Apple's iWork Selling Well [Archive]

MacRumors

Jan 23, 2006, 09:01 PM

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

News.com cites (http://news.com.com/Apples+iWork+emerges+as+rival+to+Microsoft+Office/2100-1012_3-6030011.html?tag=nefd.top) data from NPD which reports that Apple's iWork has achieved a 2.7% unit share in 2005 "Office Suite" U.S. Retail Sales. This edges out Corel's WordPerfect Office which has as 1.6% share.

Apple's share is particularly impressive considering that iWork runs only on Macs, which account for a small fraction of computers, said NPD analyst Chris Swenson. "Apple's success for iWork has been pretty surprising," he said.

Microsoft Office, of course, carries approximately 95% of the remaining unit sales. When limiting the data to Mac sales only, Apple's iWork carries a 17.4% share compared to 82% for Microsoft.

As with all statistics, these numbers must be taken in context. Corel notes that these sales do not take into account commercial sales and distributor bundles which would likely rival iWork total sales. Regardless, it represents a notable accomplishment.

Apple updated iWork (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/01/20060110142618.shtml) earlier this year and has been rumored (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2005/06/20050616145521.shtml) to add a spreadsheet component.

stridey

Jan 23, 2006, 09:02 PM

Well, that's nice to hear. I had no idea iWork was selling at all, what with it having neither a spreadsheet nor word processing app.

paulchen

Jan 23, 2006, 09:09 PM

I cannot understand why people are buying ms office becaus openoffice is free and has more opions than 99% of all the people need.

G5Unit

Jan 23, 2006, 09:10 PM

I have the trial and I'm thinking about buying. It is very nicely laid out, I just want to make keynotes as nice as Steaves!

ijimk

Jan 23, 2006, 09:12 PM

I do enjoy iwork. I am debating on updating from 05 to 06. :cool:

MacFan26

Jan 23, 2006, 09:19 PM

word processing app.

Pages is a good enough word processing app. I'm betting not everytime people open it they're going to use it make a brochure or something. There are definitely things it does better than Microsoft Word in terms of word processing.

Bern

Jan 23, 2006, 09:25 PM

I had iWork '05 and ran Word alongside. I updated to iWork '06 and banished Word from my Mac forever. I am totally M$ free. :D

Frankly for me M$ Office is overkill. Entourage is clunky, Word is bloated, Excel was useless to me and Powerpoint was a hit and miss experience. When I consider the stable and more user friendly Apple alternatives I can't imagine why I would ever have it back clogging up my ram and chewing up space on my hard drive.

Perhaps a lot of other Mac users have started to feel the same way (especially with the obvious disregard to Mac users M$ have recently displayed) and have migrated to iWork '06 as a stress free alternative.

Stella

Jan 23, 2006, 09:27 PM

I didn't realise WordPerfect Suite was still being sold. I thought, Novell.. Borland, nope.. errr..... Corel had given up on it. ( WP has been sold on more times than a hooker ;-) ).

Personally, I always thought WP was a far better word processor than Word - and generally, far more innovative ( in the 90s ).

oldMac

Jan 23, 2006, 09:28 PM

I cannot understand why people are buying ms office becaus openoffice is free and has more opions than 99% of all the people need.

Probably because Open Office is big, slow and un-mac-like. NeoOffice makes it more mac-like, but still big and slow.

jbh001

Jan 23, 2006, 09:28 PM

I cannot understand why people are buying ms office becaus openoffice is free and has more opions than 99% of all the people need.

Compared to MS Word, OpenOffice is just clunky and sucks.
Compared to WordPerfect, MS Word is just clunky and sucks.
I just sent an email to Corel telling them if they will re-release WordPerfect for Tiger and include ODF support, I will buy it.

portent

Jan 23, 2006, 09:36 PM

I was very surprised that iWork didn't get a spreadsheet this year. Maybe in iWork '07....

I cannot understand why people are buying ms office becaus openoffice is free and has more opions than 99% of all the people need.
Simple. Interoperability between Word and Writer is not perfect yet. I've had situations where I was handed a Word doc that got mangled when I tried to edit it in OpenOffice. I spent half an hour re-editing it in Word (on a PC, no less) and then I spent the money to buy Office.

Personally, I still use AppleWorks when I don't have to share my documents, but many people still need Office, simply because everyone else still has office.

~Shard~

Jan 23, 2006, 09:41 PM

Stella

Jan 23, 2006, 09:41 PM

iWork has very basic spreadsheet capabilities doesn't it - abeit, very basic?

I'm too surprised Apple didn't offer a spreadsheet app and also a cut down version of Filemaker or even make use of CoreData ( SQLite database engine at the heart).

Though I suppose Apple have to watch what they are doing - the last thing they need is for microsoft to drop Mac Office.

Nevertheless, the marketshare is rather good.

I like OpenOffice / Star Office ( unavailable on OSX ), its just a shame OO stinks on OSX. Windows and Linux versions are great.

I was very surprised that iWork didn't get a spreadsheet this year. Maybe in iWork '07....

Simple. Interoperability between Word and Writer is not perfect yet. I've had situations where I was handed a Word doc that got mangled when I tried to edit it in OpenOffice. I spent half an hour re-editing it in Word, and then I spent the money to buy Office.

Personally, I still use AppleWorks when I don't have to share my documents, but many people still need Office, simply because everyone else still has office.

~Shard~

Jan 23, 2006, 09:44 PM

iWork has very basic spreadsheet capabilities doesn't it - abeit, very basic?

Yep - it's integrated into Pages and Keynote though, not a standalone app.

I'm too surprised Apple didn't offer a spreadsheet app and also a cut down version of Filemaker or even make use of CoreData ( SQLite database engine at the heart).

Though I suppose Apple have to watch what they are doing - the last thing they need is for microsoft to drop Mac Office.

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there. Mind you, that MS rep came out publicly at MWSF and said MS would continue development for Office for Mac until, when was it, 2008 or so?

amateurmacfreak

Jan 23, 2006, 09:53 PM

Well, that's nice to hear. I had no idea iWork was selling at all, what with it having neither a spreadsheet nor word processing app.
Seriously... um, what's in it again? I love Apple, but the only thing I really like about Microsoft is in this area: Microsoft Office for Mac.:) Now for for Windows.... that's a different story.:cool:
Oh, and no offense to iWorks people. I just seriously don't have much if an understanding of it past Pages, and a very basic understanding at that.

bretm

Jan 23, 2006, 09:53 PM

Yep - it's integrated into Pages and Keynote though, not a standalone app.

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there. Mind you, that MS rep came out publicly at MWSF and said MS would continue development for Office for Mac until, when was it, 2008 or so?

She said 5 years. 2011.

InsiderTravels

Jan 23, 2006, 09:53 PM

Great to hear, although a little surprising since Apple didn't really update the suite in a major way at MWSF, IMO. If they can add in a spreadsheet app in iWork 07 and a database type of program (perhaps they'll just buy Filemaker :eek: ) then I think they'll be poised to do even better.

Me, I still use Office v.X :cool:

You do know, don't you, that Filemaker is an Apple subsidiary? I couldn't tell for sure if you were being facetious or not, so I thought I'd throw that in there.

~Shard~

Jan 23, 2006, 09:56 PM

She said 5 years. 2011.

Ah cool, thanks for this, couldn't remember the specific amount of time which was quoted. :)

You do know, don't you, that Filemaker is an Apple subsidiary? I couldn't tell for sure if you were being facetious or not, so I thought I'd throw that in there.

Yes, sorry, sometimes my sense of humor doesn't come through properly in text. :o ;) :cool:

amateurmacfreak

Jan 23, 2006, 09:57 PM

iAlan

Jan 23, 2006, 09:58 PM

Still unavailable in Japan.

Huh?

Do you mean iWork 06 or iWork in general?

I was at hte Shibuya Apple Store last week and iLife 06 was avaulable as was the newly packaged .Mac (sitting next to iLife in the new little acrylic 'bins'). I wasn'(t looking for iWork 06 so don't know if it was there or not, but iWork 05 has been around for well, a year!

Demon

Jan 23, 2006, 10:00 PM

I've been using iWorks since it was still keynote. it was my highest anticipated announcement actually. when Macrumors posted that there would be an update, i knew something good was coming out. keynote and pages is so far superior for everyday presentations and publishing that i actually enjoy making them. being a doctor, i have to make plenty, keep up the good work iWork designers!

amateurmacfreak

Jan 23, 2006, 10:02 PM

Huh?

Do you mean iWork 06 or iWork in general?

I was at hte Shibuya Apple Store last week and iLife 06 was avaulable as was the newly packaged .Mac (sitting next to iLife in the new little acrylic 'bins'). I wasn'(t looking for iWork 06 so don't know if it was there or not, but iWork 05 has been around for well, a year!
I totally agree with your iPod video signature. But I still call it that sometimes, to get a reaction.

