Ars Technica has a first look review of the new Microsoft Office for Mac 2008.

I’m oddly excited about this. Everyone knows I’m an Apple Fanboy, and I love Pages, I’m just not so keen on Numbers.  Overall though, Microsoft has done something smart with their Mac line of products for years…Office for Windows and Office for Mac are developed separately. Not that they aren’t talking and including similar features, but if you’ve been on both platforms, you would recognize that some features (Mail Merge for one) have been much easier and more robust on the Mac for years.

The not so smart thing that Microsoft did, was they didn’t talk internally about cross-platform compatibility. They released the Office for Windows update last year, with no compatibility on the Mac for the .docx file format. — Not so brilliant.  

Anywho…it really looks like this is a huge upgrade and extremely well designed from a Mac perspective.

Can’t wait to get my hands on it…should be available at Macworld next week or sometime in January…