A couple of questions on how this might relate to the first release of MS Office to officially support Intel Macs:

1) It is my understanding that the Mac BU is an officially separate entity. Does that really mean that there is no chance that Microsoft would "borrow" people on the Mac team to help push Vista or Office for Windows 2007 out the door?

2) Recently, the Windows and Mac releases of Office have been staggered so that they are released on alternating years (or 1 - 1.5 years). The Mac BU is quoted as saying that they "typically deliver new versions every two to three years" but that "[m]oving to universal binaries will naturally impact our schedule". (Isn't that wonderfully non-committal.) The last version effectively shipped in June of 2004.

Alternating releases between platforms has its advantages for MS: you don't have to hold up one release to coincide with the other and you have more time to ensure that the new version for one platform is compatible with the latest version for the other platform. Does the delay on the Windows front mean that we are likely to see the 2 versions come out more concurrently? Might MS delay the Mac version as the result of the delay in the Windows version?

No, I'm just out of the office this week.