Microsoft today took the unusual move of releasing a new version of Outlook for the Mac months before the rest of the Office suite will be ready.

Outlook is the email client bundled with the Windows and OS X editions of Microsoft’s Office cash cow.

The debut of Outlook came just days after screenshots leaked to the Internet. And the Outlook-only release was a first for Microsoft, said Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

“Microsoft likes to say ‘It’s a journey,'” said Miller of the Redmond, Wash. company’s approach to software development. “This looks like it will be a journey, an evolution over the next year or so for Office on the Mac.”

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