EXCLUSIVE |Beta converters to let Microsoft's Mac Office customers read Office 2007 documents will be released next month, but the final edition could be almost a year away...
EXCLUSIVE | If you're a Mac user struggling to open XML-based documents, spreadsheets and presentations sent by someone running Office 2007 for Windows, we've got good news and bad news. No, make that good news and terrible news.
The good news is that Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) is on track for next month's release of a beta set of converters which will translate Office 2007's native ‘Open XML' file format to the traditional Office for Mac binary equivalents.
In an interview with apcmag.com, MacBU marketing manager Amanda Lefebvre confirmed the current timetable to ship "beta converters later this spring". With the US spring ending in May, this will deliver Mac users a solution sometime next month.
These will be "based on the conversion engine within Office 2008 for the Mac" says Lefebvre. But a rock-solid solution is much further away: sometime early 2008, as best we can figure.
According to Lefebvre, "the final converters (for Office 2004) will be shipped 6-8 weeks after the launch of Office 2008".
We were curious why such a delay was necessary, given that Office 2004 will use the Office 2008 file conversion engine and that Office 2008 would likely have its code locked down at the RTM (release to manufacture stage) which typically precedes the actual launch by at least one month.
Microsoft says this period is necessary to "incorporate and test" the file conversion code being lifted from Office 2008.
"We'll be using code from the final bits which are in Office 2008" Lefebvre explains. "It's about delivering the best possible file format fidelity, and a lot of that comes from making sure that we're getting full learning from the beta and also the final code, (taking) those two sources and updating the beta converters for Office 2004."
(We'd like to think that the Office 2008 XML conversions would be pretty thoroughly tested before reaching customers, certainly to the point where there'd be no ‘learnings', also known as ‘things to fix').
Based on that timeline, this means we won't expect to see the final set of XML converters available for Office 2004 until early 2008. That's not Microsoft's official timeline, mind you, but here's how we figure it.
Office 2008 for Mac gingerly stepped out of alpha into beta in March. This means we can expect a solid Beta 1 release in May or perhaps June.
A Beta 2 release would usually follow in three months, which brings us to August or September.
Even if Microsoft skips Beta 3 and rapidly moves to Release Candidate, a further three months is realistic (if not optimistic) for the whole process from Beta 2 to RTM. Now we're talking November or December for RTM, and suddenly is looks like the product's ‘2008' moniker was well chosen indeed.
If our estimates are out by about a month then Microsoft could well get Office 2008 out the door just in time for Christmas, but we feel it's more likely to be launched in January, which almost certainly means a walk-on during the Jobs keynote at Macworld 2008.
If we take Microsoft at their word, then this would see the Office 2008 XML file converters tweaked, tuned and tossed out for Office 2004 users in -- wait for it -- March 2008.
David Flynn met with the MacBU team during a visit to Microsoft's US campus as a guest of Microsoft Australia.