We've been using Open Office for some time now on our Windows computer, but I'm not in love with their Mac implementation as it currently exists... so it's been Office 2004 on our Mac boxes, which are our main programming and work computers anyhow. The day before yesterday, Microsoft delayed once again the supposed release of Office 2008 for the Mac, which was pretty much expected.

But yesterday Steve Jobs hopped onto the stage at Apple's summer press event and released the new iWork 08, which for the first time contains a spreadsheet: the new Numbers product. So I have recently returned from the Albany Apple store and am pleased to report that Microsoft Office is 100% gone from every Mac in the joint - assuming you can actually completely remove any MS product from anything, of course. We're all iWork all the time now, and I've been very pleased at how well all our very critical spreadsheets made the move to Numbers. I had already pretty much stopped using Word, and now that the new version of Pages contains not only full change tracking but distinct modes for word processing and page layout, it was an easy thing to send Office into the void.

The new iWork even supports Microsoft's (supposedly) open doc formatting - before Microsoft itself does, for that matter. Another really outstanding job by Apple, and a good day around here as far as getting things done goes.