Since Tuesday, March 7, the Microsoft Outlook e-mail management application has been available free of charge to all users of Apple’s macOS operating system. A decision that is part of a strategy to conquer users, both on Mac and Windows.
It’s a Christmas present in March from Microsoft. Starting this Tuesday, March 7, 2023, the Outlook email client desktop app is now free for all macOS users. If the mobile application of the Microsoft service has been free for a while on iOS and Android, until now you had to pay a Microsoft 365 subscription (at the minimum price of 69 euros per year) to use its software on a computer.
As the online media notes The Vergethis decision echoes other projects to modernize Outlook in order to be more attractive to users.
A redesigned application for macOS from 2020
Available for free through the Apple Computers App Store, Microsoft’s email management client appears to have been developed to convert macOS users. From 2020, the American giant updated the design and functionalities of its Outlook application for Mac, so as to better integrate the habits of these potential consumers.
In addition to supporting iCloud email addresses, the service adapts to Apple’s software codes, integrating with macOS’s notification system and offering a calendar widget. Outlook is also compatible with Apple’s Continuity (Handoff) function, which allows you to resume your tasks where you left off if you use the application on an iPhone and on a Mac. Above all, this new version of Outlook has been optimized for Apple’s M1 and M2 processors.
In the future, Microsoft also announces that Outlook will soon add an icon in the macOS menu bar to quickly access a miniature version of your upcoming events in the calendar. The application should also integrate Apple’s Concentration (Focus) function, offering the possibility of filtering the notifications received according to your type of activity (personal time or professional time for example).
Outlook more accessible to win over users
Paradoxically, the Outlook desktop application still requires a paid subscription to be used on Windows, Microsoft’s operating system. But this contradiction should soon no longer be one: free Outlook for Mac is part of a general approach to make the web client more accessible to users.
As reminded The Verge, Microsoft has been testing a new version of Outlook for Windows for almost a year, called One Outlook. Unlike its current version, this one is based on the free web version of the service and takes the form of a Progressive web app (PWA), an application technically composed of web pages in order to be more fluid and less RAM consumer. Eventually, Microsoft plans to combine the default Windows e-mail and calendar application with this new Outlook, offered free of charge. ” One Outlookto rule them all.
However, Microsoft does not plan to turn Outlook for Mac into a PWA: according to a member of the development team interviewed byThe Vergethe company promises to improve their native application for macOS for a long time to come.
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