The biggest concern everyone had when Apple announced it would shift Macs to Intel chips from the PowerPC platform was whether third-party software companies (actually, just Adobe and Microsoft) would make the switch along with the computers. After all, it was Adobe and Microsoft’s unwillingness to develop versions of Photoshop and MS Office for Rhapsody that scuttled Apple’s first attempt to transform NeXT’s OPENStep into a next-generation Mac OS.
Adobe Creative Suite 3 brought the essential creative applications to Intel Macs at native speed, and now Microsoft is nearly ready to bring the essential productivity bundle along for the party. Though it won’t ship until January, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit is currently previewing the software at a Mac Office website — and hey, it looks a lot like the iPhone site!
All in all, it looks most like Microsoft trying to do Pages and Keynote while leaving in all the complexity. The interface still feels off (especially with Leopard coming before this), but you can tell they’re trying. And it’s about time the last excuse to not switch to an Intel Mac got polished off.
From everything I can tell, there’s nothing Mac-specific about the suite other than the interface and a few Automator workflows. It’s basically Office 2007 a year late and Windows-free. The YouTube video above shows the newly integrated SmartArt features that rapidly transform data into graphs.
Office 2008, featuring Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, is $400 in full or a $280 upgrade.
Office 2008 for the Mac Home and Student Edition, which drops Exchange support in Entourage and Automator workflows, is $150. Seriously. Corporate e-mail support costs $250 a head. Who knew?
Office 2008 Special Media Edition costs $500 or $300 for an upgrade and throws in MS’s Expression Media, a digital asset management tool on top of the standard bundle.