Person: You have an iPod?
Me: Heck yes, a 5G 30GB Black iPod.
Person: Oh. Ok.

2nd scenario:

Person: You have an iPod?
Me: Yeah, a 5G 30GB Black iPod video.
Person: OMG!! AWESOME!! You have a video?!?!?!?!!??

So it's my "5G 30GB Black iPod, and yes, that means it has video.";)

Counterfit

Jan 23, 2006, 10:02 PM

(perhaps they'll just buy Filemaker :eek: )
Er, Apple already owns Filemaker... :confused:

There are a few things I like in Appleworks that just aren't in Pages, (I think, I haven't looked at 06 yet), so I'll hold off for now. There are some neat features in Word too, but red-eye removal is NOT one of them. Why the hell is that in a word processor anyway?

iAlan

Jan 23, 2006, 10:02 PM

I was very surprised that iWork didn't get a spreadsheet this year. Maybe in iWork '07....

Maybe with MS committing to 5 years of development of MS Orifice for Mac, Apple has agreed to hold of on a spreadsheet app in iWork….

I do think Apple needs MS Orifice as this most probably the best know Windows app out there – and a lot of folks seem to think they need it….

magi.sys

Jan 23, 2006, 10:04 PM

Good to hear iwork is selling well.
I wouldn't consider it an office suite until they get an spreadsheet app in it though.

amateurmacfreak

Jan 23, 2006, 10:05 PM

Maybe with MS committing to 5 years of development of MS Orifice for Mac, Apple has agreed to hold of on a spreadsheet app in iWork….

I do think Apple needs MS Orifice as this most probably the best know Windows app out there – and a lot of folks seem to think they need it….
Yeah. Most people think they need it because Joe Bob over there has it and so does Sally. Although maybe another processor would work just as well, the little dude with the Mac just wants to be "compatible" with Sally and Joe Bob's documents, spreadsheets, etc. for "work" and "school."
Ok. :o Will never use those names again. :p :rolleyes:

Peace

Jan 23, 2006, 10:15 PM

Some people NEED a spreadsheet app and Excel is a good one..

As much as I too dislike the evil ones ( every corporation is evil btw ) I kind of look forward to seeing Office 2006 for the Mac.

bousozoku

Jan 23, 2006, 10:19 PM

Pages is a good enough word processing app. I'm betting not everytime people open it they're going to use it make a brochure or something. There are definitely things it does better than Microsoft Word in terms of word processing.

Indeed, things stay put, and that's a miracle in contrast to MS Word.

Bern

Jan 23, 2006, 10:24 PM

... I kind of look forward to seeing Office 2006 for the Mac.

Yeah people said the same thing about the updated Messenger before it came out and look what a disappointment that was.

yoda13

Jan 23, 2006, 10:25 PM

My university dept. runs entirely on office (word) and I have heard of some glitches in the way pages exports to Word files, and I can't be having that, so I have not banished Word yet. I bought pages last year, I haven't decided if I will upgrade to the new version of iWork or not. I have heard it is much better, but money is tight, so I don't know.

Some_Big_Spoon

Jan 23, 2006, 10:40 PM

I hate M$ for many, many reasons (currently living in Seattle gives you ample reasons beyond their software cartel tactics) but Entourage is actually a fairly good program, albeit crippled by the dark lord. It's due for a bit of an overhaul in terms of the GUI, but it's a one stop shop for mail contacts and calendar, and is a far more useful setup than the chewing gum and chicken wire approach of mail.app, address book, ical and isync (i guess now itunes is the new isync?).

The load times on every Office app, save for Entourage, make it frustrating enough without having to deal with the weird compatibility issues when you get into the finer points of the program (tables!). What gets me is that we all know Apple could do it better, integrate the mail and addy book, etc., but then Bill would take his ball and go home, so we don't get that.. at least that's my feeling. There's a real toe-in-the-water snail's pace for office productivity apps from apple and I don't think that's an accident.

Anyway, I can't banish Word, Keynote's fancy stuff won't work on an exported presentation to windows, Exchange support's still wonky, and excel is the devil's work on any platform. It's a mixed bag and that forces me to keep a mixture of things, including VPC, but hopefully not for long.

I had iWork '05 and ran Word alongside. I updated to iWork '06 and banished Word from my Mac forever. I am totally M$ free. :D

Frankly for me M$ Office is overkill. Entourage is clunky, Word is bloated, Excel was useless to me and Powerpoint was a hit and miss experience. When I consider the stable and more user friendly Apple alternatives I can't imagine why I would ever have it back clogging up my ram and chewing up space on my hard drive.

Perhaps a lot of other Mac users have started to feel the same way (especially with the obvious disregard to Mac users M$ have recently displayed) and have migrated to iWork '06 as a stress free alternative.

DaveClarkOne

Jan 23, 2006, 10:45 PM

Business users need this vital link of Mac-PC platforms than MS Office provides. Excel is superior to other alternatives, and even if Apple were to offer a competent spreadsheet, I wouldn't spend a dime on it because of the need to share files with 95% of those using the Wintel platform. If Apple produces a spreadsheet, who could blame MS to drop support for Office, denying those of reason to use the Mac in the business world. Open Office? puhleeze!

I cannot understand why people are buying ms office becaus openoffice is free and has more opions than 99% of all the people need.

Doctor Q

Jan 23, 2006, 10:48 PM

I have MS Office for Excel. In fact, I'll hug my copy again right now. When Apple is ready to play the spreadsheet game, I'm ready to try their app.

Wonder Boy

Jan 23, 2006, 10:50 PM

is there a demo?

nagromme

Jan 23, 2006, 10:55 PM

Didn't we just get the rumor a couple months ago that iWork wasn't selling? :D

Bern

Jan 23, 2006, 11:16 PM

I have MS Office for Excel. In fact, I'll hug my copy again right now. When Apple is ready to play the spreadsheet game, I'm ready to try their app.

eeewww icky! :p

Deimo

Jan 23, 2006, 11:27 PM

Put me in the group of people that must use MS Office purely for Excel. I picked up a copy of iWork '06 on Friday after I gave a presentation using PowerPoint that just didn't feel right. We'll see if keynote helps deliver that extra little flair to make everything look better. Compatibility with Word isn't that important for me, so Pages probably can replace it completely. But without a spreadsheet application, Excel must remain on my computer. I will go so far as to say that Excel is by far the best application Microsoft produces; when used to it's full capabilities.

hoyboy9

Jan 23, 2006, 11:29 PM

I have MS Office for Excel. In fact, I'll hug my copy again right now. When Apple is ready to play the spreadsheet game, I'm ready to try their app.

Right on the mark. This isn't about Word or Entourage or Powerpoint. It's ALL about Excel.

Excel is the end-all be all spreadsheet application. Nothing even comes close to its advanced statistics, solver and data analysis tools. As an engineer that uses all these advanced features, I will not even consider another alternative unless it can perform these tasks to my satisfaction.

If Apple wants to build an Excel replacement, they've got a massive hill to climb. I wish them luck, and I'll be keeping an eye on their progress.

ibook30

Jan 23, 2006, 11:29 PM

This is good news- and makes me feel more comfortable putting the cash down for the software. Lots of positive feedback for the software.

GregA

Jan 23, 2006, 11:30 PM

Maybe with MS committing to 5 years of development of MS Orifice for Mac, Apple has agreed to hold of on a spreadsheet app in iWork….
I think that's likely.

A pity though - especially since Appleworks is still being sold/bundled. Perhaps they'll end up bundling an Appleworks-update with iWork, and will be keeping within their 'agreement'?

Bern

Jan 24, 2006, 12:05 AM

Some_Big_Spoon

Jan 24, 2006, 12:59 AM

Was the other way around, no?

Didn't stop Apple's "Aperture" to Adobe's "Lightroom". I say give it time and it will come.

Coca-Cola

Jan 24, 2006, 01:14 AM

JoeKarame

Jan 24, 2006, 01:18 AM

I am very excited to try out iWork 06. I use Keynote 04 all the time. I love turning my presentations into Quicktime movies. Just knowing they will work properly on any machine with Quicktime installed is a relief. I don't have to worry about playing along with Powerpoint on the PC or Mac. If you export Keynotes as Quicktime files, they will work on any machine with quicktime. This has saved my butt many times. I really should try out my trial copy of iWork 05. However, I think I can skip that version altogether and just iWork 06. But first, I would like to pick up iLife 06.

Keynotes '05 was my life saver last year - certainly the best piece of software I used for my work. Keynote '06 is pretty much more of the same, just slightly updated - and that's good enough for me. Pages is brilliant when it comes to laying out work with pictures. A quick export to Word and Powerpoint, and everything pans out brilliantly. I'm a confirmed used!

