Will lack of VBA support kill Office 2007?
I don't honestly think so. In the article that I've linked, I have to say, that at some points in his essay, Rob Griffiths is talking out of his ass. I consider myself to be a power user in almost every aspect yet I have never used macros in Office applications in all my 11 years of using computers. Whenever Word or Excel tell me that there's a macro in the document, I usually ask them to disable it. And if this is the case with a person like me, I really expect that the scenario for 70-80% of users will be even simpler, i.e., they might never even have seen that window that asks them if they want the macros in the document to be enabled or not.I say 70-80% with such righteous confidence because most Mac users are admittedly not corporate users. Rob Griffiths comes from working in one of those rare organizations that happens to use Macs for all their tasks and so he feels the pang of VBA-less Office a lot more than all of us. But, for the college student, purchasing a Mac in September 2007 or for the home user, there will be no long argument on whether he should buy Office 2004 or 2007 because, "Oh, 2007 doesn't have VBA support!" Heck, even I wouldn't give a damn considering all the speed benefits I would get out of a native version of Office on Intel Macs. Plus, I have a copy of Office 2004 which I can use in case I get one of those rogue files and anyone who really needs VBA support can, I'm sure, purchase Office 2004 and Microsoft, I assume, will keep selling Office 2004 for the same reasons. It runs "fine" under Rosetta just now, and with faster Macs, that's only going to get better.
In short, there's no need to panic. Of course, I'm not happy that Microsoft is getting rid of VBA even though I never used it, I am glad Office 2007 will be Universal and offer better Automator and AppleScript support - two things that I have actually used and can use.
Sure, a short letter or fax in word, or a small tot up of a chequing account won't require VBA, but almost any business using MS Office will have dozens of documents that rely on it.
I agree with Rob, Office 2007 will be dead without VBA. Business will be forced to go Parallels+Windows+MS Office = more revenue for microsoft, and beginning to undermine the OS X platform as viably supporting business apps.
This is bad news waiting to happen, and mny people won't realise how serious it is until it is too late. Do not underestimate Redmonds business plan behind this move.