We’re very pleased to announce that the product team has signed off, and our final build has left the building and is en route to manufacturing sites abroad. Needless to say there’s some joy in MacBUville, with festivities as I post. While we love building Mac software, actually getting that software into the hands of the people we’ve been building it for is something we’ve been looking forward to for a long time. For my teams, the RTM milestone is the last step in the process.

It’s quite a thing to think back on everything that has gone into arranging the bits on this one polycarbonate disc. One way to think about the approximate total man hours is that if a single multi-talented person had done all this work they might have started around the time that King John signed the Magna Carta.

I know it’s been said before, but I’d like to extend my thanks to the team. Office 2008 is MacBU’s most significant release to date. I’m excited about both the new user experience and capabilities we’re delivering now, as well as the work we’ve done at all levels to make this release a great foundation for future releases to come.

Though our work is finished, our operations, localization and marketing teams remain busy getting Office 2008 on shelves for our product launch on January 15th at Macworld 2008. A large portion of the MacBU team will be on hand at Macworld, and I know people are excited to show their work and talk to real users about the release. We hope to see you there on the show floor, in presentations, and at various events around town – watch Mac Mojo for more details about what we’ll be up to at Macworld!

I'm hearing the ship siren getting cranked again – off to check on the latest margarita batch.