Office for Mac 2011: Still mostly Carbon, 32bit only, VB back, Faster than '08

[MikhailT]

Source

.......In fact, we send dozens of people to WWDC every year to make sure MacBU products take full advantage of core Apple technologies, such as Cocoa. If you haven't heard - Outlook for Mac and the new user interface elements in Office 2011 such as the ribbon are built on Cocoa. We like using Cocoa because it makes it easier to do what the MacBU specializes in: marrying Microsoft software and services to the look and feel Mac users want.

In Office 2011, we’ve made investments in better compatibility between Office for Mac and Windows Office, which is the largest request we receive from customers. We think we have some outstanding improvements to show you in this area, and we'll continue to share details in coming weeks. Our work to increase compatibility means we haven’t completed the transition of moving the entire user interface over to Cocoa yet. And because Apple's frameworks require us to complete the move to Cocoa before we can build a 64-bit version, Office 2011 will be 32-bit only....
Looking ahead at the MacBU development roadmap, we expect to go even further with Cocoa in the future. Meanwhile, I think customers are going to be really happy with the improvements in compatibility, collaboration, and user experience we're bringing in Office 2011.

Now that Adobe has switched to Cocoa for their CS5, Microsoft remains the only third party MAJOR company that has still not switched to Cocoa fully.

64bit isn't really important, but it's a sign that an application is using Cocoa APIs only. The fact that Office 2011 is still using Carbon for some of the stuff, it's just sad.

Granted, at least they put VB back in for 2011 and they really did improve the performance and speed of the suite (based on Beta 4 reports).

Can't wait to see what Apple has done for iWork and iLife '11.