Microsoft’s relationship with Apple never has been cozy, but the release of Office 2008 seems to have solidified the two — and their working relationship — for the foreseeable future.

Office has become the ubiquitous word processing and spreadsheet application out there, and nearly all corporate presentations are made in PowerPoint as well. Apple is trying to prepare inroads with its new iWork version, but it has some limitations. The word processor is fine for most users, and Keynote, the presentation software, is quite elegant whether you are assured you are going to be making the presentation with Apple hardware. (The Apple spreadsheet is not ready for corporate use, however.)

With Office 2008 for Mac, however, Microsoft has upped the ante. Office 2004, the former version, had been getting distant in the tooth, and the new one has arrived just in duration. The most striking thing to me is how much Office 2008 has adopted the

look and feel of OS X and how much it feels like an Apple product instead of a Microsoft product ported to Apple hardware.

Many new features, like the Formatting Palette in Word, puts a lot of great stuff right at your mouse go. Styles, bullets, alignment — it’s all there. The best feature for students is the new Citations Palette that makes management of citations and bibliographies in research papers. Word additionally features a great new “Publishing Layout View” that makes desktop publishing a snap (finally!) with Word. that clearly is a response to Apple’s clearly better “Pages” application, but Office 2008 delivers. whether you want a simple newsletter or school report creator, that is your baby.

Excel adds the Formula Builder panel and numerous design improvements, but there wasn’t a whole lot to improve, frankly. whether you’re into numbers, Excel is your baby. I find the…

Orginal post by Top Tech News