Microsoft Finalizes Mac Office 2004

The countdown has begun for Mac Office 2004. One week from today on Wednesday, April 14th, Microsoft will release its newest productivity suite for Mac OS X to manufacturing.

Microsoft is casting the suite as its best version of Office for Mac ever; pledging new tools to manage information as well as features to assist users to create "stunning" documents. Copies are expected to hit the shelves by the third week of May.

For those who simply cannot wait, Microsoft has instituted a pre-order program; other more conservative customers can view an online Flash demo of Office 2004's features. The Apple Store, MacConnection, MacMall and MacZone are among the retailers participating in Microsoft's pre-order program.

Features include charting improvements for Excel; new 'smart' buttons in Word and Excel; more than 100 new design templates; animation and transitions for PowerPoint; a save as picture function; and for documents: soft shadows to add a unique visual effect and a 'scrapbook'.

Mac Office 2004 is also more organized. To provide customers with a 'home base' of sorts for accessing emails, documents, contacts, and audio and video Microsoft has dreamed up a new featured called Project Center. Project Center is integrated with Entourage.

Microsoft is anticipating a warm reception from Mac aficionados. "Customer feedback on early versions of Office 2004 for Mac has been overwhelmingly positive; we are really excited to get it out the door and into the hands of our customers," commented Roz Ho, general manager for the Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU).

For customers who are seeking an alternative to Microsoft Office, the wait will be substantially longer than seven days: technical hurdles have postponed the native Mac OS X release of OpenOffice 2.0 until 2006.

Six localized versions of will be released to manufacturers in the weeks following the general release of Mac Office 2004: French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish. US pricing – sampled from the Apple Store online – lists the Standard Edition for $399.95 and the Upgrade Edition for $229.95.