Our latest app report shows the worst battery-draining apps for Android phones of late 2016. Is your favorite app among them? Explore the world of Mac. Check out MacBook Pro, iMac Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, and more. Visit the Apple site to learn, buy, and get support.
- Office For Mac 2016 Download
- Install Office 2016 Mac
- Mac Office 2016
- Microsoft Office For Mac 2016
- Office 2016 For Mac Requirements
- Includes premium Office apps, 6 TB of cloud storage (1 TB per person) and advanced security for email and files. With Microsoft 365 Family you and the people you share with can:. Get design and writing suggestions, plus thousands of templates, stock photos, icons, and fonts in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
- Top 10 Mac Applications that Should Be on Windows. But when we boot into Windows after spending a good amount of time on a Mac, here are 10 applications we sorely miss.
- 1Password: 1Password to rule them all: Given how many accounts we have, it's getting harder to.
Adobe’s Photoshop software is good – there’s a reason it’s the gold standard in image manipulation – but it comes at a pretty high cost. We’ve put together some of the best Photoshop alternatives out there, and they’re all much cheaper.
Back in the day, you used to be able to buy a copy of Photoshop, and once you paid for it, you owned it. Upgrades weren’t necessarily free, but they were heavily discounted. These days, upgrades are free, but your software only works when you pay every month. While Adobe manages to sweeten the pot by adding in a number of services like mobile apps and cloud syncing, the fees add up – the cheapest Creative Cloud plans that let you access Photoshop cost either $120 a year or $20 on a month-to-month basis.
Before we jump into the list of Photoshop alternatives, there are a couple of Adobe apps you should look at – apps that are still available without a recurring subscription. If your interest in Photoshop lies primarily with its photo manipulation abilities, Adobe’s Lightroom application is still available as a standalone title; you can buy it once and own it forever. You can snag it from Amazon for $143, which is about the same cost as a year’s access to the cheapest Creative Cloud plan.
Adobe also makes a less powerful version of Photoshop known as Photoshop Elements. You can pick up the current version, Photoshop Elements 14, for just $77, just half the price of Lightroom. While you’ll miss out on some of Photoshop’s more powerful features, you do get some of the more impressive ones, like their new dehaze filter (which can quickly clear up a foggy photo).
Pixlr – Free or $15/year
Pixlr is a surprisingly versatile web app. The web, in general, has gotten increasingly powerful in the past few years, and Pixlr is a great example of it. It offers a few simple tools like filters and stickers and overlays, but it also has some surprisingly strong features, like support for layers and other non-destructive editing tools.
The company has also put out mobile versions of their apps and a chrome extension for some offline editing. After Autodesk acquired the site, Pixlr also put out a desktop app; while it’s a subscription service like Adobe’s Creative Cloud, it only costs $1.99 a month, or fifteen bucks a year. Head over to Pixlr.com to try it for free.
GIMP – Free, open source
GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Project) is practically historic when it comes to freely available software – but unlike most older projects, it’s been constantly updated with bug fixes and new features. Those features make it one of the most powerful image manipulation applications outside of Photoshop itself. It’s actually available for Windows and Linux in addition to the Mac, which makes it a great option if you use your Mac in a mixed-computer household.
Office For Mac 2016 Download
Unlike most of Photoshop replacements, GIMP actually supports a robust extensibility framework, with a number of common programming languages. That sounds complex, but what it means is that you can find third party plugins for GIMP, just like with Photoshop. GIMP also supports all the other complex Photoshop features you’re used to, like layers, masking, channels, and curves. Where it tends to fall behind is in supporting advanced features and new camera formats. If you’re looking for a photo-centric replacement, GIMP might not be what you need, but if you’re looking for something more on the graphic design end of things, GIMP could do the job well. Download a free copy from Gimp.org.
Pixelmator – $30
Pixelmator is one of our favorite apps, Photoshop replacement or otherwise. It features a gorgeous user interface, and really typifies what a Mac app should look like. Unlike some of the free options on our list, Pixelmator’s cost includes getting support from responsive developers, in addition to free point updates.
One of the cooler Pixelmator features is its support for iOS. Use it on your Mac, then install it on your iPhone or iPad, and pick up where you left off. While Pixelmator is sold in the Mac App Store, you can download a free, 30-day trial straight from the company’s website.
Affinity Photo – $50
Affinity Photo is from Serif, which also publishes the popular Affinity Designer design software for the Mac. Affinity Photo is their newest product, and actually rated as the top Mac app for all of 2015 by Apple. One of the features that sets this app apart from the others on our list is its appreciable support for RAW files – the “raw” photo recorded by DSLRs and other serious cameras. Most Photoshop alternatives tend to fall down in this area.
