Microsoft has launched a new version of its Office suite, optimized for M1 Macs.
The company issued the latest version of Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Excel as part of its Microsoft 365 package yesterday (December 15), with each app given a refresh to make use of Apple’s new M1 capabilities.
Microsoft added that most of its Microsoft 365 apps are now universal, with the most popular versions running on the new Apple Silicon M1 chip.
Speaking of the news, Bill Doll, Microsoft Senior Product Marketing Manager for Microsoft 365, said: “We are excited to announce that starting today we are releasing new versions of many of our Microsoft 365 for Mac apps that run natively on Macs with M1.
“This means that now our core flagship Office apps— Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote— will run faster and take full advantage of the performance improvements on new Macs, making you even more productive on the latest MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.”
“The new Office apps are Universal, so they will continue to run great on Macs with Intel processors. The apps are not only speedy, but they also look fantastic as they have been redesigned to match the new look of macOS Big Sur.”
Microsoft has confirmed that Microsoft Teams can only be run via Rosetta 2 emulation for the time being, but promised that an M1-optimized version would be coming soon.
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