Kelmon

Jan 24, 2006, 01:20 AM

I've not used OpenOffice on the Mac but given that I need X-Windows to run it I think I'll pass. Therefore the only competing office products for me are iWork and MS Office:mac and it all comes down to the lack of a spreadsheet application. Until iWork offers a competent spreadsheet application then I'll continue to need Excel and Office:mac, so I might as well ensure compatibility through using Word and PowerPoint as well. I'd use Entourage as well but the lack of Spotlight support means that I need to use Mail instead, although Microsoft's promised updates to Office:mac 2004 may mean that Entourage gets the time of day later this year.

Compatibility, I think, will become less of an issue in the future. With the push for the Open Document format and even Microsoft attempting to have their XML document format recognised as a standard, data exchange should become much easier in the future. With any luck we may get to a time when it doesn't matter which application constructed the file - if you're application understands the file format then the document will display fine. The only aspect of this that worries me is that Omnigraffle Pro is supposed to be compatible with MS Visio using Visio's XML file format but files still look rubbish when moved between the applications. If this was to happen with the "open" standards then the whole point of them will be lost.

EricNau

Jan 24, 2006, 01:29 AM

is there a demo?
A demo usually comes with your Mac.

oingoboingo

Jan 24, 2006, 01:44 AM

Probably because Open Office is big, slow and un-mac-like. NeoOffice makes it more mac-like, but still big and slow.

That may be so, but it's quite a bit faster than Keynote and Pages. Speaking of which, has Apple improved the speed in the most recent release of these programs? I would consider upgrading from iWork '05 if they had...

balamw

Jan 24, 2006, 02:00 AM

A demo usually comes with your Mac.
A demo of iWork '06 was also included in the box of my iLife '06.

B

kiwi-in-uk

Jan 24, 2006, 02:01 AM

... Speaking of which, has Apple improved the speed in the most recent release of these programs? I would consider upgrading from iWork '05 if they had...
Not that I've noticed (but I'm running them on a 1.33 PB with a 2nd screen)

Doctor Q

Jan 24, 2006, 02:16 AM

If Apple wants to build an Excel replacement, they've got a massive hill to climb. I wish them luck, and I'll be keeping an eye on their progress.Me too. I don't expect them to build an Excel-killer, and in fact I doubt the first version of iWorkTheNumbers (or whatever they call it) will be good enough to dislodge Excel for many of us. But Version 2 or Version 3 might be good enough to tempt us, given the expected bargain iWork should still be compared to MS Office.

And if iWork threatens MS Office with new features that Apple invents, the competition might spur Microsoft into adding the same features to Excel.

Superdrive

Jan 24, 2006, 02:46 AM

dcranston

Jan 24, 2006, 02:54 AM

Has it occured to anyone that Apple is not trying to *compete* with Office, but rather provide a better option for home use than Office is? Perhaps it's the opposite of "office": "home". It seems that iWork is designed just as the name would imply: a really awesome set of tools to help people be creative and do some of the things they need to do in a very beautiful and professional-looking way.

You see, to me Excel has always been the odd one out. Spreadsheet? In the '80s when people still had Slides and MacWrite, was every home user calling out to get their hands on a copy of CricketGraph? It seems that Excel can be a useful tool for home users, but it's largely more useful in a business setting. Quite honestly, a paired-down version of Filemaker would be much more useful for a home user than a spreadsheet application would, to help keep track of things -- books, movies, etc.. although maybe custom apps (Delicious Monster?) fill this role better anyway.

I just think dismissing this suite because it doesn't compete app-for-app with Office is a ridiculous concept. In fact, comparing this suite to Office is kind of funny when you think about it, although Apple has certainly led you in that direction by bundling a presentation and page layout/word processing program together. But the fact is, these apps are part of where Apple's core strengths lie: graphics & design. Apple loves media. Excel is anything but media. It seems everyone is so focused on Apple releasing a spreadsheet application purely because Microsoft has one and everyone wants Apple to "take over" Microsoft's dominance.

Fact is, that's not going to happen. So Apple focuses on what they can improve. And that's by providing stellar graphics and media integration. I think Pages and Keynote are fine examples of the Apple way of doing things. Apple Spreadsheet is remaking for the sake of remaking -- not exactly Apple's style.

My 2 cents...

bigandy

Jan 24, 2006, 03:34 AM

Seriously... um, what's in it again? I love Apple, but the only thing I really like about Microsoft is in this area: Microsoft Office for Mac.:) Now for for Windows.... that's a different story.:cool:
Oh, and no offense to iWorks people. I just seriously don't have much if an understanding of it past Pages, and a very basic understanding at that.

but this is good. good for microsoft office as well as iWork. iWork has to improve to match and hopefully better office, and microsoft will take notice and respond with a better product. office is ok, but it's not perfect, on either platform. that's the only way microsoft function, they won't try and improve a product if there isn't a big competitor chowing down on their marketshare. ok, they might not actually improve it much, or even manage to make it worse (windows me :rolleyes: ), but they will respond.

gekko513

Jan 24, 2006, 03:56 AM

Interesting to note that the Mac "Office Suite" holds 13.4% of the total "Office Suite" market.

gauchogolfer

Jan 24, 2006, 04:08 AM

I'll get iWork when they include it with a word processor. At least with Word, it feels Mac-like (unbelievable), and I can type/print a reasonable looking page without spending ten minutes trying to figure out how to format the thing. Unfortunately, TextEdit is more of a word processor than Pages.

I started out in the same boat as you, I believe, when I made the switch to my Powerbook in May 2005. My main reason to buy a notebook was to write my dissertation without being tied to my desk, and since I've always been interested in Macs (since leaving them behind with my Performa :cool: ) I decided to take the plunge. Of course, for writing a dissertation, Word is awful (try getting 200+ pages with graphics, equations, references, etc. to behave in Word...) so I wrote it in LaTeX (using TeXShop, a great program btw). I got iWork when it came time to put together a new round of presentations for the conferences, and I wanted Keynote for this. Pages was just kind of a throw-in for me. The interface for both Keynote and Pages was sufficiently different from PPT and Word that it made for some frustrating times, but I felt that Keynote was worth the effort; Pages, not so much.
Now that I'm out of school, I decided to try and use Pages more, and just upgraded to Pages 2. I'm using it for things like research papers, notes, reports to other people in our group, and after using it more and more, I have come to like it. Yes, formatting is different than Word, but sufficiently like Keynote (using the Inspector for everything) that it's comfortable now. The ability to place images where I want them on the page (and have them stay there) is perhaps its biggest asset. IMO, this makes "layout" and "formatting" much better than in Word.

Sorry for the long-winded answer, but I hope more and more people will use Pages, not just to provide an alternative to Word, but because there is real value there, if you take the time to learn.

Hattig

Jan 24, 2006, 04:38 AM

That may be so, but it's quite a bit faster than Keynote and Pages. Speaking of which, has Apple improved the speed in the most recent release of these programs? I would consider upgrading from iWork '05 if they had...

I've found the opposite, NeoOffice is way to slow compared to iWork ('05). If I wan't to do something quickly, iWork is up and ready in a second, but NeoOffice takes ages to be in a ready state.

bugfaceuk

Jan 24, 2006, 05:01 AM

Compared to MS Word, OpenOffice is just clunky and sucks.
Compared to WordPerfect, MS Word is just clunky and sucks.
I just sent an email to Corel telling them if they will re-release WordPerfect for Tiger and include ODF support, I will buy it.

Just an interested question here, have you (or anyone else) tried Open Office 2.0 on the Mac. Certainly on my Windows PC it was a big improvement in the "clunkyness" stakes, but my Windows PC is fast enough that any slow application seems OK (wrt office productivity tools)

Project

Jan 24, 2006, 05:05 AM

Has it occured to anyone that Apple is not trying to *compete* with Office, but rather provide a better option for home use than Office is? Perhaps it's the opposite of "office": "home". It seems that iWork is designed just as the name would imply: a really awesome set of tools to help people be creative and do some of the things they need to do in a very beautiful and professional-looking way.

My 2 cents...

Somebody needs to quote this man every time this conversation pops up.

Quite simply, I find iWork to be a brilliant product. Keynote is superior to Powerpoint. Pages is superior to Word, for MY use, the home user. I dont need a spreadsheet for what its true purpose is, or for the extensive abilities that Excel provides, but people think they do. I remember reading not so long ago (maybe it was Wil Shipley) that Omnigroup found that most people use Excel just to create lists of things, or create a budget etc. So they created Omnioutliner to dutifully do these kind of tasks much better than a spreadsheet ever could. And you know what? Theyre right.

Now ive just started playing with Pages 2, and the integrated spreadsheet capabilities is more than enough for what id guess to be 80% of people. Sure it isnt a solution for scientists, or the financial department of a business, but this clearly isnt who Apple is targeting their product at. Office is too entrenched in this market to make any inroads without making a serious investment and thus losing Microsoft as a partner anyway. Clearly, Apples intention is to skim the home market.

