Craig Eisler, general manager, the vendor's MacBU said, "We're in an 'all hands on deck' mode right now to ensure Office 2008 gets finished on time, and so you will not see final versions of our RDC [Remote Desktop Connection] Client or [OOXML] file format converters until sometime after we ship Office."
Microsoft-watch.com tells the story.
Microsoft had promised the converters by spring 2007 but in May delayed their release simultaneously with Office 2008. Meanwhile, MacBU released the beta of a single Word.docx or .docm converter to—get this—RTF (rich text format).
Now the converters will release after Office 2008. A simultaneous release presumed full read-write capabilities, with OOXML being saved natively the way Office 2004 does with Microsoft's older binary file formats. Microsoft's out there beating the OOXML open standard drum. So why can't Microsoft's own MacBU quickly develop and release OOXML converters?