[coderguy123]

Having worked in nyc financial world, I can say excel is here to stay - at least for foreseeable future. Heck, the only reason I have windows running in parallel in my MBA is excel. We use to have what we called "excel test" for all quants and analyst positions. We use to QA our excel sheets just like any other software application. I am surprised that many companies don't do that - it only makes sense.

[pinaceae]

why? excel runs perfectly fine in its OSX version. which differences have you encountered?

[kermatt]

VBA, which was removed in Excel 2008 and returned in Excel 2011, is not fully compatible with Windows versions, where most users author code.

Backend data connectivity options are virtually non-existant. Excel 2011 has what appears to be a 10+ year old version of MS Query.

Some 3rd party financial plugins are Windows dependent, and I believe some of the Microsoft analysis additions are as well.

[omni]

You nailed it. I would use less generous language than you did to describe VBA's deficiencies in Mac Excel 2011. Huge parts of what could be considered the stdlib are totally missing in the Mac version. The language doesn't even have native dictionaries.

[bsg75]

I doubt MS wants Mac Office to be on feature parity, otherwise there is one less reason for businesses to keep buying Windows.

[coderguy123]

being very heavy excel keyboard shortcut user, assumed it wouldn't be the same in mac. never tried it.

[pinaceae]

fyi: you can re-map any keyboard shortcut through Tools->Customize Keyboard.