Since there is already Office on Mac I don't see why you are so surprised

good move, it would make an almost useless product somewhat useful.

Microsoft and Apple have been working together for a looooong time. They first started working together when Apple asked MS to write a version of Basic for the Apple II computer way back in 1977, called Applesoft and they've been working together since then.

A really good interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together from 2007 is here (about 80min long, but very interesting!):

Nice, did you get it with the discounts? I was originally thinking about getting a MB Pro a few months ago, but then I decided to go with the new MB Air(13", i5, 4gb) and I love it. I play games on my desktop pc, so I didn't really need anything superpowerful. 

I think Office is the same price between Office 2010(pc) and Office 2011(mac). I was hoping that you could buy one of them as a 3 license pack and use the licenses with both the Mac and PC versions, but they are limited to that version.

I wonder if the apps will be split up into separate versions like Apple did with iWork on the app store, splitting up Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

very very much agree, one of the biggest leaps in software realeases i've seen in a long time.

depends i suppose on what you want.  i want something to take the place of my dying laptop so i'm looking for something that can: browse (the entire) internet, play my music collection, store my photos, store and open my files (excel and whatnot), ect.   the mere fact that it doesn't have a USB drive but rather the propriety apple connection (meaning it's really hard to get files on/off without a laptop the very thing i'd like to replace) defeats the entire point.  the fact it doesn't browse a good portion of the web (including this site) makes is practically useless to me.

i really want to want a tablet, i just don't want a stupid one.

did things get better?  i used an ipad at the apple store and had a lot of things break for me at the time.  ~4 months ago was the last time i tried.

I find it interesting how Bill Gates speaks about tablets being the future and Jobs seems to go into deep thought about it. Could this be where the iPad idea originated?

When I watched that part, I was thinking more along the lines of the ipad being in early development stages already, so he couldn't really talk about it. Especially, when they were asked what they thought people would be using five years from now. (2012) Jobs didn't really answer the question with specifics, only with vague ideas. That's what led me to believe the ipad was still under wraps at that point.

Watching the interview made me want to check out Triumph of the Nerds again. A 3 part documentary from PBS about the rise of the personal computer from 1996. It's pretty interesting as well, each part is 50 minutes. I think I first saw it way back in 1996, hehe. It's available to watch on Youtube:

Oh and I missed the Black Friday sale MS was having on Office Mac 2011 this past weekend. It was $80 (original price $120) for 1 license! Pretty good deal. The deal was still listed when I checked out MS' website, but when I added it to my cart, it just listed the regular price.

I am quoting you both on my ipad2 while sitting here in an airport.  I don't have a problem cruising the net on almost any website.  I had some problems on a few websites 5-6 months ago.  Based on what you plan to use it for, it seems to match almost perfect.