The Microsoft Mac Business Unit has released Service Pack 1 for Office for Mac 2008 users. The update brings a slew of bug fixes, small changes and performance enhancements, but the real news is the accompanying announcement that the next revision of Office for Mac will bring back support for the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) scripting language.

VBA is a scripting language that enables you to automatic Microsoft Office applications, customize dialogs and more. Although Apple’s OS X ships with its own scripting language (Applescript), those scripts won’t run on a PC (Microsoft does have a guide to converting VBA scripts to AppleScript). VBA was part of Office 2004 but, due complexities in the transition from PowerPC to Intel chips, it was left out of Office 2008.

The absence of VBA in Office for Mac 2008 means that while you can swap documents between Mac and Windows, you can’t swap macros and other time-saving workflow helpers with your Windows wielding cohorts.

But all that will change with the next version of Office for Mac, which will include full VBA support.

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The Windows-on-your-Mac virtualization application Parallels has been updated to support the most recent Windows updates from Microsoft. The latest version of Parallels will work with both Windows Vista SP1 and XP SP3. Along with competitor VMWare Fusion, Parallels Desktop for Mac one of the two most widely used utilities for running Windows applications under Mac OS X.

The Parallels 3 update also fixes several bugs, including one that would cause a kernel panic on the MacBook Air. Also addressed in the new release is a bug that would occasionally lead to excessive CPU loads and a corresponding lack of responsiveness from your virtual machine apps.

SmartSelect and Shared Folders, two ways to move files between your Windows VMs and your normal Mac drive, have also been updated to improved transfer speeds. For more details on Parallels 3, be sure to check out our hands on review.

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VMware has unveiled the first beta of its upcoming Fusion 2.0 virtualization software for Mac OS X. Fusion 2.0, which allows Mac users to run Windows and Linux apps within Mac OS X, features multidisplay support for virtual machines, improved 3-D graphics and easier-to-use "shared" folders for moving documents between your Mac and the guest OS.

The Fusion 2.0 beta is open to the public and VMWare says that 2.0 will be a free upgrade for current Fusion users when it’s released later this year.

Most of the focus for this release is on the multiple monitor support. VMWare is touting Fusion 2.0 beta 1 as the first “true” multidisplay solution for Mac virtual machines. What they mean by that is that even your “Unity” windows can be dragged between monitors and expanded and minimized just like your Mac application windows. That allows you, among other things, to move all your virtual machine windows to a second monitor so that you can have one monitor for Mac apps and one for Windows or Linux apps.

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