'The new Outlook for Mac is available to Office 365 commercial customers and Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal and Office 365 University subscribers,' wrote the Office team in a blog post announcing Outlook's availability. Those subscriptions cost $80 for a four-year deal for college students, between $70 and $100 annually for consumers, and between $99 and $264 per user per year for businesses. Only customers with an active Office 365 subscription can download the refreshed Outlook for OS X.

But the company took a different tack today because of its emphasis on the rent-not-buy subscription model that it's aggressively pushed since January 2013. Typically Microsoft rolls out a new edition of Office as a complete package, with all-new - or mostly-new - applications rather than release bits piecemeal. 'This looks like it will be a journey, an evolution over the next year or so for Office on the Mac.' company's approach to software development. 'Microsoft likes to say 'It's a journey,'' said Miller of the Redmond, Wash.

Microsoft outlook for mac os