Microsoft revised its Office 2008 for Mac time table on Thursday, and will not be releasing the product before the end of 2007 as originally planned. Instead, the office suite release has been pushed back to mid-January, 2008.
The decision to delay the launch, according to Craig Eisler, Macintosh Business Unit general manager, was because Office 2008 would not be ready in time. "It was clear from our June and July quality checkpoints that no matter how hard we tried, we couldnit release our product in time for the Christmas season with the kind of quality we wanted," he said.
Mr. Eisler is shooting for a Macworld Expo 2008 launch, and Microsoft will start offering feature "sneak peaks" beginning in September.
Because of the effort the MacBU is putting into meeting the revised launch deadline, development efforts are being pulled away from the Office Open XML file format converter and Remote Desktop Client 2.0 projects. Final versions of both arenit expected to ship until some time after Office 2008 hits customeris hands.