Unlike Office 2007 for Windows, Office 2008 was not offered as a public beta before its scheduled release date. Office 2008 is the only version of Office for Mac supplied as a Universal Binary. Office 2008 was originally slated for release in the second half of 2007 however, it was delayed until January 2008, purportedly to allow time to fix lingering bugs. Microsoft stopped supporting Office 2008 on April 9, 2013.

Office 2008 is also the last version to feature Entourage, which was replaced by Outlook in Office 2011. Office 2008 was followed by Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 released on October 26, 2010, requiring a Mac with an Intel processor and Mac OS version 10.5 or better. Office 2008 was developed by Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit and released on January 15, 2008. It supersedes Office 2004 for Mac (which did not have Intel native code) and is the Mac OS X equivalent of Office 2007. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. Unofficially runs on PowerPC G3 Macs (like the iMac G3 in Bondi Blue) and with less RAM

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