keyboard accessories. That said, there are still many things you can't do on a phone, or at least can't do comfortably on such a small screen. One of the biggest culprits there is productivity or office suites that are designed by nature to be used on larger devices. But with the world moving towards a more remote and more mobile reality, Google is updating its G Suite to make the experience less painful on phones.
Microsoft's online email service Outlook on Web has been updated with support for integration with Google Calendar, according to the company, making it a little more useful for those who mostly rely on Google's ecosystem. The new feature is limited to Outlook work accounts at this time, which can now be linked with Google Calendars or a personal Outlook.com account for expanded functionality.
Microsoft delivered a news alert today tipping a "massive" phishing campaign using COVID-19 and Excel files to hook in unsuspecting users. Much like MOST phishing campaigns, users could avoid any harmful nonsense by avoiding downloading attached files or entering personal information prompted by email. This email campaign began on May 12, 2020, and posed as the Johns Hopkins Center to deliver a so-called "WHO COVID-19 SITUATION REPORT."
We've known about Microsoft's Fluid Framework since Build 2019, but now it seems the company build out its feature set. As part of its Build 2020 announcements today, Microsoft announced that new Fluid Framework integrations will be made in Office 365, specifically in Outlook and Office.com. On top of these new integrations, Microsoft also made a big announcement today regarding making Fluid Framework open source.
Microsoft 365 is getting new text predictions, echoing Gmail's Smart Compose by adding easier ways to compose replies in Outlook. The new feature will suggest words and phrases as users write messages in Outlook.com and Outlook on the web, based on predictions as to what they're likely to want to say.
Despite numerous attempts to kill it, the venerable email still remains one of the most-used forms of digital communication today, especially in businesses. Although relatively more secure than that other ancient messaging technology, SMS, email has its own set of flaws that are triggered even by well-intentioned users. One such problem is known as a Reply-All Storm and Microsoft Office 365 is now implementing a way to prevent that from taking down the company's email servers.
Microsoft is hard at work getting Office for iPad up to speed with Apple's latest iPadOS release, with plans to add cursor support for trackpad and mouse in the apps. Apple introduced the cursor to its iPad and iPad Pro line-up in iPadOS 13.4, alongside the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro that for the first time includes a trackpad.
It may have been late to the split-screen party but the iPad has slowly and very surely become the mobile worker's dream come true. Its list of features, thanks to the newly-branded iPadOS, and accessories have made it a productivity and creativity machine you can easily carry around. That is unless you make heavy use of Microsoft's Office apps which are still a few steps shy of perfect on iPads. Fortunately, Microsoft is taking one step closer with an upcoming update that will finally let you view two Word or PowerPoint documents side-by-side.
For the past few weeks, the world has become more reliant on the Internet, both for play and especially for work. The latter is why many software and platform developers have been adjusting their features and even their policies to account for the sudden change in work habits. Unsurprisingly, Google is making some changes to its G Suite platform, suspending its earlier move to cut off the access of what it considers "Less Secure Apps".