Microsoft will detain the release of Office 2008 for Mac until mid - January 2008 , congresswoman of the fellowship ’s Macintosh Business Unit announced Thursday .
The long - awaited Intel - native Office , featuring programs such as Word , Excel , Powerpoint , and Entourage , was to begin with scheduled to be put out afterwards this year . rather , Microsoft said it hope to release Mac Office 2008 to manufacturing in December , which would allow it to release the intersection at the January 2008Macworld Conference and Expoin San Francisco .
“ We made the decision to do this so we could give users the eccentric of lineament that they deserve , ” said Craig Eisler , general manager of the Macintosh Business Unit . “ This is a quality - get decision . ”
Eisler , who take over the top job at Microsoft ’s Mac Business Unit in June , aver the decision was made as a part of Microsoft ’s stock process of lineament evaluations , and that his arriver was not a factor in the determination .
“ It was my call , but this was n’t Craig come in and saying , ‘ We need more clock time , ’ ” Eisler said . The delay was not due to the gain of any new characteristic , he add together , but rather was the compounding of a “ stark storm ” of factors that hampered the development try .
“ We exchange to Intel , and Office changed file data format , ” Eisler said . “ It was no one thing . This exit was harder than most just because of all those things befall at once . ”
In rescript to build Intel - native Mac coating , the Office development team also had to switch over fromFreeScale ’s CodeWarriorenvironment and alternatively adoptApple ’s Xcode system .
“ modify development tools is not something you ’d voluntarily do in the middle of a product cycle , ” Eisler said . “ But if we want to aim Intel processors , it was a requisite . ”
Office 2008 for Mac will share some technologies with its Windows counterpart , Office 2007 , making for unseamed compatibility between the different versions , according to Microsoft . Both Office releases will practice the Office Open XML Formats , which will enable users to easily save files and open files in either weapons platform .
Other new features of Office 2008 for Mac include a Publishing Layout View , which lets users create layout - rich documents in Word , and Ledger Sheets , which enables Excel to handle unwashed fiscal direction job such as budgets , invoices , and register without requiring users to whip up complex formulas on their own .
Eisler said that pricing for Office 2008 has not been finalized .
