Microsoft, through its Office 365 subscription service, has released a new Outlook for the Mac designed to offer better performance and reliability through a new incorporated threading model and database improvements.
New Outlook for Mac now has a new modern user interface with improved scrolling between tabs, online archive support for searching online or on-premises archived mail, Office 365 push email support for real-time delivery and faster email download with Exchange Web Services syncing.
“This release offers a more familiar and consistent experience between Outlook on the PC, Outlook on the web and Outlook Web App (OWA) for iPhone, iPad and Android devices,” said Microsoft in a post.
The new Outlook for Mac is available to Office 365 commercial customers and Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal and Office 365 university subscribers.
Also announced was plans by Microsoft to release a new Office package for Mac computers that is scheduled to be available in 2015.
“In the first half of 2015 we will release a public beta for the next version of Office for Mac and in the second half of 2015 we will make the final release available.”
The new Office for Mac will be available at no additional cost to Office 365 commercial and consumer subscribers.
As is tradition for Microsoft, release of new versions of Office for Mac do not take more than a year period after the Office for Windows is released, but this release has taken longer than expected.
A situation Microsoft blames on the release of Office 365, following which the company diverted their focus by prioritizing mobile first and cloud first scenarios for the increasing number of people who are getting things done on-the-go more frequently.
This led to Microsoft improving Office on a variety of smartphones and tablets brought together by the cloud (OneDrive) to help people stay better organized at work, school, home and everywhere they go.
Subscribers of Office 365 are now able to enjoy unlimited OneDrive storage through a last week roll out to Office 365 Home, Personal and University customers, with OneDrive for Business customers expecting the unlimited storage beginning next year.
