Microsoft announced today that next edition of Microsoft Office for Mac will be released in late 2010 and it will replace the much-hated Entourage with Outlook. Microsoft says the Outlook for Mac will include all the functionalities of Entourage like public folders, managed folders and category syncing, but it will feature new database that will give Outlook incredible reliability, better performance and better integration with technologies such as Time Machine for backup and Spotlight for search.

Microsoft also said that Outlook for Mac wouldn’t be a feature-for-feature match with Windows counterpart, but it will work well with Windows Outlook and the Exchange environment. Which means Microsoft will keep Outlook for Mac crippled so that more cooperate customers would opt for Windows Office.

Now the big question is would Outlook matter in 2010 because Apple is bring native Exchange Server support in Mac OS X Snow Leopard (coming this September). This will allow applications like Mail, iCal and Address Book to access data on Exchange Server without the need of Microsoft Outlook. However, Microsoft claims that Outlook would offer features that Apple’s integration with Exchange won’t offer. We have to wait and see, if Outlook is any good or just another Entourage.
[Via Macworld]