Mac Office, Virtual PC Previewed

A new release of Office for the Mac OS X, called Office 2004 for the Mac, and support for Apple’s 64-bit platform in the next version of Virtual PC for Mac, signal Microsoft’s continuing support for Mac OS X. Yet, despite these announcements at Apple’s annual MacWorld San Francisco conference, some skeptics continue to wonder how long Microsoft will continue to invest in the Mac given its other priorities, including fending off Linux in the enterprise.

Office 2004 Includes Mac-First Features

After years of releasing Office products for the Mac that looked and functioned almost identically to their Windows counterparts (which did nothing to endear Microsoft to the Mac faithful), in 2001 Microsoft introduced Office v. X-a version of Office for the Mac that looked and behaved like a Mac application. Office 2004 for the Mac builds on that release and includes several “Mac firsts”-features that are appearing in the Mac product before the Windows version. Excel, for example, offers a new Page Layout View similar to that of Word, which allows users to see exactly how a spreadsheet will print, including headers, footers, and page breaks, and also allows users to edit the document while in that view.