Although it may sound rather strange, one of the biggest software releases that's going to take place at this year's MacWorld Expo comes from Microsoft. On the other hand, it's good to see that Bill's company gets back on the Mac, especially since the last Office package for this platform was released back in 2004...
The official site for Microsoft Office:Mac 2008 is already up, and you can see it here. Since it's already announced that the big realease is going to take place on the 15th of January, there's no question about where this is taking place, so let's try to take a look at the features that should help Microsoft's Office for Mac take on Apple's iWork suite, shall we?
First of all, it seems that the applications included in this Office version for Mac are still Carbon, but they combine some Office 2007 novelties, such as the ribbon, and Leopard's look and feel.
Word is going to feature the new Publishing Layout View, together with support for OpenType, but Excel seems to lack some important things, like the support for Visual Basic for Applications, which is still present in Office 2007. Obviously, this may lead to compatibility problems in large companies that use both Windows and Mac, so they may end up running Office 2007 in Parallels, which is not a brilliant idea, but ends up with a double purchase from Microsoft(Windows and Office 2007), instead of only Office 2008...
At last, it seems PowerPoint and Entourage also got various improvements, but it doesn't seem to be anything worth being mentioned at this time. Just wait a few days, and we'll surely know a lot more, as soon as the real thing comes out...
