The deleted post on the realities of commercial software development was an editorial blunder. I was refreshing my memory using an ancient column of mine from Windows NT Systems. That was in my cut buffer when I meant to paste this follow-up. The moral of the story: Edit your blogs with vi.As I bring a close to my discussion of Office for Mac ramping down over the next five years, keep something in mind: I’m talking about 2011. That’s, like, five years from now. Do you even know who will be President in 2011?I cast my vote for the iChat AV lady. In 2011, Office’s packaging, be it virtual or physical, will have an OS X (or whatever it’s called then) and Windows (or whatever) logo stamped on it side by side. That is, if it’s not simply taken for granted that Windows apps run on OS X. By then, I think it will be, and that Apple will see that it’s done in The Apple Way, which co-opts other technology to suck developers and users into the platform, then never lets them go.Here are the top rationale for my Office for Mac sunset premise:Microsoft would have to rearchitect Office for Mac to keep it going past 2011. Office 2004 for Mac is a set of MacOS/Carbon CodeWarrior C++ standalone executables, legacy on legacy on legacy, all deprecated by Apple. Through some seriously heavy hauling, Microsoft manages to make this feel (mostly) like OS X software. MSN Messenger for Mac shows that the Mac BU is expert in the latest cut of CodeWarrior for Mac and the PowerPlant framework. That can take Office for Mac into Mach-O binaries, .app bundles for the major executables and x86 support.Microsoft remains stuck with the task of making Office look like it has all the advantages of Cocoa. Even Apple doesn’t shoot for OS X look and feel with its Carbon apps, which is evidence of the magnitude of the task.Office 2004 for Mac isn’t the product for the Mac BU to beat. Office 12 for Windows is. Like many Mac users, I prefer Office 2004 for Mac to the Windows alternative, enough so that I’ve never burned install media for Office 2003 for Windows. The argument that Office for Mac is superior in some way to Office for Windows will go up in smoke with Office 12 (not its final name). Through no lack of love or effort on the part of the Mac BU, Office for Mac risks looking dated and Lite compared to Office 12, whether Office for Mac runs in Rosetta or not.Windows and .Net will become Apple-supported OS X subsystems or frameworks. Within a year, we’ll have 50 ways to run Windows on a Mac, three of which will be supported commercial solutions. And they’ll all suck in terms of efficiency and integration unless Apple and Microsoft team up on one solution and support it. I think they should, and Office 12 would be an early beneficiary of such an effort.Read the next post for more. Software Development