In his latest column for BusinessWeek, Alex Salkever says that Apple’s real worry isn’t the loss of Internet Explorer — it’s the growing chance that Microsoft will abandon Office for the Mac. “That Redmond pulled the plug on IE for Apple was hardly a surprise. After all, Jobs & Co. must have expected some reaction when it released Safari. But far more daunting is the prospect of Microsoft abandoning the Mac version of its popular Office software. That’s because Apple hasn’t yet shown it can replace Office for most of its users. And without Office, Apple’s whole ‘switchers’ program to convert Windows users will probably run aground. Microsoft Word, Entourage, Excel, and PowerPoint are key bridges between the two worlds. Remove them, and buying a Mac suddenly looks a lot scarier.”