I won't be buying it -- my Apple days are over -- but it's good to see Microsoft <em>finally</em> seem to have seen some sense over the Mac version of Word. At least judging by <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2010/092810-microsoft-word-for-mac.html">this review from Network World </a>(the product won't be on general release till the end of October).

Word 2008 for Mac is a stinker, especially those horrible bars that stick at the top of every page as you write (I do not ever wish to see the monstrous term 'Smartart' again, thank you kindly).

They appear to be there in the new version -- but, sigh, you can hide them. Since moving to Windows 7 and <a class="zem_slink" title="Microsoft Office 2010" rel="homepage" href="http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010">Office 2010</a> I've come to realise the three core features of Word 2010 I will not be without. They are...
<ul>
	<li>The ability to turn off and turn on the contents of the ribbon -- and to hide the ribbon itself. I hated the ribbon when it came out but in 2010 it's actually very powerful provided you tailor it to your own uses.</li>
	<li>A proper navigation sidebar that lets you drag and reorder chapters and scenes manually, and gives you a simple word count for sections without having to select them. On Windows you do this just by right-clicking the chapter/scene heading.</li>
	<li>The ability to get rid of all the window junk and right full screen with an unobtrusive background (just pick the black colour scheme in Office 2010 and you have a variety of options).</li>
</ul>
From what I've seen Mac users will get all of these things with this new release. At last...

You can <a href="http://blog.officeformac.com/office-for-mac-2011-available-october-26/" target="_blank">watch the full screen feature in a video here</a>, along with some odd 'layering' technique which will presumably interest someone, though no one who works with words alone I imagine. If I were still actively writing on a Mac I think I'd have placed an order for the upgrade already.

The question is... what do Apple plan to do in return? Their offering is iWork and Pages, which is so very nearly excellent but not quite. These new features from Microsoft leave Pages -- which is very poor at outlining and offers no sectional word counts -- very much in the shade. But is Steve Jobs really interested in boring office apps any more? I wonder...