I honestly think they should include iWork on every new Mac. Get people using it. They will soon realise what a nice bit of software it is. And as I recall AppleWork isnt being included with Intel machines, now is the time to start bundling it. Then make them pay for the upgrade 12 months later if they want to, like iLife.

bugfaceuk

Jan 24, 2006, 05:08 AM

Has it occured to anyone that Apple is not trying to *compete* with Office, but rather provide a better option for home use than Office is? Perhaps it's the opposite of "office": "home". It seems that iWork is designed just as the name would imply: a really awesome set of tools to help people be creative and do some of the things they need to do in a very beautiful and professional-looking way.

...

I just think dismissing this suite because it doesn't compete app-for-app with Office is a ridiculous concept. In fact, comparing this suite to Office is kind of funny when you think about it, although Apple has certainly led you in that direction by bundling a presentation and page layout/word processing program together. But the fact is, these apps are part of where Apple's core strengths lie: graphics & design. Apple loves media. Excel is anything but media. It seems everyone is so focused on Apple releasing a spreadsheet application purely because Microsoft has one and everyone wants Apple to "take over" Microsoft's dominance.

Fact is, that's not going to happen. So Apple focuses on what they can improve. And that's by providing stellar graphics and media integration. I think Pages and Keynote are fine examples of the Apple way of doing things. Apple Spreadsheet is remaking for the sake of remaking -- not exactly Apple's style.

My 2 cents...

And a good 2 cents it is, I don't think are trying to compete with office at all other than in the "Office Productivity Suite" stakes. That does not mean "App for App" but as usual Apple are asking "What can we do well"? IMHO it's this slow burn "do what we do well" stratgegy that has seen Apple back into fiscal and market strength.

I think that the provision of "enough Numbers to meet needs" is a good thing. If it grows into an application because it becomes strong and distinct enough to do so, that's great. The filemaker position is an interesting one, and I guess I almost would expect that to be somehow integrated with a .Mac offering (perhaps allowing more dynamic web-pages). Although I must admit that doesn't seem to integrate well with Apple's current paring of .Mac+iLife. However, I don't see any compeling reason for the application integration to stop at iLife.

Just my 50th of a buck.

Bern

Jan 24, 2006, 05:09 AM

Has it occured to anyone that Apple is not trying to *compete* with Office, ....
My 2 cents...

Well said, I couldn't agree more.

akhomerun

Jan 24, 2006, 05:19 AM

i didn't know they still made wordperfect!

well i guess...i don't know...is it really something to beat wordperfect?

BornAgainMac

Jan 24, 2006, 05:31 AM

The part I like about this story is that it is doing so well overall if you include both Windows and Mac users. It tells developers that the small marketshare of Mac users can matter. Corel only runs on Windows that has 20 times more users to buy it and it has a much smaller marketshare. I don't think there is anything wrong with Corel Office, it is a good package.

-hh

Jan 24, 2006, 05:33 AM

...NPD which reports that Apple's iWork has achieved a 2.7% unit share in 2005 "Office Suite" U.S. Retail Sales...

Microsoft Office, of course, carries approximately 95% of the remaining unit sales. When limiting the data to Mac sales only, Apple's iWork carries a 17.4% share compared to 82% for Microsoft.

As with all statistics, these numbers must be taken in context...

Which is why I'm scratching my head.

If only 17.4% of Mac's are using iWork, but has captured 2.7% of the total market, then that would suggest that the current formula that includes the market share for Macs vs PC's would be:

(Mac Marketshare-%) * 17.4% = 2.7%

(Mac Marketshare-%) = 2.7% / 17.4%
(Mac Marketshare-%) = 15.5%

IIRC, MacWorld just had a report last friday that said that Apple's ~33%ish growth in 2005 raised the Mac's marketshare up to 4%.

15% vs 4% is a huge difference ... it suggests a major error in someone's math, somewhere!

For example, if you believe the 4% Mac/PC total marketshare to be true and the 2.7% iWork total marketshare to be true, then 2.7%/4% = 67.5% of all Mac users would have to be using iWork.

-hh

DeSnousa

Jan 24, 2006, 05:38 AM

Which is why I'm scratching my head.

If only 17.4% of Mac's are using iWork, but has captured 2.7% of the total market, then that would suggest that the current formula that includes the market share for Macs vs PC's would be:

<snip>

These stats are for the US. I believe about 80% of macs sold are in the US and therefore there is a greater share in the US when compared to the rest of the world ;)

oingoboingo

Jan 24, 2006, 05:40 AM

I've found the opposite, NeoOffice is way to slow compared to iWork ('05). If I wan't to do something quickly, iWork is up and ready in a second, but NeoOffice takes ages to be in a ready state.

Yeah startup times are a different story, but I've always been amazed at the way that Keynote can drag a whole system down (my 1.6GHz G5 in this case) performing simple manipulations that you don't even notice in PowerPoint or OpenOffice.

Thomas Harte

Jan 24, 2006, 05:44 AM

15% vs 4% is a huge difference ... it suggests a major error in someone's math, somewhere!
Only if you assert that everybody who owns a computer buys a new Office suite every year. The difference could just be because Mac owners tend to be more affluent and to update their software more frequently. There may not have been an Office update on the Mac for two years, but there hasn't been one on the PC for three and iWork is updated annually.

asxtb

Jan 24, 2006, 06:07 AM

Only if you assert that everybody who owns a computer buys a new Office suite every year.

Or an office suite, period. I'm sure there are lots of people that buy a computer for something other than creating documents, and have no need for an office suite.

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 06:08 AM

mymacluvsme

Jan 24, 2006, 06:08 AM

WordPerfect? Wow, I remember using that when PCs were still running MS-DOS.:)

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 06:10 AM

Has it occured to anyone that Apple is not trying to *compete* with Office, but rather provide a better option for home use than Office is? Perhaps it's the opposite of "office": "home".

How many Keynote presentations do you do in your home? :)

Now that I'm out of school, I decided to try and use Pages more, and just upgraded to Pages 2. I'm using it for things like research papers, notes, reports to other people in our group, and after using it more and more, I have come to like it. Yes, formatting is different than Word, but sufficiently like Keynote (using the Inspector for everything) that it's comfortable now. The ability to place images where I want them on the page (and have them stay there) is perhaps its biggest asset. IMO, this makes "layout" and "formatting" much better than in Word.

Sorry for the long-winded answer, but I hope more and more people will use Pages, not just to provide an alternative to Word, but because there is real value there, if you take the time to learn.

Well said. I've never really liked the way Word did it's formatting and stylesheets back as far as I remember. Back on Windows I used to use Samna AmiPro which later became Lotus' WordPro. That used to have a kind of document inspector and excellent style sheet handling too. I find long time MS Office users seem to have many problems using Pages as it's 'done right' IME and not the MS way. Given a willingness to change how you work and think about how your document is structured and formatted, Pages has hidden depths that a casual Word user won't appreciate. If you're the type of Word user that goes through your document using the font menu instead of the stylesheet then perhaps you should relearn your habits. In the web design world I find the difference between Word and Pages about as profound as HTML with FONT tags embedded and XHTML and CSS. Word is old. Pages is new. Some people can't cope with new.

Pages 2 also moves the bar set by Pages 1 further on. It's not a radical change but they've concentrated on fixing most of the things that were a little clunky in v1 and it's quite a bit faster at longer documents than v1.

I wonder if we won't see a link between Pages/Keynote and Grapher at some point to solve the scientific equation desire from some users. At the moment, Grapher allows you to copy the equation and graph to the clipboard and paste it into Pages. I'd be surprised if they didn't integrate Grapher into Pages directly.

And a spreadsheet is inevitable. I was really surprised 06 didn't include one although I still think iWork06 is incredibly good value for the two programs included in the 'Suite'.

06 is a solid upgrade rather than something spectacular. Here's hoping 07 brings the remainder of the 'Suite' - a semi decent spreadsheet, integrated Grapher and maybe a database app - which incidentally, MS Office lacks.

These stats are for the US. I believe about 80% of macs sold are in the US and therefore there is a greater share in the US when compared to the rest of the world ;)

Wrong. From Apple's last financial report. Total Macintosh system sales.

USA - 515,000 - 49%
Europe - 387,000 - 36%
Japan - 81,000 - 8%
Other Segments - 78,000 - 7%

More Macs are sold outside the USA than inside. USA includes Canada too I think in this case.

Just an interested question here, have you (or anyone else) tried Open Office 2.0 on the Mac. Certainly on my Windows PC it was a big improvement in the "clunkyness" stakes, but my Windows PC is fast enough that any slow application seems OK (wrt office productivity tools)

The problem with OpenOffice on the Mac stems from it's use of X11 as it's interface. That's slow and un-Mac like. The implementation on Windows looks and feels substantially enough like a Windows application that you don't think it's any more clunky than Windows. Both Windows and X11 are as clunky as each other. The icons, design, colours are all psuedo-windows.

