Hasta La Gadget!

So you updated to OS X Mountain Lion and, gosh darn it, you’re not sure that Office for Mac 2011 (or Office 2008 for Mac) will be in perfect harmony. Time to put off finishing that accounts receivable spreadsheet until IT sorts it all out, right? Unfortunately for anyone looking to catch a break, Microsoft just certified that the two most recent Mac versions of Office will purr with Apple’s latest big cat. About the only hiccup remaining is the inability to manually download and install future updates as long as Gatekeeper is on full lockdown. If you’ve been spending all day making paper planes, it’s time to knuckle down and get back to work.

Filed under: Software

Office for Mac 2011 and 2008 ready for OS X Mountain Lion, procrastinators groan originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 00:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know how they say that when it rains, it pours? Well, right now it’s really, really pouring at CloudOn’s HQ. Keeping up with last month’s global expansion, the outfit has announced it’s launching its bestseller Android and iPad application in 60 more countries, including big-name markets like Mexico, Costa Rica and Honduras in Latin America, as well as Australia, Croatia, Greece, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey across the various ponds. What’s more, the editing (and creating) cloud-based app is adding a fresh voice dictation feature, along with new drag-and-drop tidbits for moving files around with more ease — in addition to these, though, CloudOn told us exclusively you’ll soon be able to add annotations / comments to all your docs, and that notes will soon be custom tailored for mobile devices. Feel free to dig into the PR down below, where you’ll find the full list of over 70 nations in which the application’s now live.

Continue reading CloudOn’s productivity app heads to 60 additional countries, new features announced

Filed under: Tablet PCs, Software

CloudOn’s productivity app heads to 60 additional countries, new features announced originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you read our preview of Office 2013, you know we liked it. A lot. But if we had one reservation it’s that Office still isn’t that finger-friendly, even with the addition of a touch mode that widens the spacing between onscreen objects and flattens the menus so that you don’t have to tap quite as much. As if in response to critics like us (and readers too!) Microsoft has published a lengthy blog post detailing the thinking that went into the design of Office’s new touch-enabled features. Which is to say, it’s a more detailed recap of how the company’s engineers tweaked the desktop interface for touch, and designed some standalone apps that better match the Metro experience of Windows 8. At the very least, it’s a handy primer for folks who missed Steve Ballmer’s keynote and haven’t yet read up on radial menus or the Metro-styled OneNote MX app. Even if you have, though, it’s worth a read: Microsoft offers some interesting insight into the various scenarios where it imagined each touch-enabled app being used, and what kind of posture the user is likely to have, even. Whether that’s enough to prompt a change of heart is up to you, but it’s interesting nonetheless to get a little more color on how it all came together.

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Microsoft responds to critics, defends touch UI in Office 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been about three years since Microsoft unveiled a new version of Office, and particularly with Windows 8 just months away from dropping, the software has been well overdue for an upgrade. Today, Redmond unveiled the latest edition — Office 2013 (aka Office 15) — which the company will be showing in a preview stage until the final version goes on sale (hit up the source link if you want to download it for yourself).

Perhaps the biggest news isn’t any single feature Microsoft’s added to Word (hello, easy YouTube embeds!), but how and where you’ll access your files. With this version, the company is moving to a subscription-based model wherein your Office files are tied to your Microsoft ID. Once you sign up, you can download the various desktop apps to a certain number of devices and, as with Windows 8, your settings, SkyDrive files and even the place where you left off in a document will follow you from device to device. (It’s telling, we think, that files now save to the cloud by default.) As you’d expect, too, this version is also more tablet-friendly than editions past, with a touch mode that widens the spacing between onscreen objects and flattens menus. In Word and PowerPoint, you’ll also find a read-only mode that turns documents into full-screen editions, whose pages you can swipe through as you would an e-book or digital magazine.

Of course, Microsoft included plenty of granular updates like PDF editing and a behind-the-scenes Presenter View in PowerPoint. Fortunately for you, curious power users, we’ve been spending the better part of a week testing the software on a Samsung Series 7 Slate loaded up with Windows 8. So join us past the break where we’ll give you a detailed breakdown of what’s new, along with screenshots and detailed first impressions.

Continue reading Microsoft Office 2013 preview: details, screenshots and impressions

Filed under: Software

Microsoft Office 2013 preview: details, screenshots and impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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