Preview of Office 2016 for Mac

Last week, Microsoft launched a preview of Office 2016 for Mac. The entire preview version is free and you can download it right now. Integrating fluidly with Office 365, OneDrive, and SharePoint, this marks the biggest update to the Apple-centric version of the famed productivity suite in years. With an Office 365 account, users can share documents across various networks and devices with ease. Mac owners with Retina screens should look hard at this. While Office 2011 had a few Retina-compatible elements, this will mark the first fully optimized version of Office for Retina displays. A redesigned ribbon interface puts the most relevant information first and organizes it in a more logical manner. There’s even a charming little scroll bounce when you hit the bottom of a document. This update also takes some shots at Google Docs with cloud capabilities and vastly improved shared document editing in Word. Comments are now threaded so that rounds of editing feel and look more like an ongoing conversation, which should help clear up some confusion in the communication process. We’re still playing around with the new version of Office for the Mac, but you can do the same by downloading the preview version and trying it for yourself. The preview build with be regularly updated until Office 2016′s official release later this year, so give it a shot and let us know what you think.