What do you think about iWork?

A few days ago my colleague had a problem with his Powerpoint presentation. He prepared it on the PC desktop and moved to his PC laptop (to show on the meeting). It came out that he had an older version of the program installed there and some animation tricks didn't work. He wanted to export it but no format was suitable.

In iWork presentation I saw that you can export any Keynote presentation to many different formats - mov, images, PDF. It seems very handy and my questions are:

1. What do you think about iWork?
2 Which features are really useful comparing to MS Office?
3. How does MS Office files import/export work?

I also like the Numbers features where every table is treated separately so
you can have different column widths without messing around with cells merging etc.

 

Personally, I love iWork it has a beautiful interface and everything else looks beautiful. Although you should take my word with a grain of salt because I don't own iWork I've only used it. iWork has become much more extensive since the older version. If you plan on doing more professional work I suggest that you get MS office especially 08 when that finally rolls around. If you just need the basic features of an office suite (In addition to the beautiful templates) I suggest you purchase iWork. iWork is pretty god at exporting files as I have used Keynote with PowerPoint 2003.

 

I like iWork. For its price, it does most of the things that the average user needs from an office suite. Keynote is easy to use and has awesome effects and transitions, Pages is, as it is, a word processor. Numbers is still a little new, so expect more improvements in future versions of that.

If you always need compatibility with Office, then I'd say stick with Office for Mac. iWork files shouldn't have a problem transferring between Office, but to be absolutely sure, Office for Mac is going to be more guaranteed.

But if you don't work with complicated files (say just word documents), then you won't have to worry about compatibility issues most of the time. And iWork is much cheaper than Office too, so definitely a worthy alternative.

 

yeah I agree with Sam; I was forced to get Office for Mac because my brother convinced my dad that I might as well get the more professional version now since I'll need it in college.

 

Thanks guys. And what about unique features or things you found useful? For me exporting to Flash is something I might be very interested in.

 

yeah I think a unique feature maybe not necessarily a feature but I think the transitions within Keynote and the templates within Pages are quite enticing to certain people but I think that's certainly interesting. I also like how all of the programs flow together...

 

I enjoyed playing with pages and keynote, they are nice apps which if it weren't for Office's domination would do for most peoples needs.

I too ended up being forced to install Office though because I occasionally work from home and need some Word features that don't transpose with 100% accuracy (attributable track changes, comments bubbles, fine formatting).

NeoOffice and OpenOffice are even closer to Office but still dont manage comments and track changes with 100%.

 

I think iWork is awesome. I have been using it for a few months now and have never had any need for Office. Office 2004 is horrible to use on Intel-based Macs anyway because it is so slow. You will have to wait for the new version to come out to remedy that problem. Everything that I need to do I can do with iWork. And if somebody with a PC needs my file then I just export it to an Office format and it loads up on the PC without any additional changes being needed. Somebody above said they had problems with tracked changes and comments being messed up when converting from Pages to Word but I haven't had any problems with that feature. I always get documents emailed to me because I need to proofread them. So I track changes and add comments and send them back to them for use on their PC. It always works just fine. I'm also comfused about what another person posted above. They said they might as well get the professional version (Office) instead of iWork because they will need it in college. This seems like a silly statement to me. I don't see any reason why Office is more professional and there isn't anything that Office does that iWork can't do for those in college. If anything, iWork is better for those in college who need to give presentations because a Keynote presentation looks much more professional than a Powerpoint presentation. Although, Powerpoint 2007 is pretty good competition for Keynote 2008 when it comes to presentation design. And as somebody already mentioned, iWork is almost half the price of Office and in my opinion is a better product. Of course there are different versions of Office that come with additional programs that do things that iWork can't do but I never use those programs anyway. I just use Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. But now I use Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. I'm not even sure if I will buy the new version of Office when it comes out. I used it for the PC and it is a very nice and worthwhile upgrade from the last version. But I'm not sure if I will switch from iWork to the new Office for Mac because iWork is so nice.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that iWork will open up those new Office 2007 formats without any problems.

 

The thing about iWork is that it's awesome, but it's not widely used. Sucks, because I bet you 80% of the people who buy office just use it lightly, for typing stuff in word, basic formulas in excel, etc, which iWork would do you just fine, for less than half the price. I've been using '08 since it came out, and haven't touched office since. The only thing I would be inclined to use office is for all the forwards with ppt presentations I get, but keynote does just fine playing those.

 

The trial version of iWork that came with my Macbook was deleted and it saved me roughly ~300MB of space.

Won't miss it a bit.

 

Very informative.

 

Gotta agree with littlemacylady. Just got my new MBP and opened iWorks. And then my jaw dropped and not in a good way. I always thought that Apple had an amazing way to condescend their loyal following by producing out of date apps, telling everyone how good they are and then charging them for the privilege to use the aforementioned c**p. Unfortunately I was right. It is amazingly basic. In looks, features, everything. It reminds me of office suits released years ago. So 1st thing I downloaded the beta 1 of Office 08 and am more impresed with that instead (although not a patch on pc Office 07). And to anyone who says they dont think Office '07 for the pc is not more professional i'd advise them to run iWorks and Office '07 side by side as i'm doing right this minute. Mac users are getting a bum deal especially considering how much we have all paid for the privilege of owning this OS/hardware.



