[OFFER] Office 2016 Preview for Mac

[voidp]

It's not clear to me if this is on the FTP or a new build?

Article: http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/05/micro ... tegration/

     "Microsoft launches Office 2016 preview for Mac with full Retina support, OneDrive and SharePoint integration"

     "Microsoft says the Office 2016 preview for Mac will be updated 'regularly'"

Home Page: http://products.office.com/en-US/mac/mac-preview

Download (2.5GB): http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=523849

[gus33000]

It's not on the FTP, you can upload it

[voidp]

@gus33000: Do you know what version it is?

[pneumono]

So I've been using this a bit since yesterday and honestly it feels really similar to 2011, just with the ribbon, which is basically useless since most of the stuff in it is also duplicated in the menu bar.
Still has the laggy resize, scrolling, etc. from 2011. Doesn't support any multitouch for zoom or anything but scrolling. Doesn't support iCloud or Handoff. Why bake in OneDrive when the OS already has a cloud-storage system much better integrated into the OS? (Yes I know it's in Microsoft's interest to get people to use OneDrive, but come on guys)
I know it's an early release, so maybe stuff will change. Just my two cents thus far.

[//Dan]

There are plenty reasons for Microsoft to leave out iCloud. First and foremost, the usage of the iCloud API is only permitted for apps distributed using the Mac App Store. That means Microsoft would need to rewrite parts of Office to support OS X's sandboxing, and most importantly: Microsoft would have to give Apple 30% of their MAS-generated revenue. And it'll be a cold day in hell when Microsoft finally decides to willingly give Apple their money. Anyway, if you really want to store your documents in iCloud (moreover, in the Word/Excel/PowerPoint for iOS folders), you can click "On my Mac" in the save dialog and navigate to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/. Then just put it in the right folder. iCloud API bypassed.

I do hope Microsoft will at least start supporting multitouch in Word and Excel. And they need to bring back My Day in Outlook. It can only get better from hereon out.

[voidp]

@pneumono: Can you identify the build number and push it up to the FTP?

[pneumono]

@//Dan, fair enough. Honestly I'm more miffed about the UI stuff. It's like they put zero effort into any part of it. How do you even get scrolling and resizing to lag? That takes serious effort (unless they're not using cocoa for some reason).

@voidp, I can but it'd take forever (my upload is generally around 40-50kb/s off-peak). If no one else can I'd be happy to though. About reports version 15.8.0 (150303). I'm assuming 150303 is the build number, but I don't usually work with Microsoft betas so I don't really know (plus that seems like a pretty high number...)

[//Dan]

@pneumono

Surprise! Office 2016 is Cocoa-based. They had to, since Carbon has been considered deprecated since 10.8. Right now the "Application requires Carbon environment" flag is still set to YES, so they're not done rewriting just yet.

I have a much faster upload speed (around 12MB/s all the time!) so I might have a crack at uploading to the FTP.

[voidp]

I have a much faster upload speed (around 12MB/s all the time!)...

Wow! You win. I'll leave it to you.

[pneumono]

@//Dan, I figured they'd have to be using Cocoa by now, but that just makes me wonder why it's still as sluggish as 2011 was. Maybe it'll smooth out but as of right now it's atrocious.

[//Dan]

@pneumono
Launch times are the worst. Even on a Mac with a PCIe SSD launching Word seems to take just as long as launching Word 2004 on my old G5. If anything, it's slower than 2011. I also just noticed that all of Office 2016 is still 32-bit (for now, at least). There are a lot of improvements, but right now it still feels like lipstick on a pig.