Microsoft announced today that they will in fact be updating Windows Office—for those who for some reason still aren’t using iWork—to take advantage of the new Mac OS X Lion features.
Slashgear.com sums it up pretty well:
The new features will be integrated for the latest Office for Mac 2011 and will include Auto Save, Versions, and Full-Screen mode. However, don’t expect the update to come tomorrow or even in the next few weeks. Instead, Microsoft Office team member Pat Fox confirmed that the wait for the update will more likely be “measured in months.”
Fox also emphasized that Office for Mac 2004 will not work with Lion as it is written for PowerPC systems and Lion no longer includes the Rosetta code needed for backwards compatibility. This seemed to have been the same problem for several other software packages, including Intuit’s popular line of QuickBooks and Quicken accounting software.
Great features indeed. But like we’ve said before…now the time to try out the less expensive iWork, as they’ll be some very nice iCloud features going to iWork this fall—seamless syncing (we hope) between computers, iPads, and iPhones. Have you recently switched from Office to iWork? If so, what are your thoughts?