I’m not a techie, but it seems a lot of good suggestions were offered — RealBASIC integration, open sourcing VBA, etc. Are any of them being considered? Are the decisions preventing their implementation technical or corporate?

It seems that an awful lot of the negative “mojo” you’ve experienced lately has centered around this particular cross-platform issue. Also, I suspect the heightened competitive tensions between Apple and MS (e.g. Apple’s anti-PC advertising and Vista’s anti-virtualization EULA restrictions) have spilled onto MBU. Unfairly, I agree, but an unfortunate fact.

With all this as a backdrop, some update and an indication that MBU is responding to customer input on VBA in a practical way might help alleviate some of the angst.

P.S. for the record, I’m a big MacOffice fan, having bought every version since Office 2k1 out out my own pocket. I don’t really care about VB — it’s not an issue at my workplace. I do, however, care deeply about cross-platform compatibility.

Office is still a very important product for the Mac, and my biggest concern as a Mac user is that Office might be limited as a response to competition with Apple on the rest of the Redmond campus, rather than technical or business reasons.

Please give post an update on the suggestions you received and what, if any, you are looking at implementing.

Thanks

There are surely a few positive commenters who want others to know how they feel. But most aren’t interested in either appreciation or condemnation, nor in being well-known or notorious. They just want to tell you what they appreciate, without drawing attention to themselves. (The equivalent people on the negative side won’t write about it at all: to write you privately slamming you would be too uncomfortable.)