Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it has been working closely with Apple Computer to insure Office 2004 for Mac will work with Mac OS X 10.4 when it becomes available on April 29, and is presently testing Virtual PC 7.0.1 for any possible issues.
In a prepared statement provided to The Mac Observer, the company said Office 2004 will work with Appleis Spotlight search feature and will index Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats. The company did not provide additional details of other features that will work with Tiger.
"Support for additional features such as sync services will be enabled by a future update," the company said, but would provide nno time period of when such an update might be released.
As for Virtual PC, Microsoft said it "will conduct final testing upon Tigeris availability" but will not know for sure if there will be any issues until they can begin testing their final code. A Microsoft spokeswoman said if issues do arise, the company would release a free update "within the next two to three months to address any issues."
Among the issues the Mac Business Unit development team will havw to focus on in Virtual PC include compatability with zero configuration printing so special printer drivers will not have to be downloaded by the user, virtual switch that lets Virtual PC users do host-to-guest and guest-to-host networking, and usage of the dock start menu that allows users to see the same files in Mac OS X as they would in Virtual PC, even if Virtual PC isnit running.