On the Mac, OpenOffice stands out like someone wearing fluro-socks and short trousers at a funeral plus it doesn't support all of the interoperability features of the OS you'd expect of an application.

NeoOffice addresses some of the clunkiness but not all.

MS Office for Mac is also miles better than the Windows version.

gauchogolfer

Jan 24, 2006, 07:25 AM

I wonder if we won't see a link between Pages/Keynote and Grapher at some point to solve the scientific equation desire from some users. At the moment, Grapher allows you to copy the equation and graph to the clipboard and paste it into Pages. I'd be surprised if they didn't integrate Grapher into Pages directly.

I didn't know this about Grapher, as I haven't taken the time to use it. I use Kaleidagraph for all my real plotting, and Mathematica for function graphing, so I haven't needed Grapher. It's a good idea to increase interoperability between programs, IMO; the Media browser in the Inspector is great. I currently use a LaTeX editor to generate pdfs for equations, and anything that makes this extra step unnecessary would be great (Export function from Mathematica?).

CrazyWingman

Jan 24, 2006, 07:30 AM

I had no idea iWork was selling at all...

Actually, iWork is selling so well that my local Apple store was completely sold out of the Family Pack and was getting low on the single copies when I went to pick it up last week.

They restocked in the next couple of days and I bought mine over the weekend. I'm finding it to be excellent so far. I'm redoing a newsletter for my fraternity, and it's been a very pleasant experience. :)

Zatko

Jan 24, 2006, 07:56 AM

Beware of iWork's horrendous exporting ability. The PDF's it exports always look busted in Acrobat, which 95% of the people you'll be showing the PDF will be using.:mad:

Thomas Harte

Jan 24, 2006, 08:26 AM

MS Office for Mac is also miles better than the Windows version.
Perhaps that's why the Office 12 for Windows technical beta looks so much like a third party attempt at an iApp?

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 08:29 AM

Beware of iWork's horrendous exporting ability. The PDF's it exports always look busted in Acrobat, which 95% of the people you'll be showing the PDF will be using.:mad:

Not true. It has perfect exporting ability which is what causes the problem.

iWork 05 and many other applications on the Mac export PDF to the latest PDF v1.5 spec which wasn't supported until very recently by Adobe in it's reader. The workaround for iWork 05 in Tiger at least was to use 'Print' and then 'Save As...' and select PDF/X as the output. Otherwise transparency and shadows don't work.

With iWork 06, Apple seem to have realised that exporting to the latest spec wasn't actually good news for compatibility with users who've not updated their PDF reader and they now export in PDF v1.4 specification which anyone with Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or later can read. This is also good news if you send your output to a print shop as most of them are way behind the times.

I didn't know this about Grapher, as I haven't taken the time to use it. I use Kaleidagraph for all my real plotting, and Mathematica for function graphing, so I haven't needed Grapher. It's a good idea to increase interoperability between programs, IMO; the Media browser in the Inspector is great. I currently use a LaTeX editor to generate pdfs for equations, and anything that makes this extra step unnecessary would be great (Export function from Mathematica?).

I've no real need for equations or plotting graphs like Grapher does so I've rarely used it but it copies to the clip board as a PDF. You then paste it in to Pages and you can scale it without losing quality as it's not a bitmap.

I'd presume Grapher isn't as comprehensive as Mathematica but it certainly provides some level of equation editing and plotting to placate the cries of 'I can't use Pages as it doesn't have equation editing'.

sushi

Jan 24, 2006, 08:47 AM

I cannot understand why people are buying ms office becaus openoffice is free and has more opions than 99% of all the people need.
Actually no.

If you work with folks who use Microsoft Office, then you just about need to have it to be compatable.

Open Office is fine, but not there yet. Nor are the other alternatives.

~Shard~

Jan 24, 2006, 08:49 AM

Er, Apple already owns Filemaker... :confused:

Sorry, my facetious comment obviously didn't get conveyed properly... :o :cool:

sushi

Jan 24, 2006, 08:49 AM

gauchogolfer

Jan 24, 2006, 08:50 AM

I just fired up grapher for the first time...thanks for the tip! Copy/paste as PDF works fine, at least for simple equations. Really complicated ones may still necessitate LaTeX, but this looks to be a good time-saver. Now, if the Equation Palette in Grapher could only interface directly with Pages and Keynote, I'd be in business.
Thanks again for the suggestion...macRumors is great.

I've no real need for equations or plotting graphs like Grapher does so I've rarely used it but it copies to the clip board as a PDF. You then paste it in to Pages and you can scale it without losing quality as it's not a bitmap.

I'd presume Grapher isn't as comprehensive as Mathematica but it certainly provides some level of equation editing and plotting to placate the cries of 'I can't use Pages as it doesn't have equation editing'.

sushi

Jan 24, 2006, 08:57 AM

I have MS Office for Excel. In fact, I'll hug my copy again right now. When Apple is ready to play the spreadsheet game, I'm ready to try their app.
One reason Excel is so good, is that it was first created for the Mac.

What I miss were the days were the menu/features were the same between Office for the PC and Mac (Office 98 for the Mac and Office 97 for the PC).

It was so easy to go back and forth between the two back then.

Sometimes I wonder why Microsoft doesn't make DVD that contains Office for Mac, Winders, Linux. One DVD. One Code that will allow you to run it on three computers. And, all the same programs for all languages.

...wake me from my dream. Arg!

Sorry, my facetious comment obviously didn't get conveyed properly... :o :cool:
Okay time to receive your punishment...

...50 lashes with a wet noodle! :D

Speaking of Filemaker, it sure has improved over the years.

~Shard~

Jan 24, 2006, 09:12 AM

Okay time to receive your punishment...

...50 lashes with a wet noodle! :D

Oh damn, not again! :eek: :D

CubaTBird

Jan 24, 2006, 09:13 AM

are you guys forgetting that microsoft will be developing office for the mac for AT LEAST the next five years? what's it to apple to make a spreadsheet program?

TheMasin9

Jan 24, 2006, 09:22 AM

if they have made improvements on 05, this is good, i do believe they could make pages word competetive, just build in a good spell checker and more formatting options and it should be good to go.

kenaustus

Jan 24, 2006, 10:02 AM

I doubt that MS is worried about iWork - even if it has Numbers and FileMaker Jr. added.

What I believe they WERE worried about is getting caught with their pants down, like they were when the Intel announcement was made. As I understand it MS will continue with their profitable Office for Mac for 5 years and in return Apple will give then more advanced notice on moves they are making.

I was one that was expecting iWork 06 to be a full replacement of AppleWorks and that the db would be an "Express" version of FileMaker - allowing for easy migration to the full versions. Numbers would match Excel feature for feature, but would handle the majority of the functions that are generally used by non-engineering types. The other feature of AppleWorks - lots of wizards and templates - are stuff that the newer programmers can take care of and learn "The Apple Way" in the process.

Oh well, there is always iWork 07 . . .

sushi

Jan 24, 2006, 10:39 AM

FileMaker Jr.
LOL. Good one. :D

sbb155

Jan 24, 2006, 10:59 AM

MS is not worried at all about apple. They could crush apple in a second. HOW? My not making office for mac. Sorry, but in the educational and corporate markets, 100% compatibility with office is necessary. When I email a document to my coworkers, it must be 100% compatible. Same with PPT. This is the problem that apple will always have. Believe me, apple needs MS to keep making office. Now, all the Mac-faithful who are disillusioned will criticize this, but not those in a corporate market. Apple will always be ok for artists, but to gain real market share, they need to continue to have office. And that is why apple and MS are inexorably linked.
Just one person;s opinions

FOr what it is worth, the apple products are the best for movies/video/music. But for corporate work, there are problems.

ppnkg

Jan 24, 2006, 12:01 PM

MsOffice works fine on the mac. There is a mac lab at my uni with lots of mac minis and I use Word and Excel there. At home I've got NeoOffice, which is ok generally but it's slow and becomes less responsive with more complicated/long documents.
I'm still thinking whether I should buy MsOffice for my home mac. It's not a question of being pure or hating microsoft. It's a question of doing things without unnecessary complications.

For my thesis, I use LaTex+TeXShop. It's the best option. For longer texts with bibliography and tables etc `office' apps are simply not good enough.

freeny

Jan 24, 2006, 12:19 PM

Never even considered iWork. Perhaps after reading these testimonials ill give it a try....:)

windmaomao

Jan 24, 2006, 12:37 PM

Simple. Interoperability between Word and Writer is not perfect yet. I've had situations where I was handed a Word doc that got mangled when I tried to edit it in OpenOffice. I spent half an hour re-editing it in Word (on a PC, no less) and then I spent the money to buy Office.

Personally, I still use AppleWorks when I don't have to share my documents, but many people still need Office, simply because everyone else still has office.

very true, same here

kenaustus

Jan 24, 2006, 12:37 PM

MS is not worried at all about apple. They could crush apple in a second.

