I know this is a few days old, but I felt the need to follow up on my earlier story entitled ‘What the Hell is Taking Microsoft So Long with the New Office for Mac?‘; Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit has launched a site called ‘Art of Office‘. It’s basically a gallery for things created using Microsoft Office on a Mac. Okay, so now we know at least part of what is taking them so long to pump out Office 2008.

I mean this is just so utterly ridiculous in a way that only something associated with Microsoft can be. There are so many Mac users out there who have been waiting since 2004 for an upgrade to Microsoft Office; you just announced that it was delayed again a few weeks ago without giving any real good reason, and then you come out with this?! Is this a joke? Get to goddamn work!

Mike Arrington wrote about how clear it was just from the comments on TechCrunch that Mac users are really pissed off about this waste of time by MacBU, and MacBU responded saying that the site didn’t take “even a day” off of the Office 2008 shipping window. Sure. If you have even one person working on that pointless site that could be running to get coffee to keep the programmers awake who are coding Office 2008, it’s a waste of time.

Nevermind the fact that as a former Windows-only user I have Office 2004 on all of my Macs (I no longer have any PCs), but I no longer use it since I’ve discovered Apple’s Pages program and Google Docs – so I really could personally care less when Office 2008 comes out for the Mac, because there is a 0% chance I will buy it or even pirate it. I just find it so ridiculous that the first Universal (that is working on both Power PC and Intel chips in the Mac) Office is going to have taken over a year longer to complete than a working Universal (and now final) version of a much more complicated program, Photoshop.

Everyone is wondering what on Earth is taking them so long, then them come out with this stupid site, which clearly took some time to make despite what they say. Their unit may have ‘Mac’ in the title, but it’s still very much a Microsoft unit.