When Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac ships later this year, you won’t be able to run it at 64-bit. It will be a 32-bit only app, quite unusual nowadays on Mac OS X.
Why? Because they’ve focused on making the Windows and Mac compatible with each other so much that they don’t have time left to do the transition.
From the official post:
“In Office 2011, we’ve made investments in better compatibility between Office for Mac and Windows Office, which is the largest request we receive from customers. We think we have some outstanding improvements to show you in this area, and we’ll continue to share details in coming weeks. Our work to increase compatibility means we haven’t completed the transition of moving the entire user interface over to Cocoa yet. And because Apple’s frameworks require us to complete the move to Cocoa before we can build a 64-bit version, Office 2011 will be 32-bit only.”
Perhaps a 64-bit version will be ready by the arrival of Mac OS X 10.7.