And there is an army of lawyers at the Department of Justice who would jump on this with hours of the press release. Then add the other countries that don't love MS. The cost to MS would far exceed the profits the Mac version brings in each year.

windmaomao

Jan 24, 2006, 12:41 PM

are you guys forgetting that microsoft will be developing office for the mac for AT LEAST the next five years? what's it to apple to make a spreadsheet program?
oops, that depends who wants to get the money eventually :eek:

MS is not worried at all about apple. They could crush apple in a second. HOW? My not making office for mac. Sorry, but in the educational and corporate markets, 100% compatibility with office is necessary. When I email a document to my coworkers, it must be 100% compatible. Same with PPT. This is the problem that apple will always have. Believe me, apple needs MS to keep making office. Now, all the Mac-faithful who are disillusioned will criticize this, but not those in a corporate market. Apple will always be ok for artists, but to gain real market share, they need to continue to have office. And that is why apple and MS are inexorably linked.
Just one person;s opinions

disagree. It depends on what you define crush, think about firefox and os x tiger and linux. It's all about making money and the same time inspiring people.

p.s I use opera though :D

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 12:45 PM

if they have made improvements on 05, this is good, i do believe they could make pages word competetive, just build in a good spell checker and more formatting options and it should be good to go.

It uses the OSX Spell checker. What's wrong with that? It could do with a grammar checker perhaps.

More formatting options? It already has more than Word. Can word do shadows? reflections? irregular and regular masks? opacity? gradients? It's one area where Pages is certainly not weak.

MS is not worried at all about apple. They could crush apple in a second. HOW? My not making office for mac. Sorry, but in the educational and corporate markets, 100% compatibility with office is necessary. When I email a document to my coworkers, it must be 100% compatible. Same with PPT. This is the problem that apple will always have.

I don't believe that for a second.

1) Email your cow-orkers PDFs if they don't need to edit the documents directly. I get emailed so many Word documents for me to look at of which all I need to do is read them. They don't need to be in Word and often as a PDF they're much smaller. A lot of the time they don't even need to be in any document format - how many times do you get some office newbie typing a memo in word and then emailing you a word document that's just text? It's bizarre.

2) Microsoft is opening up it's document formats finally to XML in Office 12 making it easier for other companies to interoperate with native Office formats. They'll have to because of EU laws and more enlightened businesses.

I've already worked on a number of projects with organisations where they don't allow proprietary document formats such as Word (or for that matter Apple's Pages).

Apple and others will not always have the problem of having to be 100% compatible. And in any case Apple and Microsoft have formalised an agreement committing MS to a further 5 years of Office for the Mac. By that time the office suite landscape may have substantially changed and hopefully software vendors can compete on features and not MS Word compatibility.

hayesk

Jan 24, 2006, 01:02 PM

Let's go the other way. Is there going to be a decent long technical document writer for MacOS X. Now that Adobe has given up on FrameMaker (why they bought it in the first place is beyond me), there is nothing in that area.

Word simply cannot cut it when collaborating on 500+ page documents. It crashes constantly, cannot keep cross-references straight, and has weak style enforcement.

Lynxpro

Jan 24, 2006, 01:46 PM

Compared to MS Word, OpenOffice is just clunky and sucks. Compared to WordPerfect, MS Word is just clunky and sucks. I just sent an email to Corel telling them if they will re-release WordPerfect for Tiger and include ODF support, I will buy it.

I'd really like to see Google buy up the remnants of WordPerfect, open sourced it, and made it as free as OpenOffice. Such a move would give Steve Ballmer a heart attack when Microsoft's share price collapsed.

gauriemma

Jan 24, 2006, 01:55 PM

cgc

Jan 24, 2006, 02:07 PM

I cannot understand why people are buying ms office becaus openoffice is free and has more opions than 99% of all the people need.
OpenOffice is ugly, slow, and very unMac-like...

bousozoku

Jan 24, 2006, 02:10 PM

I used to use WordStar back in, oh, '86-'87. How's that selling these days? :-)

That sounds more like WordStar 2000, the graphical version. I still have WordStar 3.3 on my CP/M machine. It works but for some reason, word processors that fit into 64KB don't sell well these days. Those things were fast though but of course, you had to guess at how it would look finally. :D WYSIDNWYG (What You See Is Definitely Not What You Get--Of course, that could be applied to the Windows 3.x versions of MS Word also.)

The WordPerfect people really held on too long to version 5.1, including porting it to Atari ST and Amiga and Macintosh with minimal changes. I guess their market has changed a bit since Data General is out of business.

Zatko

Jan 24, 2006, 02:36 PM

Not true. It has perfect exporting ability which is what causes the problem.

iWork 05 and many other applications on the Mac export PDF to the latest PDF v1.5 spec which wasn't supported until very recently by Adobe in it's reader. The workaround for iWork 05 in Tiger at least was to use 'Print' and then 'Save As...' and select PDF/X as the output. Otherwise transparency and shadows don't work.

With iWork 06, Apple seem to have realised that exporting to the latest spec wasn't actually good news for compatibility with users who've not updated their PDF reader and they now export in PDF v1.4 specification which anyone with Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or later can read. This is also good news if you send your output to a print shop as most of them are way behind the times.

Sorry but it is true. PDF/X does indeed fix many of the issues, but you are rewarded by quality degradation, which for me makes it not an option.

Here's an example of Pages excellent PDF export capabilities...
Showing the same PDF created by Pages in Acrobat 7.0.5 and in Preview:

http://www.caffeinatedconsulting.biz/apple/pages/pages.html

areyouwishing

Jan 24, 2006, 02:52 PM

I truly wish Apple and Microsoft could co-develop Office. Use the MS name to comfort the IT department, and have Apple's style.

In the enterprise Entourage trumps the "iCal, Address Book, Mail" combo, but the later has a much better interface. If Apple created a PIM that integrated into Exchange or an IMAP-LDAP combo, I would buy iWork in a heart beat.

Take Apple's mail as the base, stick in iCal, Address Book, a today screen, and iSync and we've got the best PIM in the world. See below and fill in the blanks.

kwajo.com

Jan 24, 2006, 02:56 PM

I use iWork for all my essays and presentations, it's a beauty for everything I need it for, especially Keynote. the new versions that just came out are greta improvements, I especially like the new comments feature in Pages. It's great for making note of things I need to revise later

gauchogolfer

Jan 24, 2006, 03:20 PM

Sorry but it is true. PDF/X does indeed fix many of the issues, but you are rewarded by quality degradation, which for me makes it not an option.

Here's an example of Pages excellent PDF export capabilities...
Showing the same PDF created by Pages in Acrobat 7.0.5 and in Preview:

http://www.caffeinatedconsulting.biz/apple/pages/pages.html

So, on the link above, you give examples of pdf output from Pages as viewed by both Preview and Acrobat, is this right? It seems to me that the image quality is quite different for the two, and looks to be better in Preview. Is this a sign that the problem is with Acrobat?

I've exported some pages from Pages to pdf, and am usually pretty content (with the exception of very detailed bitmap images, which don't ever translate well), since the pdf even preserved html links and the like which I've incorporated. I'll have a look myself to see if there is a difference in output when viewed using Preview and Acrobat Pro 6 (my only version).

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 03:21 PM

Sorry but it is true. PDF/X does indeed fix many of the issues, but you are rewarded by quality degradation, which for me makes it not an option.

Ultimately you have to flatten the PDF v1.5 capabilities somewhere be that in Pages, Preview, Acrobat Reader or your printer driver. PDF/X is a subset of PDF guaranteed to be supported. If you want your document to be read by old none PDF v1.5 compliant readers then you've no choice but to flatten down to PDF/X and lose some of the features that make PDF v1.5 great. It's NOT Pages' fault. It's outputting good PDF to spec.

Here's an example of Pages excellent PDF export capabilities...
Showing the same PDF created by Pages in Acrobat 7.0.5 and in Preview:

http://www.caffeinatedconsulting.biz/apple/pages/pages.html

Other than Acrobat's poor font rendering - which is a problem with Acrobat and the flattened shadow being darker than in Preview your point is what exactly? All it shows is that Acrobat isn't as good as Preview. Nothing to do with Pages at all.

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 03:26 PM

Take Apple's mail as the base, stick in iCal, Address Book, a today screen, and iSync and we've got the best PIM in the world. See below and fill in the blanks.

Sounds like the worst PIM in the world to me. I like them all separate thanks. 90% of the time I only need Mail so the other two stay closed and out of the way on my dock. And IMHO Apple's last Mail interface is the worst interface they've ever done. Bring back the drawer!

