From Microsoft's press release about Office for Mac:

The group also is providing a glimpse at the road map of Office for Mac by announcing the return of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in the next version.


You've got to be kidding me. After all the crap that went up on the MacBU blog about how vba was dead and the requisite flaming from the Littles that vba was make or break, it's the MacBU that caves. I'm so confused.

* Why take the PR hit by saying vba was gone?
* Why bother with replacing vba with AppleScript in the most recently released version of Office for Mac?
* Why not just have updated the old Office for Mac with new Office formats and saved the brand new AWESOMEO 3000 engine for when vba was ready?

(You know, I never really understood why it was so impossible to port vba to this new Office for Mac. Isn't the whole point of .NET that it's easily deployable on new platforms? .NET is, in many ways, Java for Windows, with interpreted code running in a sort of Virtual Machine. And if M$ is eating their dog food, shouldn't much of the vba engine for Windows be written in .NET? Borrow the Mono project's compiler and off you go... It should be easier to port a vba engine from scratch now than ever before, right?)

Right choice or no, this is a cluster. I'd argue this seems emblematic of Microsoft in general since they decided to go Vista. They're chasing cash now more often than making smart decisions.

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