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Writing in his MSDN blog, Brian Jones, a program manager for Microsoft Office, who has been working on XML functionality and file formats in Office for about six years, notes that iWork "reads the Office Open XML files with very high fidelity".

Jones then lists companies that provide some degree of OOXML support. Apple appears again, with iPhone support for Word and Excel email attachments on the iPhone.

"It's definitely a much broader level of adoption than you saw for ODF at it's same point in time (9 months after standardisation)," he says.

Whether Apple's ability to add import-only support for OOXML Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx) and PowerPopint (.pptx) files embarrasses Microsoft - as some have claimed<

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- is questionable.

Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research describes adding the ultimate insult to injury.

"Not only has Microsoft not delivered the ability to read and write Open XML in its Mac Office, but at the end of the day, Apple was the one who delivered," he said.

But Apple has done nothing that Microsoft has not already done Its filters can only import OOXML files, much like Microsoft's own converters.

Microsoft's Mac Business Unit recently attributed the delayed release of the next version of Office for the Mac to problems with implementing OOXML, among other things. And Jones says it is no surprise that full OOXML support will only be available once Mac Office 2008 is complete.

"I think the timing of Open XML support in products like iWorks, or MacOffice were more related to their entire project schedule, and not specifically the Open XML formats," he wrote. "The MacOffice folks have a ton of stuff they are working on for the next version, so it's not surprising that you aren't seeing full Open XML support until they reach that point."