But what OSX really needs is a version of Onenote. Anyone who has used this program for research or student life cant go back. Before everyone starts a flame war let me clarify something. I personally think that MS have their head up there corporate backside but at least they produce a great Office suite, whatever the cost may be. Apple just tell me their product is fantasic and if I dont agree there must be something wrong with me. I just dont get that mentality at all. If they are convinced they have the better OS then they should honour their loyal customers with the best ofice suite also. iWorks just doesnt work in this day and age and quite simply they are not helping themselves convince people of the benefits of moving to OSX and MS dont seem in any humour to produce an optimised version of Office 07 dedicated to mac users needs.

Come on Apple, less money spent on advertising, more spent on an office suite for the 21st century.

 

I agree, and most agree as well. iWork is not meant to compete with Office. Office 2007 is excellent, I love it as well. Very nice interface, very easy to use, very powerful.

But when you think about the price of iWork ($79), which is just about half of what Microsoft Office Student edition costs, then its not necessarily not worth the money. For someone who doesn't need the power of Office but wants more than OpenOffice/NeoOffice (because the PowerPoint application is extremely basic), iWork is a viable alternative.

 

iWorks is meant to complete with MS Works. And it kicks its tail high and low, up and down, left and right. There is NO comparison between the two.

If you compare it to Office, though, you're going to be screwed. Forgive the old pun, but it's like comparing Apples to anything-you-can-think-of-that-isn't-an-apple.

 

I have the same feelings - iWork has its strengths but in many cases I will need MS Office.

 

What is your experience when exchanging files with PC Office? I am talking about more advanced features - reviews, comments etc.

 

That is the whole point. Even in companies you just use SUM and charts for Excel and standard text in Word. I am not even talking about PPT because I have seen so many ugly/basic/horrible presentations in my life...

 

The file transfers between Office '08 for mac and Office '07 for pc seems fine. I'm a law student so exact replication on footnotes and citations are fanatically important to me. Sometimes the footnotes are spaced a bit off but please bear in mind that the Office '08 version I have is beta 1 from june/july and in 5 months things can change dramatically so heres hoping. Also the Word Notebook layout which arranges things in a tabbed pages format with audio recording is brilliant and really helps to keep track of complex lectures.

And the point I was making about the iWorks/Office competition has nothing to do with the relative price of the two packages (€115 for 3 licences sounds fair to me) the point was that in the entire arsenal of mac software apple dont have enough respect for their users to develop an Office package that can compete with those on pc's. So next time ya see an advert for Apple with the whole i'm a mac/i'm a pc remember that in terms of the business and student world which NEEDS a professional office package the mac is being dragged along on its face backwards through a hedge by the pc. Until the mac has that it will remain a 2nd order operating system to the business world. Considering the stability of OSX that is a major shame on Apple.

 

Apple doesn't NEED to make a "professional office package." Macs have OFFICE. If you'd actually payed attention to those "I'm a mac/I'm a PC" commercials, you'd get that the focus of Mac software is for home and everyday use, to which iWorks is vastly more than adequate for. You're comparing the wrong software packages, bud: Works was made for home users, hense it being packaged with almost every pre-built PC nowadays. You wanna know something about it, though? It SUCKS! And in comparison to iWorks, there isn't any competition.

 

I agree "Apple" doesnt need a 'professional office package'. But some of its users do. And those who use there macs for professional purposes 'require' this on their macs, like me and countless others. As for the adverts your idea seems strange to me. The mac, even pre-OSX has always prided itself on being a stable platform for not only the home user but also the professional crowd who move and stay with Apple because of its professional attitude and software. This isn't a flame war, its not a pc versus mac who is better, MS or Apple, i'm mac user and Office '04 doesnt cut it. My point is there is a large market share controlled by MS and we need to have something to convince people to change and see the benefits of going mac. Oh and I totally agree about your assessment of pc Works. Its a freak of a package that should have been shot before it left the developers room. Lets hope MS can solve things with the '08 package and then we have a tool to convince people.

 

Well, it's just that almost all the advertisements focus on iLife (which isn't a professional package) and how "professional" the PC can be (and sometimes not live up).

I honestly don't think Apple needs to be the one to make the Office counterpoint you're looking for. Actually, a great counterpoint to Office would be either Corel coming back from the dead and making a great WordPerfect suite, or even Apple purchasing the WordPerfect suite from them and making it their own. I realize that WordPerfect is still being made, but you can probably tell that it gets little-to-no advertisements nor any real comparisons to Office. If Apple were to get ahold of it, surely they could push it beyond the scope that it takes now, and I know they'll offer it at a comparative, if not cheaper, pricepoint to Office. Just gotta wonder if MS will retaliate and revoke their Office lineup from Mac. They did it with IE because of Safari; however, I don't see anyone missing IE....

 

Well that's cause IE sucks. Office doesn't

 

Yeah...IE is terrible, while Microsoft really made an excellent office suite with Office 2007.