Affinity Photo scored a big update in December, which added support for the new DCI-P3 panels found in the latest 5K iMacs, panorama photo stitching, and a haze removal filter (one of the best new Photoshop features). It also adds extensions for use in Apple Photos; it really integrates into your Mac better than just about any other photo software, including Photoshop. Serif offers a free, 14-day trial of Affinity Photo on their website, after which you can snag it in the Mac App Store for $50.
Acorn 5 – The Image Editor for Humans – $30
Acorn 5 comes from a company called Flying Meat, Inc. As the names of both the company and the app might intimate, they don’t take themselves too seriously. Don’t take that to mean that their app isn’t any good, however, because it’s a powerful program that prides itself on being easy to use. Like Affinity Photo before it, Acorn 5 supports 30-bit displays, like those found in the latest 5K iMacs.
One of the things we really like about Acorn 5 is the huge list of free tutorials that Flying Meat created to instruct users on how Acorn works. There’s a set of text and video tutorials that cover just about any feature you can find in the app, from saving an image and straightening a photo to blurring a background and artificially aging a person’s face. Flying Meat offers a 14-day free trial of Acorn 5, but the full version is available both in the Mac App Store and on Flying Meat’s website for just $30.
Related Posts
- Like on a PC, most of your Mac's software lives in the same place on…
- While most people can access their email via the web these days, having a dedicated…
- If you want to start making your own GIFs and join the ranks of other…
We’ve put together a list of some of the best Mac apps anywhere: if you’re looking for a new utility, web browser, or photo app, you’ll probably find what you need on this list.
Whether you’ve been using a Mac for a very long time, or you’re unboxing your very first MacBook, it’s always nice to see the sort of software and tools that other people use.
While we don’t include them in our official best Mac apps list, since they’re free and from Apple, new users should always check out Apple’s apps that come with every Mac purchase.
Best Mac Apps: Utilities
1Password
Price: $49.99 | Link
1Password is the gold standard of password managers. With people cracking online accounts left and right these days, it’s more important than ever to use secure, complicated passwords – and never the same one twice. 1Password can keep track of all your passwords for you, and automatically enter them into your browser. The latest versions also keep track of sensitive data like insurance numbers, bank accounts, and credit card numbers, making it an important resource if your wallet or purse gets stolen. Apps are available for iPhone, iPad, and Android, making your data available wherever you are.
Caffeine
Price: free | Link
Have you ever started uploading a video to YouTube, walked away, and returned only to find your computer had gone to sleep (and thus corrupted the upload)?
While OS X is supposed to be smart enough to not do that, it doesn’t always work – and now, Caffeine will guarantee it.
Duet Display
Price: Free (on OS X, but requires a $16 iOS app) | Link
Built by a cadre of ex-Apple engineers, Duet Display lets you increase your screen space by taking advantage of your iPhone or iPad. With support for touch tracking and the full Retina display of your mobile device, Duet Display can be a godsend if you’re stuck editing on a cramped coffeeshop table.
There are a number of wireless iPad display options, but Duet Display is our top pick.
Dropbox
Price: Free (various premium service levels) | Link
By now, you’re probably familiar with Dropbox, but if you aren’t, this is the company that made cloud storage famous. These guys make sharing and storing files easier than ever, and helps make all your data accessible on each of your devices.
Viscosity
Price: Free 30-day trial, then $9 | Link
Viscosity is a great replacement for the built-in VPN tool in OS X. Designed to let you log on with just a couple of clicks, Viscosity will work with a number of VPN clients, whether you need to log into work, protect yourself at coffeeshops, or simply evade regional lockouts on media.
Chrome Remote Desktop
Price: Free | Link
There have been a number of tools over the years that let you log into your computer when you’re not at home, and one-by-one, they’ve all turned to a non-free model. Not so with the Chrome Remote Desktop. As long as both your home and away PCs are on, you’ll be able to log in and control the remote PC without paying a dime.
Note: both PCs will also need to have the Chrome web browser installed and allowed to run in the background.
Crashplan
Price: Free to external drives, 30-day cloud storage; $60 per year for backing up one computer; $150 per year for backing up between 2 – 10 computers | Link
Crashplan is backup made simple. If you don’t want to pay, the company will offer you free use of their backup software (if Time Machine is not to your liking) as well as 30 days worth of online backups.
