Recently in Microsoft Office Category

Microsoft's aim to bring applications like its flagship Office suite to the cloud, making it — in one form or another — accessible through Web browsers and other interfaces is still too new (and not actually available) for anybody to see exactly what it means.

But to get a start on the new Microsoft push, start with this CNet package, Windows and the Cloud. Specifically, look here for Office and how Microsoft is trying to compete with Google's already established Docs offering.

From Ina Fried's Beyond Binary:

Microsoft will offer browser-based Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in two ways. For consumers, they will be offered via Microsoft's Office Live Web site, while businesses will be able to offer browser-based Office capabilities through Microsoft's SharePoint Server product.

The company has been pushed into this arena by Google, which has been offering its free Google Apps programs for some time. In competing with Google, Microsoft is touting the ability to use Microsoft's familiar user interface, as well as the fact that all of the document's characteristics are preserved.

...

Elop said that not all of the editing capabilities of the desktop products are in the browser versions. "The editing we are characterizing as lightweight editing," he said.

Although Google Apps has seen most of its popularity among consumers, it has started to attract attention from corporate customers. Google Apps got a strong look from Procter & Gamble, which only decided to stick with Office after a strong push from Microsoft.

MS Office 2008 for Macintosh will sync with the iPhone.

So you'll be able to do a PowerPoint presentation anywhere, anytime, on a teeny screen! OK ... you can plug the iPhone directly into the projector with the proper Apple AV cable.

Love or hate the iPhone, it's the future of computing. We'll all be carrying around something similar within the next 10 years.

According to NPD, via Microsoft-Watch.com, a full 20 percent of retail sales of Microsoft Office these days is the Macintosh version. And even more startling, 10 percent of the U.S. retail sales for Windows Vista Business and Ultimate also come from Mac users.

What's the deal? Macintosh users love MS Office. And ... OpenOffice is weak on Mac OS X, Apple's own iWork isn't making much of a dent ... and the student-teacher edition of MS Office retails for a very reasonable $149..

The article from Microsoft-Watch.com muses over whether Microsoft wants to be in the business of boosting a rival platform (OS X over Windows). What is unsaid is that Microsoft could play hardball and cease support for Office on the Mac, as it did for Internet Explorer years ago. But that would only strain the now-cosy relationship between Apple and Microsoft, one that pretty much splits the market between them both and chokes out other competitors in the software space.

No doubt, MS Office is a major factor in allowing Mac to be chosen for corporate and other office environments, but you can bet that Apple would pump a whole lot more juice into iWork if MS Office weren't available. Running Windows (and Office) in Boot Camp wouldn't be as desirable, especially for the non-technically minded.

In a way, it's a mutual-aid society -- both Microsoft and Apple hedge their bets and keep their businesses going with the kind of cooperation that keeps Microsoft's Office on the Mac, Apple's iTunes on Windows ... but curiously doesn't give Mac users the same MS e-mail program or Web browser. Again ... if Firefox weren't available, Safari would have to be better -- and be supported by the code at untold numbers of Web sites that currently only offer partial functionality to Safari users.

But when it comes to MS Office, the rock and hard place, between which both Apple and Microsoft are caught, is made less rocky and hard by all the money they use for profitable padding in between.