Play Ultimate

Jan 24, 2006, 03:41 PM

I used to use WordStar back in, oh, '86-'87. How's that selling these days? :-)

Ahhhh...the good old days of Multimate, Ashton-Tate's Framework & dBase III (back then I had a single disk PC with 640 kBytes of RAM). Anybody for a game of Rogue?
:)

Play Ultimate

Jan 24, 2006, 03:51 PM

Well said. I've never really liked the way Word did it's formatting and stylesheets back as far as I remember. Back on Windows I used to use Samna AmiPro which later became Lotus' WordPro. That used to have a kind of document inspector and excellent style sheet handling too. I find long time MS Office users seem to have many problems using Pages as it's 'done right' IME and not the MS way. Given a willingness to change how you work and think about how your document is structured and formatted, Pages has hidden depths that a casual Word user won't appreciate. If you're the type of Word user that goes through your document using the font menu instead of the stylesheet then perhaps you should relearn your habits. In the web design world I find the difference between Word and Pages about as profound as HTML with FONT tags embedded and XHTML and CSS. Word is old. Pages is new. Some people can't cope with new.

Pages 2 also moves the bar set by Pages 1 further on. It's not a radical change but they've concentrated on fixing most of the things that were a little clunky in v1 and it's quite a bit faster at longer documents than v1.

I wonder if we won't see a link between Pages/Keynote and Grapher at some point to solve the scientific equation desire from some users. At the moment, Grapher allows you to copy the equation and graph to the clipboard and paste it into Pages. I'd be surprised if they didn't integrate Grapher into Pages directly.

And a spreadsheet is inevitable. I was really surprised 06 didn't include one although I still think iWork06 is incredibly good value for the two programs included in the 'Suite'.

06 is a solid upgrade rather than something spectacular. Here's hoping 07 brings the remainder of the 'Suite' - a semi decent spreadsheet, integrated Grapher and maybe a database app - which incidentally, MS Office lacks.

It sounds like everybody really wants an upgrade to Apple Works. If they just tweaked the Word Processor and the Presentation stuff on Apple Works to somewhat match Pages & Keynote isn't that the "ideal" system?

MS is not worried at all about apple. They could crush apple in a second. HOW? My not making office for mac. Sorry, but in the educational and corporate markets, 100% compatibility with office is necessary. When I email a document to my coworkers, it must be 100% compatible. Same with PPT. This is the problem that apple will always have. Believe me, apple needs MS to keep making office. Now, all the Mac-faithful who are disillusioned will criticize this, but not those in a corporate market. Apple will always be ok for artists, but to gain real market share, they need to continue to have office. And that is why apple and MS are inexorably linked.
Just one person;s opinions

FOr what it is worth, the apple products are the best for movies/video/music. But for corporate work, there are problems.

You are 100% correct. Further, Microsoft needs Apple to avoid the anti-trust folks. If Apple was not around, we may have seen an ATT-type break-up long ago.

digitalbiker

Jan 24, 2006, 04:04 PM

I bought Keynote 1.0. Later upgraded to 2.0 and last year. Ended up buying iWork'05. I have used both Keynote and Pages extensively.

Personally I like Keynote but it is limited compared to PowerPoint. It does make some really beautiful simple presentations really well but for complex presentations it falls flat and really isn't compatible with PowerPoint when you need to share it with a windows user.

Pages, just plain sucks. It is the worst piece of software I have ever used. It is slow. Hangs very bad. It is buggy. The templates are a pain to use unless your needs are directly addressed. Large documents, over 100 pages with graphics should not be constructed in pages. No indexing, no correction following, it is OK for the home newsletter but forget it for real word processing or publishing.

My opinion is that Apple would be better served to drop the officesuite idea. Instead they should work very hard not to lose the Mac Business Unit of MS for writing MS Office on the Mac. Frankly if they lose MS then the only way to have a decent office suite will be running MS Office in VPC on the new intel macs.

kwajo.com

Jan 24, 2006, 04:19 PM

Pages, just plain sucks. It is the worst piece of software I have ever used. It is slow. Hangs very bad. It is buggy.

while the new version of iWork won't install on it, I have had iWork 05 installed on my iBook (specs in my sig.) for a year and it works wonderfully! It's faster than Word and has never crashed on me. Needless to say I was very impressed with its compatibility with such an old machine.

Zatko

Jan 24, 2006, 04:53 PM

So, on the link above, you give examples of pdf output from Pages as viewed by both Preview and Acrobat, is this right? It seems to me that the image quality is quite different for the two, and looks to be better in Preview. Is this a sign that the problem is with Acrobat?

I've exported some pages from Pages to pdf, and am usually pretty content (with the exception of very detailed bitmap images, which don't ever translate well), since the pdf even preserved html links and the like which I've incorporated. I'll have a look myself to see if there is a difference in output when viewed using Preview and Acrobat Pro 6 (my only version).

Since PDF is an Adobe product, I would consider Acrobat the standard for viewing them. Using preview is like opening up a Word document in Open Office. I'm saying Preview and Pages is behaving like Internet Explorer does in regards to Web standards.

Ultimately you have to flatten the PDF v1.5 capabilities somewhere be that in Pages, Preview, Acrobat Reader or your printer driver. PDF/X is a subset of PDF guaranteed to be supported. If you want your document to be read by old none PDF v1.5 compliant readers then you've no choice but to flatten down to PDF/X and lose some of the features that make PDF v1.5 great. It's NOT Pages' fault. It's outputting good PDF to spec.

Other than Acrobat's poor font rendering - which is a problem with Acrobat and the flattened shadow being darker than in Preview your point is what exactly? All it shows is that Acrobat isn't as good as Preview. Nothing to do with Pages at all.

If the whole world used Preview, I wouldn't have any issue at all. Unfortunately, I can't release PDFs to the public where to the vast majority of users (windows+acrobat) will think I was on crack when I wrote the document.

Also, don't get me wrong, besides the problems with PDF exporting... I love Pages. I love it so much that that is the reason why these PDF quality issues really make me upset.

I can say Pages prints beautifly.

digitalbiker

Jan 24, 2006, 05:13 PM

while the new version of iWork won't install on it, I have had iWork 05 installed on my iBook (specs in my sig.) for a year and it works wonderfully! It's faster than Word and has never crashed on me. Needless to say I was very impressed with its compatibility with such an old machine.

I have two seperate pages documents each with 55 pages. One table per page with 2 small jpegs per page and they will take at least 3-4 minutes for your machine to open.

In addition one of the documents contains 55 slighlty larger imbedded images and it takes about 5-6 minutes to open. Once open if you scroll either document it takes 1 minute for the window to re-draw and the beachball to stop spinning.

If you unlock or lock, group or ungroup, again it takes 1 minute for the beach ball to stop.

Pages is the worst piece of crap I have ever owned and I have used many different word processors / page setting / desktop publishing software on the Commodore 64, Amiga 2000, IBM 8087, Apple IIe, etc. etc.
Anything is better than Pages.

All of this is on a 1.67 Ghz G4 with ATI 9700 GPU and 1 GB of Ram, 100GB 7200 RPM HD.

gauchogolfer

Jan 24, 2006, 05:14 PM

Personally I like Keynote but it is limited compared to PowerPoint. It does make some really beautiful simple presentations really well but for complex presentations it falls flat and really isn't compatible with PowerPoint when you need to share it with a windows user.

I agree that Keynote 2 was somewhat unnecessarily limited (no multiple bulleted lists on one slide, no split-bulleted builds, etc.) but I have given presentations at several conferences using KN2 to good effect. I'm not using audio/video in these, but I'm guessing it's easier here than in PPT. As for PPT compatibility, it's only the fancy transitions that I've had problems with. Support for that has to come from MS.

BTW, the problems in KN2 I listed have been fixed in KN3, and I'm a very happy upgrader.

I have two seperate pages documents each with 55 pages. One table per page with 2 small jpegs per page and they will take at least 3-4 minutes for your machine to open.

In addition one of the documents contains 55 slighlty larger imbedded images and it takes about 5-6 minutes to open. Once open if you scroll either document it takes 1 minute for the window to re-draw and the beachball to stop spinning.

If you unlock or lock, group or ungroup, again it takes 1 minute for the beach ball to stop.
All of this is on a 1.67 Ghz G4 with ATI 9700 GPU and 1 GB of Ram, 100GB 7200 RPM HD.

I have the same system as you (15" Pbook, 80GB HD though) and I'm interested in trying this out for myself....though I don't have a file this large in front of me. Any way to download your file so I can take a look? If this isn't kosher, do you know of any publicly available documents I could try?

EDIT: Is there an easy way to convert pdf to rtf or .doc format so that I could open it in Pages? My dissertation is pretty large and might bog Pages down. It's in LaTeX with pdf output though.

EDIT: So, I found TextLightning to do pdf to rtf conversion: http://www.metaobject.com/Products.html#TextLightning
Testing 150 pages now....

EDIT: OK, so TextLightning is crap...none of the graphics are included, and tables in RTF are shot to hell. Never mind, time for bed.

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 05:46 PM

Since PDF is an Adobe product, I would consider Acrobat the standard for viewing them. Using preview is like opening up a Word document in Open Office. I'm saying Preview and Pages is behaving like Internet Explorer does in regards to Web standards.

