iWork ‘08 with Office Open XML support

Just this month, Apple released iWork ‘08, their latest version office suite. The package includes Pages ‘08 (word processor), Keynote ‘08(presentation), and Numbers ‘08(spreadsheet), which is more similar to Word/Publisher, PowerPoint, and Excel respectively.

Nothing more exiting than its new feature of the capability to support Office Open XML (OOXML), which is obviously based on XML format for electronic document specification that has been developed by Microsoft. This release brought Microsoft a bit of “shame” to Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit (MacBU), a unit focusing in developing applications for Mac, which was not able to deliver capability of supporting its own format. And yet, Apple did it.

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac was now delayed until later release in January 2008, saying the delay is due to “quality drive” effort. And I suppose one of it is to go with supporting Open XML formats. Well, Microsoft has to learn something from this. And according to Brian Jone, a Program Manager in MS Office, “this suite reads the Office Open XML files with very high fidelity.” — posted in his blog.