What happened to the MBU?

It has now been over two years since Apple has begun the transition from Power PC processors to Intel, which, it is fair to say, has become a huge success. This transition took place with an incredible simplicity, strongly supported by Rosetta and by the availability of compilers that have enabled developers to quickly offer native software. Of course, a huge propellant was the faily quick transition of Adobe CS.
The final component of that transition was the eagerly-awaited Microsoft Office 2008, which has now sold for over two weeks. Until the release of Office 2008, we had full confidence in the MBU (Macintosh Business Unit), which has operated at Microsoft for 11 years, doing an excellent job, we might add. Their Mac versions often surpass their Windows-counterparts, but it's difficult not to be disappointed Office 2008. Without wanting to throw too many stones, let's just say it disappoints.
Although some cosmetic and functional improvements were certainly made, it now runs natively with the Intel CPU, which has yielded disappointing results! The first and foremost, we have already discussed that performance is slow. As incredible as it may seem, it is not better than 2004's performance, even under Rosetta. On the contrary, everything in Excel is slower, Entourage is still incredibly dependent on the disk and froze when we simultaneously selected a few dozen messages. We have even come to believe that a piece of code regarding PPC disk-access had been forgotten! Other problems exist, for example, a bug in the installer not giving the right permissions to files, or this incredible omission of Visual Basic.
We are not only disappointed but also worried. Like it or not, Office on the Mac is still essential for many professionals, and a sub-par version may affect sales of Apple machines. Our high expectations, therefore, might encourage the MBU to work very hard to improve its software suite as soon as possible!