Microsoft Office beta testers will soon get MacBook Pro Touch Bar support
The jury is still out on whether the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pros are a total gimmick or not — some people really like it but others, not so much.
While it'll take some time before there's a healthy crop of apps with Touch Bar support, Microsoft Office is ready to finally join the club.
First teased at the new MacBook Pro's unveil event in October, Touch Bar support is finally rolling out this week for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook — but only for Microsoft's Office Insider beta users, The Verge reports. Regular Office users will get to use it in the coming months.
Touch Bar features appear to be fairly simple and straightforward, like displaying useful tools for formatting text and fonts in Word and PowerPoint.
In Excel (below), it will display shortcuts for things like recently used formulas and tools for color-coding cells.
Users with the new MacBook Pro will also be able to initiate audio and video calls right from the Touch Bar using Skype for Business.
Of course, only some of the features were teased. Because the Touch Bar is customizable, there are probably a lot more shortcuts for app-specific features that we don't know about yet.
Office joins the short list of third-party apps — like Adobe Photoshop, Pixelmator, djay Pro and 1Password — to support the Touch Bar.
Hackers, however, have come up with all kinds of interesting Touch Bar integrations like a mini piano, that endless Nyan Cat and even playable classic games like Doom and Pac-Man.
Raymond Wong is Mashable's Senior Tech Correspondent. He reviews gadgets and tech toys and analyzes the tech industry. Raymond's also a bit of a camera geek, gamer, and fine chocolate lover. Before arriving at Mashable, he was the Deputy Editor of NBC Universal's tech publication DVICE. His writing has appeared on G4TV, BGR, Yahoo and Ubergizmo, to name a few. You can follow Raymond on Twitter @raywongy or Instagram @sourlemons.
