Mac users will have to wait until the first quarter of 2008 to purchase the new Microsoft Office. This is due to the fact that the Macintosh Business Unit wants to “deliver Microsoft Office at the right quality level.”General Manager of the Macintosh Business Unit, Craig Eisler said, “We had hoped to deliver the product in the second half of 2007 and as you know might imagine, this was a tough slip for us.”
The delay was not because of the addition of new features, but several factors that hampered development. “We switched to Intel, and Office changed file formats. It was no one thing. This release was harder than most just because of all those things happening at once,” Eisler said.
In a blog entry from the Mac Business Unit entitled “Office 2008 Coming January 2008”, the Mac Business Unit said that: “We’re in an ‘all hands on deck’ mode right now to ensure Office 2008
gets finished on time, and so you will not see final versions of our
RDC client or file format converters until sometime after we ship
Office.”
The new Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac will share some technologies with its Windows counterpart (Office 2007), and will use the Office Open XML Formats. Other new features of Office 2008 for Mac include a Publishing Layout View and Ledger Sheets.
Prices have yet to be announced.
See: www.microsoft.com
