Today Microsoft made the pricing and release dates of all new Office apps official. They've revealed that they're bringing "many" of the collaborative features from Microsoft 365 (for subscribers) to Office 2021, and they're ready to roll out both the PC and Mac versions of the core Office apps in a non-subscription format for the year 2021.
Today Microsoft announced the release date for Office 2021, the company's consumer perpetual offering for the service. At the same time, Microsoft revealed the release of the Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) for both Windows and Mac for government and business licensing to general availability. If you're looking for the next one-time-purchase Office build for your own home computer, look to October!
Chrome OS has become a sort of "one OS to rule them all" in the past years. In addition to the usual native Chrome OS apps and web apps, it has also gained support for Linux and Android apps. With no small amount of work, it can even run Windows software to some extent. That, however, doesn't mean that the experience of apps from those other platforms is on par with full-blooded Chrome OS apps, and Microsoft seems to be using that to justify ending official support for the Android versions of its Microsoft Office and Outlook apps on Chrome OS starting September.
Ricoh, the company you probably best know for its digital cameras, has teamed up with E Ink to launch a huge new smart whiteboard product. Called the Ricoh eWhiteboard 4200, this new model packs a 42-inch electronic ink display that resembles paper, allowing users to write on the surface the same way they would a regular whiteboard -- but with some seemingly magical features that make this product far more useful.
The next wave of Emoji will launch at the turn of the month - but not before Microsoft releases Clippy. The classic living paperclip character has officially made its way to the next upgrade in Emoji in Windows products, courtesy of a Twitter dare. After suggesting that they'd make Clippy into an Emoji if a Tweet reached a certain number of likes - that happened several times over, so here comes Clippy - with a few other changes to Emoji in tow.
Those who were Microsoft Office users back in the late 90s or early aughts undoubtedly remember Clippy, the paperclip office assistant who offered tips and tricks for Office that most found annoying rather than helpful. Even though Clippy hasn't been used in any Office apps for many years at this point, the irritating little office assistant still has quite the reputation. It seems that Clippy is about to make a grand comeback too, though you don't have to worry about it greeting you every time you open a new document.
This week Microsoft released Microsoft Teams backgrounds, including but not limited to "retro" concepts involving Clippy. There's a wide variety of options available with the Microsoft Teams Backgrounds collection, both branded and unbranded. They've got FOX shows, FOX Sports, NBC shows, NBC Sports, Xbox, Black History Month, Women's History Month, Pride, "Holiday background", and now Nostalgia.
Google created its Workspace suite, sometimes collectively known as "Google Docs", to take on Microsoft Office by bringing productivity to the cloud. There was a time when the market seemed to be on a verge of an office suite war and while things have settled down, no clear winner has emerged yet. Google Docs and friends have definitely come a long way but a new feature that was announced is setting the Internet ablaze but not in a flattering way for Google Workspace.
The Microsoft Office for Android app now has a dark mode, one with a pleasing black background surrounded by dark grey menus and borders. Users have two different options for enabling the dark mode, one that mirrors their device settings and the other that can be toggled on and off depending on your needs at any given time.
This week Microsoft released Office 2021 Standard for Mac (Preview) with early testing versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, and Teams. This system is not intended for home users of Office, and is instead meant as a preview program for organizations expecting to buy and deploy "the new volume licensed (perpetual) version of Office that is scheduled to be released later this year."
In 2020, Microsoft announced it would be bringing text predictions to Word with the feature using Machine Learning to make suggestions based on the text being typed by the user. Shortly after that initial announcement, the feature was rolled out to about half of the Beta Channel users. Microsoft is now set to make the feature available to everyone according to the Microsoft 365 roadmap.
Office 2021 for PC and Mac is coming later this year, Microsoft has confirmed, but despite what many believe you won't need an Microsoft 365 subscription in order to use it. Although Microsoft has shifted its focus in recent years to subscription-based software and services, particularly as it weaves in cloud functionality and storage from OneDrive, there's still a subset of users that would prefer the familiarity of an upfront purchase instead.