Microsoft Office 2016 Preview Available for Mac as Free Download

Microsoft has released a free public preview version of the Microsoft Office 2016 Suite for Mac. The Office suite includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and OneNote, which are arguably the most popular productivity apps in existence. 

Office 2016 has all of the features of Word, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint that you’d expect, plus a variety of new features, including enhance cloud support to be able to store and access document from anywhere, be it the web, an iOS device, another Mac, or Windows PC. The user interface has been redesigned to fit with modern versions of OS X as well.

The Office suite will remain free as long as the apps are in preview (effectively a public beta). You’ll want to keep on top of updates for the apps, as each preview build will expire 60 days after it has been posted. An included Office for Mac Auto-Update tool will notify users when a new version is available to download. The final public preview build will apparently continue to work for about a month past the official launch date, at which time Mac users who wish to continue using Office 2016 apps will need to pay for the final software.

Go here to download the free preview version of Office 2016 for Mac directly from Microsoft

OS X 10.10 Yosemite or newer is required to run Office 2016 on a Mac. Pricing for the final version is not currently available.

For those wondering, yes you can run the Office 2016 suite of apps alongside Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac apps. The Office 2016 apps will install in the /Applications/ folder as usual, and can be uninstalled / removed by placing the appropriate applications into the Trash.

iPhone 6 Plus Home Screen Not Rotating? It’s Your Display Settings

iPhone 6 Plus Home Screen Not Rotating? It’s Your Display Settings

 One of the more interesting features that arrived with the larger screen iPhone models is the ability to view the devices Home Screen, where app icons are shown, in a rotated sideways horizontal format. This places the Dock onto the side, and kind of resembles a tiny iPad. To rotate the iPhone Home Screen, you simply need to turn the iPhone into a horizontal position, and as long as Orientation Lock is not on, it will rotate. Usually.

Sometimes the Home Screen does not rotate while other app screens do rotate, however, but the reason for this is quite simple; it’s the iPhones Display Zoom settings.

Basically, you have to enable home screen rotation on iPhone 6 Plus by not using the Zoomed view:

1. Open the Settings app on the iPhone and head to “Display & Brightness”

2. Under the “Display Zoom” section, tap on “View”

3. Choose the “Standard” view, then choose “Set” and confirm the settings change

4. Return back to the Home Screen of the iPhone and rotate the device sideways into landscape mode to rotate the Home Screen

Important: Always check to make sure Orientation Lock is not turned on, visible by a little lock icon with a arrow around it in the status bar. That setting will interfere with the ability for the screen to rotate in all views of iPhone, whether in specific apps or just the icon filled Home screen of the device.

If you have the display set to “Standard” and the Orientation Lock turned off and the screen is still not rotating, try placing the iPhone into landscape mode and giving it a good shake, sometimes the accelerometer becomes unresponsive or less sensitive and this almost always resolves that issue.

Myself and many other users have a strong preference to use the Zoom View, it makes everything on the big screen appear larger and easier to read (that alone makes a very strong argument for picking iPhone Plus, though it will spoil you), but the Zoom view does not allow for Home Screen rotation. Thus, if you want to rotate the view where your icons display and have the iOS Dock on the left or right side of your iPhone screen, you must use the “Standard” view for the devices display. With the Home Screen rotating, you can think of the iPhone Plus as a smaller iPad, which also has the same rotation ability, except that the Dock gets rotated with it. Simple enough, right?

http://osxdaily.com/2015/02/20/rotate-iphone-home-screen/

Detect & Remove Adware from Mac OS X Easily with AdwareMedic

Detect & Remove Adware from Mac OS X Easily with AdwareMedic

 

Detect and Remove Adware in Mac OS X

Adware is generally something most Mac users won’t have to worry about, but that doesn’t mean that OS X is entirely immune to the potential nuisance, and nobody likes it when their browser has been hijacked by that type of junk. If you’re at all concerned about adware impacting your Mac and web browsing, you can easily scan, detect, and remove some of the most frequently encountered (although still rare) adware found in OS X using an excellent free utility called AdwareMedic.

AdwareMedic currently detects and handles 24 different families of adware, and the app will update it’s detection list each time you launch it to handle future findings. It’s effective and extremely easy to use, making it an appropriate addition to a general Mac maintenance routine, particularly if you or someone else is noticing some weird behavior while browsing the web.

How user friendly is AdwareMedic? You’ll have downloaded the app and completed a scan of the Mac for adware in a minute or two at most, regardless of your technical proficiency:

1. Get AdwareMedic free from the developer here and mount the DMG, you’ll want to copy the app to your /Applications/ folder if you plan on using it more than once

2. Launch AdwareMedic and choose “Scan for Adware” – the scan is quite fast and won’t take long to complete

3. Quit when finished detecting / removing adware*

* You’re most likely to see a “No adware found!” message, however in the event some adware is found it will remove it for you, or show you what steps to take if any are necessary. 

Keep in mind that adware, or malware, and other junkware for that matter, is generally less common in OS X than Windows, typically with the exception of users who willingly install lots of questionable software from questionable sources (for example, interacting with dubious banners on adult sites, or downloading apps from questionable sources which bundle other junk with an installer). Do be aware that adware is mostly just a nuisance that does things like redirecting your web browser to other sites you didn’t intend on visiting, or injecting junk flashing banners here and there, while malware can be a lot more serious. Both can be problematic at varying levels though, which is why AdwareMedic is so great to be offered for free.

The Mac does take precautions at multiple levels to prevent the varying kinds of disruptive junk from onboarding itself to OS X, ranging from an auto-updated malware detection list, Gatekeeper, to automatic disabling of old versions of Flash and Java, but it’s not perfect, and it’s still possible to inadvertently install something sketchy. If you’re interested, you can learn a lot more about how malware works in OS X at a very technical level, or just follow some general precautions to ward the stuff off to begin with. Perhaps the best way to keep any computer safe from adware and malware in general is to never install questionable software, and avoid apps that you did not specifically intend to install from a source that is trustworthy. That’s the case regardless of what operating system you’re on, with Macs offering no exception to reckless user behavior.

AdwareMedic requires a modern version of OS X, it works fine in OS X Yosemite, Mavericks, and Mountain Lion. Heads up to CultOfMac for this excellent find.

http://osxdaily.com/2015/01/29/scan-remove-adware-mac-os-x-adwaremedic/