SoftMaker.com

Interesting article on MS Office 2008 for Macs. If MS can do it, why can't SoftMaker?

New Office for Macs Speeds Up Programs, Integrates Formats

http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080103/new-office-for-macs-speeds-up-programs-integrates-formats/

Well it did take Microsoft 4 years to produce this version so it seems to have been a hard task even for Microsoft's dedicated Mac developers..

MS can do it because they control their own file formats. They have months/years to implement their own file formats before they announce them and release the software that uses them.

They do not provide other software authors the file specifications, so companies like SoftMaker have to reverse engineer the file formats if they want their software to read and write Microsoft formats. This process takes a lot of time and is subject to error.

Even if Microsoft released accurate file format information at the time they released new versions of their software, other companies would be months/years behind Microsoft in implementing those new file formats.

For further information you may want to check:

robweir.com/blog/2007/12/those-who-forget-santayana.html