Kevin Browne, general manager for the Macintosh Business Unit used his keynote this morning at Macworld Expo to demonstrate, for the first time, a Carbon version of Office 2001 running on Mac OS X.
Browne showed attendees working versions of the company’s new PIM, Entourage, and Microsoft Word. Although the versions shown today were not feature complete, Browne told the crowd that Microsoft is “spending money in a huge way” on their Mac products.
Explaining the development process to bring Microsoft products to OS X, Browne said that the MacBU was porting 200 components and applications to Apple’s next generation operating system.
“Please put out of your mind the question of whether we’re committed, we are investing tremendous resources to bring our products to OS X,” Browne said.
Reminiscent of a Steve Jobs demo of applications working in OS X, Browne showed the crowd how Entourage and Word minimized in the Dock, and he also showed the open and save dialog boxes. The Word demo also included a document with an embedded QuickTime movie that continued playing while minimized in the Dock.
Browne said that Office for OS X would be available in the fall. If you purchase Office 2001 now the upgrade price will be US$149 — 50 percent off the normal upgrade price of $299.