Microsoft's mission to subtly sneak more and more of itself into competing platforms continues with the launch of its Insider Preview program, which now lets in Mac users of Office 365 Home.
The company's latest initiative is part of a greater whole of updates to Office 365 in January. Now that the stylus has come into vogue again as part of the digital productivity workflow, Microsoft Office now comes with new inking capabilities that can be used with either a finger, a pen or a stylus.
There's a special Draw tab now located in the top Office ribbon that allows for easier and quicker access to Office's new inking smarts. Using it really is smarter too – the program can transform a user's hand-drawn shapes and lines to more perfect looking shapes. Great for the obsessive compulsive, drawing two quick circles over each other can instantly become a Venn diagram, for example.
The inking toolset added to the Office 365 suite is really interesting, but the new collaboration improvements will help individuals and companies get the real work done. Last year, Microsoft added the ability to see what others were typing on a collaborative document in real time for Word 2016.
This year, it's bringing the same feature to Powerpoint for both Windows tablets and desktops. That will allow a document's co-authors to see who else is working on the document and where. However, it's not just for Windows, the feature is also coming in a basic form to Office Insider members on Preview builds of Word and Powerpoint for Android.
With the launch of Microsoft's fantastic Windows Phone keyboard coming to iOS, the Redmond-based company is finding more and more ways to get into Cupertino and Mountain View. Especially with Office Insider for Mac users (and no real workhorse of an office productivity suite available on iOS or OS X), Microsoft should be seeing more subscribers from different platforms join its Office 365 program.
Of special note, the Office 365 Insider program for Mac is also quite a bit different from the Windows Insider program. Whereas Windows Insider users generally test possible new Windows 10 features that could be months away from a final release, Mac Insider users will be testing features that are about one to three weeks away from general availability.
