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Over the years, Apple has made it increasingly easier for its OS X operating system to make nice with a Windows network, while Microsoft's Office for Mac has made it easier for Mac users to share files with Windows users. Today, there should be no more of that Mac good, Microsoft bad flame war that Apple keeps stoking with its TV ads.

Office for Mac comes out of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, which has been quietly refashioning versions of Office for Mac for the past decade. And, like the previous releases, this suite offers much more than other Mac productivity tools do, despite the recently released and beefed up Apple iWork suite, including a spreadsheet (Numbers), a word processor (Pages) and an arguably better slide-show package (Keynote versus PowerPoint). One thing both iWork 08 and Office for Mac lack is a database program; there's no Mac equivalent for Access, but Mac users can go to Filemaker's Bento, due to be released soon.

Mac's iWork 08 is manifestly preferable in price ($79, compared the full Office for Mac, almost eight times that). But the way both suites have evolved makes a choice between them much clearer than before: iWork has all the features individuals or small workgroups could need at a great price, while Office for Mac is the de facto product for large corporate networks, where business users must be able to read and use the full-featured files made by other who are using Excel and Word.

Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 makes one thing clear: As good as Mac hardware and software are, Apple still needs Microsoft Office.

More technologically informed people wanting a cheaper productivity suite should consider the free OpenOffice 2, or the free online components such as ThinkFree, Google Docs and Spreadsheets and Zoho Office.

With Office for Mac, business users also get the full Word mail merge, much more powerful Excel spreadsheets and better e-mail tools in Entourage, the Mac equivalent to Outlook. Some Mac reviewers have complained that Word now saves work in the new Open XML-based file formats by default, despite the option to change that default in the configuration panel to the more traditional DOC, XLS and PPT.

Mac users who have heard the grumbling of Windows users when they first saw the new interface of Office 2007, on which Office for Mac 2008 is based, shouldn't worry. The new Mac interface is not as radical a change for them as it was for Office for Windows users — in fact, Office 2007's interface owes a lot to Mac design, so the Windows users' shock should be largely irrelevant to Mac users.

The Windows version of Office, for instance, arranges its functions within tabs along its "ribbon" menu, while Office for Mac still uses drop-down menus such as File, Edit and View. Some menu items appear only when the context requires them, a feat of morphology that is not distracting.

In fact, a lot of the changes Microsoft wrought in Office for Mac 2008 are an acknowledgment to the Mac user interface, which clearly inspired the Aero Glass interface of Windows Vista.

Moreover, Office for Mac 2008 has obviously emphasized its graphics features, which are usually important to Mac users. Word, for instance, should make it easier to create attractive documents than using the Windows version, although a bigger factor is the graphics talent of the user. There's a Publishing Layout View with improved desktop publishing tools to create cover pages, tables of contents and use the kind of reference tools (citations and bibliographies) required in academic writing. Mail Merge has become a lot easier, with clarified instructions.

The only ones short-changed here are bloggers who might want a custom layout, like the one in the Windows version of Office.

Excel for Mac 2008 has also visited the beauty salon, and it now offers more attractive templates from its Elements Gallery. It's a big spreadsheet program, capable of handling 17.18 billion cells, the same as the Windows version, and includes useful tools for building formulas for complex calculations.

There are also templates for household budgeting and handling a small payroll. One big disappointment here is that Microsoft has dropped Visual Basic support for the Mac version of Excel, which should frustrate power users who like to write and use macros. Why Microsoft did this is a mystery; it was supported in the Excel version that came with Office for Mac 2004.

Entourage, the Outlook equivalent, is essential for business use. Individuals can continue using the Mac e-mail program, but those who connect to an Exchange server for their e-mail have no alternative. Office for Mac 2008 has added an Out of Office assistant — sending e-mail replies to let correspondents know you're out of the office and might not reply soon. (One thing e-mail has done to us is raise the expectation of an almost instantaneous e-mail response, which makes the Out Of Office feature particularly good for business users.)

Microsoft has also beefed up the way Entourage displays e-mail in HTML (a much-needed feature), its junk mail and phishing filters, as well as its search function, though it appears the search is not quite as fast in practice as it is in theory (or Microsoft's press releases). There's also a To Do list, which includes appointments and a colour-coded calendar to a new and fully interactive My Day widget that either floats on the desktop or runs in minimized mode, allowing users to schedule meetings and manage conflicts entirely within the widget. Oddly, this quick reminder of the day's chores and appointments looks like an on-screen version of a Palm handheld screen.

Anyone with a previous version of Office for Mac or even just the Mac Mail program can set up Entourage for e-mail accounts almost blind-folded — the first time it is run, Entourage will inhale account details from either source, including webmail accounts (Gmail and Windows Live Mail). Some problems have been reported with Hotmail accounts, but that's probably because Microsoft is in the process of migrating its millions of Hotmail users to the new and needlessly confusing Windows Live Mail concept.

PowerPoint and Keynote are both powerful, and the real difference between the two is the flourish with which individuals use them. From my perspective, the choice between the two boils down to personal preference.

And Expression Media, a module that comes only with Office for Mac Media Edition, is another example of Microsoft's ability to confuse its customers. It has nothing to do with Expression Studio, the recently released Microsoft design suite; Expression Media is a tool for cataloguing and organizing different media within a corporate context.

Canadians especially will be happy with the inclusion of Microsoft Messenger with the suite; we have embraced the Microsoft chat system over AOL, which has been much more popular among Americans. This version allows the use of emoticons, the ability to check out others' tastes with Apple's iTunes and includes a spell checker (why doesn't the Windows version have that?). And, to assuage fretful IT managers, Messenger will run on Live Communications Server 2005 using encrypted messages; users can also communicate with iChat, AOL, AIM, Yahoo, and MSN users.

In the final analysis, why should people shell out so much money for Office for Mac 2008? The question itself is based on sketchy logic. People who ask it are probably not corporate users, the prime market for the suite; they would easily do with iWork, any of the available free productivity suites, or even consider the Home and Student edition of Office for Mac 2008, which has no Exchange Server connectivity and does not include collaboration or the Office Automator collaborative tools. This version retails for $149.95, less than half the price for the top package.

Those who are part of a mixed-platform network will have little choice about buying it or have the software thrust upon them by employers. In either case, the cost of the suite is a function of the use to which it would be put, and not really a function of budgetary constraints.

It should also be remembered that unlike Office for Mac 2004, this version will run on both PowerPC-based Mac as well as Intel-based Macs.

Other factors affecting a decision to buy include: iWork Pages can handle the XML-based Office files, but can't handle Microsoft's Smart Art graphics or dynamic charts offered by Word; Pages also can't do bulk mailings merging data from sources that are not in the Mac Address Book. Those who use spreadsheets will have to ask themselves whether they need to use and change elaborate corporate files; if not, iWork's Numbers will fill most people's needs. And the best argument for Entourage is its ability to synchronize with e-mail, contact lists and appointment calendars on an Exchange server.

As for the flame war between Apple and PCs running Windows, it's right about one thing: Microsoft software makes big demands on hardware. Office for Mac 2008 needs 1.5 GB free on the hard drive using at least OS 10.4.9, with 512MB of RAM and a 500MHz Intel or PowerPC processor.