MacRumors.com

APC Magazine claims to have some details about Microsoft's upcoming Office 2007 for the Mac.

As expected, Microsoft is coding the next version of Mac Office as a Universal Binary application, allowing Intel-Macs to run the application natively.

Being able to sidestep the Rosetta translation layer which enables Power PC applications to run under the Intel architecture should in itself deliver a significant speed boost to Office [2007]

At this stage, Microsoft Mac Business Unit has only just finished the transition to Apple's X-Code development environment which is required to deploy a Universal Binary application. The next milestone is expected to be a refresh of the user interface, which remains in development.

According to the article, the new version isn't expected until the third quarter of 2007.