It should be noted that Microsoft states that Office 365's One Note, Access and Publisher are for PC only (See asterisks for the first bullet of each highlight section for the Office 365 Home Premium and Small Business.). I've never used 365 to know if this is true or not.

I know that Access and Publisher were never available for Mac since version 1. Don't know about Note. Hopefully MS would not charge full price for Mac user.

Pretty much guaranteed Mac users will pay the same annual fee for less functionality than their PC brethren. If it were otherwise it wouldn't be Microsoft Office for Mac users.

Here is how I think this will play out.

If you're a PC user it will cost $99/yr and you'll get the following:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
Publisher
Outlook
Onenote
Access

The Mac users will pay the same $99/yr and get the following:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint
Outlook

And of the above apps, there will likely be features missing that exist in the PC versions of each.

On the other hand, users tend to go through a cycle of disliking the new version, followed by acceptance and familiarity with how it works, and eventually mastering it and holding on to that version out of comfort for perhaps years beyond Microsoft's intentions, then finally upgrading and repeating the cycle.

I think you've hit upon a near perfect description of how Microsoft dominates certain markets. They create dreadful user interfaces--that's a given. But because of its market share, users are forced to learn that UI and, having done so, are unable to adapt to better-designed UIs from other companies. Then, as those other companies began to make their products look like Microsoft's, the company changes its UI yet again. It treats UI's like high-fashion clothing design. It doesn't matter that the new designs or impractical and ugly. What matters is that they're constantly changing, making it hard for competitors to keep up.

I realized this when I talked to someone who's very high up in Microsoft's product support. He admitted to me that it took him two years to come to accept the latest changes in their UI, as if that was normal. But the kicker came when I asked him what Microsoft was doing to get other companies to at least follow the same design. His response implied that was something Microsoft would never consider doing.

Of course, there are other things going on at the same time.

I've got a job where at times I need to use Windows 7 and the accompanying Office products. At first, I wondered why anyone would be so stupid as to design a UI this clumsy. Starting a new email, for instance, required selecting a different tab for receiving email--the two most common things I do. And then there was the constant mode shifting. Clicking on a tab with words, getting a ribbon with vague images, having pull-down lists. It was sheer awful. It was like driving a car where the steering wheel was constantly changing shape and the petals for gas and brake shifting position.

Then I realized that, as a touch screen UI, it wouldn't be that bad. That doesn't mean it was good. Touch screens have certain limitations--such as an inability to make pull-down menus work well--that force other, more clumsy techniques to be used. Windows 8 is carrying that madness still further, which is why I'm lobbying at work not to upgrade.

What Microsoft's UI teams fail to realize is that differing UIs for keyboard/mouse v. touch devices is actually a good thing. They not only allow each UI to be optimized, the very fact that they're so different makes shifting between them easy. That's why none of us have any trouble shifting between a car (steering wheel) and bike (handlebars). Not understanding that basic point has been Microsoft's crucial mistake.

Apple's making a similar mistake, although on a smaller scale. When it comes to storing documents, an iPad gives up versatility for simplicity. Users don't have to save documents and, indeed, often can't choose or not choose to save them. Apple's stupid and still unconfessed blunder with Save As in Lion is an attempt to impose on OS X users the simplicity of an iOS UI while depriving them of versatility. And since many of us have been taking advantage of that versatility for years or even decades, it ticks us off to be treated like twits. That difference is built into our work flow. We use the fact that changes are not saved (in the older and better scheme) until we consciously save them as a way to try out new ideas. Apple, in its folly, has taken that ability away from us.

And in a very real sense, Apple's blunder with Save As illustrates that it is as capable as Microsoft of mistakenly merging two very different ways of working. A mindless autosave on iOS makes some sense. In a touch UI, manually saving is too clumsy. But in OS X, all I need do is develop a Cmd-S reflex to save regularly. I don't need Apple to do for me something I can do--or more importantly not do--for myself.

In addition, Apple seems guilty of a bad case of NIH--not invented here. I've got numerous third-party apps (InDesign, Scrivener etc) that do a backup autosave every few seconds. Then if the app crashes or my power goes out, I get the option of going with my last formally saved version or the last autosaved version. Apple deprives me of that choice.

The same is true of versions. Scrivener does versioning right with its Snapshot feature. I can save a version with a description of what it means. Apple's scheme just mindless saves a version from time to time without explaining what each version is. Apple's versioning seems designed of, by, and for programming geeks and no one else.

And, quite frankly, after the Save As and Versioning fiascos, I not longer trust Apple to get their UI changes right. Their 'we know it all' attitude seems to be growing even faster than the value of their stocks. That is not good. Apple needs to listen and at least give us the option of choosing to stay with the more versatile Save As scheme. Apple is just a little way down the mad path that Microsoft is racing down. But it is making the same mistakes. There are critical ways that touch/tablet OSs need to remain different from mouse/laptop UIs.

I agree with most of Inkling's comment except for the "Save As/Versioning" part. This was not a UI change I had to "learn to like" but rather one I embraced from the start, as I often use older documents as templates, and (previously) had to keep dozens of revision versions around saved by hand for clients who changed their minds frequently. Lion's system was a godsend for my workflow and I'm disappointed that they watered it down in ML, luckily they have not changed it so much that I can't use it but I definitely preferred the default locking (after a user-set period of inactivity on a document).