If you have Mac pals that aren't yet on the Office train, bring 'em some joy This just landed in my inbox from Microsoft PR:We wanted to provide a quick correction that Black Friday shoppers will receive an instant $350 rebate (70% off) on Office 2008 for Mac: Special Media Edition. This offer is available on Thursday, November 27, and Friday, November 28, at all Apple store retailers, Best Buy Online, and Amazon.com.A $350 instant rebate off anything sounds okay, but what is Special Media Edition? When a vendor says “special,” I hear “stripped.” Special Media Edition is a really lousy name for the $499 SKU of Office 2008. It’s the full suite: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage with Exchange Server support, Automator workflow actions and Expression Media. The promo brings the $499 suite down to the $149 price of the lowball SKU. For the two days of the sale, Microsoft is giving away Expression Media, Exchange Server support and Automator workflow actions. These are controversial as product differentiators. What good is Entourage without Exchange Server support? Doesn’t all commercial Mac software come with Automator actions? And who wants Expression Media?It turns out that Expression Media earns its keep as a very close analogue to Aperture 1.0, except that an identical program exists in the Expression development tools for Windows. Expression Media implements contact sheets, light table, loupe and playlists. Projects built on the Mac cross the platform line with metadata, ratings and version history along with text and voice annotation. Expression Media works with RAW files from major camera manufacturers, and collections can contain any system-supported audio, video or PDF files. Playlists create slideshows that can be packaged as video.After Black Friday, the discount falls to 50%. If you have Mac pals that aren’t yet on the Office train, bring ’em some joy. Software Development