During Apple’s special event yesterday, it was briefly mentioned that the Microsoft Office suite would support the new MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar. Now, Microsoft has stepped in to explain exactly what this functionality will entail.
In a blog post published shortly after the event, Kirk Koenigsbauer — Microsoft’s vice president of the Office team — shared some details of what users can expect to accomplish using the Touch Bar.
Word is getting a new mode to aid concentration, which can be accessed by a simple touch of the OLED strip. Word Focus Mode hides most of the on-screen user interface, placing crucial commands on the Touch Bar so that users can focus solely on their work.
In PowerPoint, the Touch Bar will help users arrange and manipulate the visuals used in their presentation. The Reorder Objects button makes it easy to find the right layer and edit it as needed, and touch-based rotation controls make it much easier to fine-tune the orientation of a particular element.
Excel users will be pleased to hear that the Touch Bar will be populated with recently used functions whenever an equals sign is placed into a cell. It also provides quick access to formatting tools and recommended charts.
Finally, in Outlook the Touch Bar offers up commonly used commands while you’re sifting through emails or consulting your calendar. If you’re composing an email, it will even suggest recent documents that you can add as an attachment.
These new features all sound like the right way to implement the Touch Bar — rather than simply using the new keyboard component for the sake of it, it’s easy to see how Office users will benefit from the new functionality that’s being introduced.
As of the time of writing, Microsoft hasn’t yet announced when MacBook Pro users can expect to see Touch Bar support added to the Office suite.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.