Apparently, not only are the Open XML converters for Mac MS Office users slow in coming, leading to at least a few months of interoperability pain for their paying customers, but Microsoft has announced they will also be pulling VBA support from future Mac MS Office.

To say that Excel VBA and Macro support is an important key to interoperating within a corporate (mostly Windows) environment is an understatement, it is the reason that many people buy Mac MS Office:

To me, while the automation features are nice to have, it’s the fact that macros are portable across platforms that has helped the Mac versions of Office succeed in the market. With today’s versions of Office for Windows and OS X, macros written on the Windows version will work on the Mac version, and vice versa. (There are some exceptions for very complex macros, but most macros work the same on both platforms.) In any sort of mixed-platform environment, this is a very important capability—calling it mission critical for many wouldn’t be an understatement.

The other day I had quipped that Mac MS Office users may have to rely on Novell OpenOffice.org for their Windows MS Office compatibility needs on an interim basis, until the document converters were completed. Obviously, that was a misstatement - Mac users may need to rely on Novell OpenOffice.org for their Windows interoperability permanently.

Why is Microsoft bending over backwards making interoperability overtures towards Novell and Linux while punishing Apple and Mac?