Office for Mac: The software equivalent of a hot dumb blonde?

Various blogs are posting reviews of the new Office for Mac 2008 which according to Wired is due to be released the week of the 14th of January. For all of us who’ve taken the plunge to intel macs this is good news. Office 2004 was unbearably slow under Rosetta and the beta that I’ve tried feels a lot more responsive on my Macbook.

So far so good.

But what about the functionality? Microsoft and Apple both use the Mac Business Unit as an indication that Microsoft is committed to releasing software for the Mac. We mac-users are even special enough that we merit our very own releases. We are also so nice and visual and creative that we don’t care about not having VBscript in Excel or a host of other things that our office pack just doesn’t do.

Is Microsoft dumbing it’s Mac:Office down to make sure the Mac will never really be seen as a serious contender for businesses? would it really be impossible to do a unified release of Office for both the PC and Mac?

You’d think it was easier for them to just focus on one release and there’d be less confusion about cross platform compatibility to boot.

So my questions is: Is Microsoft doing this to keep the Mac irrelevant to mainstream business users (despite its often touted superior security profile) or are Mac users simply so focused on “the pretty” that they happily feel special with their dumbed down office and pre-save compatibility checks?