Still waiting for Outlook on the Mac?

Just when I thought I had the office apps issue sorted, Microsoft goes and announces two new versions of its Mac Office suite that include more enterprise-focused features and capabilities. The new Business Edition of Mac Office 2008 launches on September 15 and will include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage plus new features that will improve the suite’s ability to work with SharePoint, Exchange and Microsoft-hosted Online services.

But more interesting is the announcement that the next version of Office for Mac, due out late 2010, will finally drop the less-than-popular Entourage and replace it at last with a Mac-optimized version of Microsoft Outlook. The 2010 release of Office for Mac also will add back support for Visual Basic, which for some reason was dropped from the 2008 version.

The standard Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition are being phased out, the plan being to offer only two versions of Office 2008 for Mac: the new Business Edition and the existing Home and Student edition.

Why the big change? Mac news websites are suggesting that Microsoft is feeling the pressure since Apple’s next version of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, will include native support for Exchange Server when it’s released next month, which means business users can connect to Exchange data via Apple's built-in Mail, iCal, and Address Book applications, so by the time Outlook becomes available on the Mac next year most potential users will have forgotten why they thought they wanted it so badly!