Microsoft is releasing new versions of its Office productivity apps that run natively on Macs with Apple’s internally developed M1 processors, rolling out via a software update starting today.
The updates, announced Tuesday morning, continue a longstanding tradition of cooperation between the Microsoft Office and Apple Mac teams. The practice dates back to the mid-1980s, when Microsoft released Word and Excel for Mac, and it has endured even as the companies have competed aggressively on other fronts.
Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will run faster on M1 Macs as a result of the update, taking advantage of improved processor performance, says Bill Doll, Microsoft 365 senior product marketing manager, in a post announcing the updates. The apps are universal, allowing them to run on Intel-based Macs, as well. They’ve also been redesigned to adopt the look and feel of macOS Big Sur.
Microsoft says it’s working on a similar M1 universal app update for its Teams collaboration software, which can run in Rosetta emulation mode on Macs with the new chips in the meantime.
Apple released the first Macs with Arm-based M1 chips in November. The big unanswered question now is whether Microsoft will change its Windows licensing terms to let the Arm-based version of Windows 10 run natively on M1 Macs. The traditional version of Windows can currently run on Intel-based Macs via Apple’s Boot Camp virtualization software.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, told Ars Technica in November that the decision was up to Microsoft.
“We have the core technologies for them to do that, to run their ARM version of Windows, which in turn of course supports x86 user mode applications,” he told the site. “But that’s a decision Microsoft has to make, to bring to license that technology for users to run on these Macs. But the Macs are certainly very capable of it.”
