So now that this is available…is it better to subscribe via iTunes or just get a subscription from Amazon. Amazon’s is $99 for Office 365 Home for 6 users on Mac/PC/iOS/Android and iTunes is also $99.
Office 365 on the App Store says in the details that it’s eligible for family sharing (i.e. my spouse) but it also says that in-app purchases can’t be shared…and from my brief foray into the 1 month trial subscription of Excel you subscribe not in iTunes but in-app.
With the price being the same…doing it through iTunes and Family Sharing is probably better but it’s not clear that she’ll be able to activate it once she downloads it…although she can obviously just use my Microsoft login if need be.
I wouldn’t touch MS Office via MAS, they’re selling the HOME version (also known as Family). Unless you have 5 other family members who need to be using the apps at the same time you are, you’re just paying MS for nothing.
Get the “Personal” edition directly from MS’s website for $69 per year, 1 user on as many devices as you own (macOS, Windows, iOS, Android). Includes all the apps + 1TB Storage on OneDrive. You can get it for a little over $58 per year if you pay for a year at a time, rather than month by month. https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office-products?&activetab=1
Of course, if you don’t need the 1TB of storage, access to the Windows software, and the absolute latest version of the software, you’re better off just buying the perpetual license. Considering how little truly changes in the apps over the years, you’re probably better off doing this anyway.
You raise a good point. I see on the page you linked to that the single license costs $150. So in essence that’s what ~2 years of subscription service costs ($70/year).
So I guess this boils down to gauging if macOS updates two years away from now will necessitate yet another MS Office update. If we believe we’ll need to update Office more frequently, that might indeed be a good argument for the subscription (I say that as somebody who abhors the subscription model). I have zero interest in OneDrive or having Office on my iOS devices, but for others that might be an additional benefit of going with the subscription.
The personal subscription used to allow only one computer as well as multiple non-computer devices. So, I have subscribed to the Home edition for the last few years to enable my desktop and laptop simultaneously. However, apparently the restriction is now only how many users can subscribe and multiple computers can be on the same Personal subscription. Does anyone know when the change occurred?
Simon: considering I have office 2011 running on Mojave at work, I would say the perpetual license is a fairly safe bet. But who knows what the future will bring.
I subscribed a couple of years ago for both reasons. I do use Excel on the iPad when I travel (it’s rare when I need to carry a MacBook anymore), and OneDrive has replaced my DropBox subscription (I still have the free tier for a couple of apps that use DropBox syncing.) I am paying less per year for a 1 TB storage syncing service and get the Office apps as a “bonus”.
When you launch it the first time it says you need an Office 365 subscription…and you can sign up for either a single or multi user license subscription…or you can just enter a separately purchased subscription. In our case…we need it for 2 computers and 4 iOS devices…so Personal isn’t really the answer.
I even tried to learn to like Pages and Numbers…I could deal with the former but I’ve decided I just have too much history with Excel to start over learning something new. Even simple worksheets take longer to build than in Excel…and despite futzing around with it for a year or so off and on it’s just not getting any easier to use for us.
We’re also still running Office 2011…which will die with the next macOS version as it’s not 64 bit…hence I’m moving along to something that will still work. If there was a multi user perpetual license I would just get that…but even with the cheapest Home and Student license (which we technically don’t quality for) that’s $300 for 2 licenses plus it’s only the “Classic versions” whatever that means.
Like it or not…I think subscription software is the way we’ll be doing almost all of it 10 years from now…I don’t like it much either but from the vendor’s point of view I can see why they like it instead of perpetual licenses.