Their paid plans are really compelling, however: $60 a year gets you unlimited online backups of your entire computer and network attached storage. You can retrieve individual files or, should emergency strike, pay to have a new hard drive with your backup overnighted to your house.
TextExpander
Price: Free trial, then $45 | Link
TextExpander is kind of like autocorrect, but for your Mac. You can program snippets of text into the TE interface, and when you type them into nearly any program, TextExpander replaces them with your pre-chosen macro.
For example, you could type ‘soon5’ in a meeting email, and TextExpander would replace it with “I’m running late, but I should be there in five minutes.” The new version is easier than ever, and TE includes a fun chart that will show you how many hours you save, based on a specific typing speed.
Airfoil
Price: Free trial, then $29 | Link
Airfoil lets you send any audio from your Mac to any Airplay source – speakers, Airports, AppleTVs, you name it. It offers granular, per-app control that the system option sorely lacks, and lets you send audio out to multiple sets of speakers.
Rogue Amoeba, developers of Airfoil, include a free copy of Airfoil Speakers with each purchase, which lets you receiveAirplay audio on your Mac (or iPhone / Android device).
One fun way to use both of these is to set up Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers on your Mac, then Airplay your iPhone audio to your Mac – this way you can send one phone’s audio out over multiple sets of Airplay speakers, something that is otherwise impossible to do.
F.Lux
Price: Free | Link
F.lux is based on the idea that seeing blue light late at night is bad for your eyes, and impairs your quality of sleep. The app works by changing the color temperature of your display (computer displays are typically pretty “blue”) as the sun sets; by the time you’re ready to call it a night, things can be looking pretty orange.
It definitely reduces stress on your eyes; if you don’t believe us, try quitting F.lux after you’ve used it for an hour – you’ll be scrambling to re-enable it.
GrandPerspective
Price: Free | Link
Install Office 2016 Mac
One of the most frustrating things about the Mac to this day (not that the PC is all that much better, frankly) is the inability to see your disk space. How much free space do you have, what folders and files are using it all, etc.
GrandPerspective is a free utility that gets rid of all that storage uncertainty by displaying information in an easy-to-read, blocky interface.
Little Snitch
Price: $35 | Link
This is the best firewall you didn’t know you needed. Little Snitch not only monitors for inbound connections, but also outbound connections. It’s a great program for finding out what apps on your computer are calling home and transmitting information; you can block any of them at any time, just by tapping a button.
The devs recently released a companion product known as Micro Snitch; Micro Snitch has a similar philosophy to Little Snitch, except it explicitly monitors your webcam and microphone, so you can be sure nobody is using them to record you.
Malwarebytes
Price: Free | Link
Worried about whether your Mac can catch a virus or worm? With the platform’s growing popularity, you probably should be.
Marlwarebytes is a trusted name in PC security, and with a recent acquisition, they’re bringing expertise over to the Mac.
The software itself is free, but you can sign up for premium service and support at a rate of just $25/year.
Capture Gif
Price: Free, or $6 | Link
It may seem like a strange addition, but the ability to quickly record your screen and make GIFs can come in handy. You can keep it simple with basic text GIFs, or record yourself doing full-screen actions (take a look at our El Capitan Split View overview for an idea).
Capture Gif offers a free version with limited settings, but the $6 full copy is cheap and offers you the ability to change the framerate of the GIF as well as innovative mouse tracking features.
Best Mac Apps: Internet
GoogleChrome
Price: Free | Link
Google’s internet browser has become the world’s most browser, and for good reason. Unfortunately, those reasons don’t really exist on the Mac – not only is Chrome slower than Safari, but it’s also a power hog and can drop your battery life by up to an hour!
Still, it has its uses. Chrome comes bundled with an always-updated version of Adobe Flash, so you’ll never need to worry about updating a version for the Mac. Need to check out a Flash-enabled site? Just spin up Chrome, check it out, and shut it down. Given how many vulnerabilities Flash tends to introduce, it’s worth keeping exposure as limited as possible.
Skype
Price: Free | Link
You’re probably aware of Microsoft’s VoIP product by this point, but it’s worth pointing out. Despite competing alternatives, Skype’s sheer cross-platform connectivity and pervasiveness means that it’s always handy to have around if someone wants to call you.
Transmission
Price: Free | Link
When it comes to BitTorrent, the cat is out of the bag, and it isn’t going back in. We like Transmission for an OS X torrent client, because it’s cross platform and open source, and also because it isn’t constantly trying to get you to download things you don’t want (ahem, μTorrent).
Best Mac Apps: Music and Video
Spotify
Price: Free, or $10/month Premium tier | Link
Spotify is one of the world’s largest music streaming services, with over 75 million users accessing either its free or pay tiers. The software itself is completely free, supporting your listening with advertising inserted into the streams.
If you don’t mind ponying up, however, you can snag unlimited ad-free music streaming for just $10/ month, with the ability to skip around to whatever music you like, and cache songs to your device for offline listening.
iOS and Android apps round out the experience.
VLC
Price: Free | Link
If you keep any quantity of your own media, VLC will be well known. For everyone else, this app is the gold standard for watching videos from the internet. No nonsense codec downloads, nothing else to install, just download it, open, and play.
Best Mac Apps: Productivity
AirMail
Price: $10 | Link
Running just $10 in the Mac App Store, AirMail builds upon the basic functionality in the Mail app and adds some pretty nice integration and power user features (superior keyboard shortcuts, snoozing an email like Gmail’s Inbox does). You can import files directly from services like Dropbox or Google Drive, or send attachments that are too large to email by using Droplr. One of the best features over Mail, however, is how AirMail has worked to integrate itself into the best known third-party productivity apps – so if you use software like Wunderlist, Fantastical, and Evernote, you should take a look at AirMail.
Clear
Price: $10 | Link
Clear, like Mailbox, made waves for introducing powerful features paired with an extremely simple and intuitive user interface. Mailbox was for, well, email, but Clear is for keeping you focused at the tasks on hand. It works best when you pair it with the iPhone and iPad apps (which together cost a $5 one-time fee); there’s also an app for the Apple Watch
Fantastical
Price: $40 | Link
OS X’s Calendar isn’t bad, but it’s also not very useful if you need to track more than the very occasional event. Fantastical (now actually Fantastical 2) is extremely powerful, with a natural language engine that lets you remember events just by typing them out. It comes with a free trial if you don’t feel the need to shell out $40 quite just yet.
Microsoft Office
Price: $70 / year for 1 PC or Mac, $100/yr for 5 PCs or Macs, $150 one-time purchase for 1 computer | Link
There may be the free Google Docs and Apple iWork suites, but nothing can beat the powerhouse that is Microsoft Office. Aside from the fact that its omnipresence nearly requires you to use it (so that your files can all be shared between jobs), new versions for iOS and Android make it very easy to work on your projects on the go. While Microsoft’s attempts to send Office into the cloud with a monthly or yearly subscription, they do still offer standalone installations.
Best Mac Apps: Graphics and Photo Editing
Pixelmator
Price: Free 30-day trial, then $30 | Link
Adobe’s Photoshop CC might reign supreme at the top of the image editing heap, but if you’re not a professional, or very serious amateur designer or photographer, it probably doesn’t make much sense to shell out for it. For the price of less than one month of Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription, you can get a permanent standalone copy of Pixelmator. There are definitely Mac photo editing apps out there that can do more than Pixelmator, but few can match it on a features-per-dollar basis.
Best Mac Apps: Programming
Textmate 2.0 (beta)
Price: Free | Link
Mac Office 2016
If you’re a programmer, you know that your choice of environment not only says a lot about you but can impact your workflow in drastic and unforeseen ways. Should Vim be getting you down, take a look at Textmate’s most recent version, a product of Macromates.
Microsoft Office For Mac 2016
Textmate offers an easy way to work on a project’s many files at once without getting lost, and features powerful plug-in architecture should you need a tool that it lacks.
Best Mac Apps: Emulators
Andy Android Emulator
Price: Free | Link
If you’re on a Mac, chances are you probably prefer to use iOS over Android. Thinking about seeing how things work on the other side? The Andy Android emulator works extremely well to give you a virtual Android tablet. For the most part, this virtual model works exactly like you’d expect.
The only downside is that the most recent release – which came out in November – only goes up to Android 4.2.2, so some apps and features might not work. Hopefully, we’ll see an update to Android M or N before too long. If you just want to try things out, however, it’s more than good enough.
Office 2016 For Mac Requirements
Disagree with the titles we’ve put on the best Mac apps list? Sound out in the comments with some of your favorite apps or tools that you think are the must-haves for any Mac user.
Related Posts
- Starting with OS X Mountain Lion, Apple introduced Gatekeeper so users couldn't easily install downloaded…
- Like on a PC, most of your Mac's software lives in the same place on…
- If you want to start making your own GIFs and join the ranks of other…