Actually, it's more the other way round. Acrobat Reader is like Internet Explorer - it has 90% of the market yet renders the standards badly. Really. Stick a Pages generated PDF through a decent RIP that supports PDF v1.5 properly and you'll see output that more closely matches Preview and Pages.

Adobe may have created the standard but so far they've not produced a rendering engine on the Mac to touch Apple's. So yes, that means flattening to PDF/X in iWork '05.

As I said earlier though, Apple seem to have realised the problems in iWork 06 which renders PDFs to the PDF v1.4 specification. I suspect that will 'fix' most compatibility problems between Acrobat and Pages/Preview.

bbyrdhouse

Jan 24, 2006, 06:03 PM

That may be so, but it's quite a bit faster than Keynote and Pages. Speaking of which, has Apple improved the speed in the most recent release of these programs? I would consider upgrading from iWork '05 if they had...

Whaaaat! Keynote and Pages both are way faster than OpenOffice. I don't know how you could say imply that they were slow.

There was a day when I really "rooted" for Oo, but over the last couple of years progress has slowed a great deal. It seems that every since Star Office 5 (later Oo) they keep saying that they can almost do MSWord, but they never get any closer. Sorry, but MSWord is still better than Oo.
And Pages is more like taking MSWord and MSPublisher and mixing the two. In my opinion Pages is a much cleaner and easier to use program than either Word or Pub, but for compatability it's hurting.

If you are looking for a really nice Word Processor for Mac then check out Mellel from Redlix. Really nice with loads of features.

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 06:19 PM

I have two seperate pages documents each with 55 pages. One table per page with 2 small jpegs per page and they will take at least 3-4 minutes for your machine to open.

In addition one of the documents contains 55 slighlty larger imbedded images and it takes about 5-6 minutes to open. Once open if you scroll either document it takes 1 minute for the window to re-draw and the beachball to stop spinning.

If you unlock or lock, group or ungroup, again it takes 1 minute for the beach ball to stop.

Pages v1 was slow with some large documents. The key to not making it slow was to create a new page for each page rather than letting text just flow across 50 pages. Anything that meant the text would have to reflow 50 pages meant a beachball for ages while each page was reflowed. On v2 I've not had the same issue but it's still quicker with nicely defined pages and sections.

As a counterpoint. I've just created a 300 page document in Pages v2 by cut and pasting 10 pages at a time created from the 'EXTREME' newsletter template as seen on Apple's website. It opens in about 15 seconds on my iMac G5 1.8Ghz with 1GB. It'd be faster but I'm printing 500 leaflets just now and don't want to interrupt it. ;-)

Pasting 100 pages at a time beachballs for about 25 seconds which seems acceptable. I get no beachballs at all paging through the document, resizing or moving images such that a page insert due to an overflow occurs.

Pages is the worst piece of crap I have ever owned and I have used many different word processors / page setting / desktop publishing software on the Commodore 64, Amiga 2000, IBM 8087, Apple IIe, etc. etc.

Oh come now, you must not have used Wordworth. That was slow compared to WriteNow! ;-)

The first Pages v1.0 was a bit iffy. v1.02 was ok if a little slow and they should have had another version to fix some issues before v2. Otherwise it was solid and reliable for me.

v2 seems to fix the slowness. The thumbnail bar is great now. It's in some ways what v1.0 should have been. It does far too much in real time incurring massive CPU costs - do we really need to see an image moved in realtime with text flowing and shadows being generated as it moves? However, that aside, I think it's a cool little wordprocessor and layout program now. I much prefer it to Word since it does what I tell it and I'm not scared of doing any kind of complex layout in it unlike Word where I've managed to get a document into a state that I can't load again without an instant crash.

sushi

Jan 24, 2006, 06:40 PM

digitalbiker

Jan 24, 2006, 07:01 PM

Pages v1 was slow with some large documents. The key to not making it slow was to create a new page for each page rather than letting text just flow across 50 pages. Anything that meant the text would have to reflow 50 pages meant a beachball for ages while each page was reflowed. On v2 I've not had the same issue but it's still quicker with nicely defined pages and sections.

As a counterpoint. I've just created a 300 page document in Pages v2 by cut and pasting 10 pages at a time created from the 'EXTREME' newsletter template as seen on Apple's website. It opens in about 15 seconds on my iMac G5 1.8Ghz with 1GB. It'd be faster but I'm printing 500 leaflets just now and don't want to interrupt it. ;-)

Pasting 100 pages at a time beachballs for about 25 seconds which seems acceptable. I get no beachballs at all paging through the document, resizing or moving images such that a page insert due to an overflow occurs.

Oh come now, you must not have used Wordworth. That was slow compared to WriteNow! ;-)

The first Pages v1.0 was a bit iffy. v1.02 was ok if a little slow and they should have had another version to fix some issues before v2. Otherwise it was solid and reliable for me.

v2 seems to fix the slowness. The thumbnail bar is great now. It's in some ways what v1.0 should have been. It does far too much in real time incurring massive CPU costs - do we really need to see an image moved in realtime with text flowing and shadows being generated as it moves? However, that aside, I think it's a cool little wordprocessor and layout program now. I much prefer it to Word since it does what I tell it and I'm not scared of doing any kind of complex layout in it unlike Word where I've managed to get a document into a state that I can't load again without an instant crash.

Well, it sounds like maybe it would be worth purchasing iWork 06. Just to get an update of Pages.

Did Keynote get much of a bump with the new version? I doubt that I would have any use for iWeb. I already use Macromedia's software suite for web site design work.

I have liked using keynote for simple and fast but yet professional looking presentations. Also it is kind of nice to pull up a theme that the windows crowd using PowerPoint hasn't seen.:D

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 08:02 PM

Interesting work around.

But doesn't that defeat it as being used as a word processor?

Not really.

If you just pasted in 50 pages of text then it caused an issue in v1. If you used sections and pages as intended with Pages then it was fine. Usually, you'd not have a 50 page section though.

maya

Jan 24, 2006, 08:06 PM

Most of this is due to patronage and easy of use. I mean come on how long have we been at the word processing game, it should not take long to give the public something usable after the initial version 1.0 release which is usually a tester anyhow. :)

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 08:16 PM

Did Keynote get much of a bump with the new version? I doubt that I would have any use for iWeb. I already use Macromedia's software suite for web site design work.

I've never used PowerPoint. Keynote I've used a couple of times but it's instantly more professional looking than any PowerPoint presentation I've had the misfortune of having to sit through. From the reviews I've read, v3 is quite an update over v2 and the brief play I've had with the new templates and effects look nice - there's a really nice reflection effect in 3D. On the whole though I never use presentation software in presentations.

iWeb is part of iLife, not iWork. I've no use for iWeb or Macromedia's software either for that matter past simple prototyping or where a client insists on it. I always hand code sites. I guess I should be using TeX for writing documents too but there's only so much time in the day eh? :)

digitalbiker

Jan 24, 2006, 08:27 PM

I've never used PowerPoint. Keynote I've used a couple of times but it's instantly more professional looking than any PowerPoint presentation I've had the misfortune of having to sit through. From the reviews I've read, v3 is quite an update over v2 and the brief play I've had with the new templates and effects look nice - there's a really nice reflection effect in 3D. On the whole though I never use presentation software in presentations.

iWeb is part of iLife, not iWork. I've no use for iWeb or Macromedia's software either for that matter past simple prototyping or where a client insists on it. I always hand code sites. I guess I should be using TeX for writing documents too but there's only so much time in the day eh? :)

That's right. I was confusing iLife with iWork.

It irritates me that Apple didn't bump Pages once before offering iWork 06. I had purchased Keynote and used it fairly often. So when iWork 05 came out I decided to give it a try since it bumped Keynote a little and gave the initial offering of Pages.
Unfortunately I have not found Pages V1 useful at all. It creates a nice looking final product but I thought that the speed problems and formating problems were a pain to work through. If Apple would have bumped Pages a little to fix the problems in V1 yet left out a few of the new features that went into V2, it would have been a better deal.
Now a user is confronted with buying the whole suite over just to bump Keynote a little and to get fixes for a fairly poor v1 Pages app.

Project

Jan 24, 2006, 08:38 PM

digitalbiker

Jan 24, 2006, 09:40 PM

Well to be fair none of the iLife apps (iTunes not counting) get a bump during the year. It is of course to make the yearly update seem very nice and encourage you to empty out another bit of cash.

I get iWork for £30 via student discount. Absolute bargain. Keynote envisions exactly what Apple home products are about and I am looking forward to giving my first presentation at University in a months time. Its kind of like my secret weapon because I know for a fact it is going to turn heads in a room full of powerpoint users.

As for Pages, I really liked 1.0, and 2.0 has pretty much cemented its position as my only word processor in use. I dont need much compatibility with Word (though it handles imports nicely) and I wont be writing any 100 page documents anytime soon. Mainly just the ability to export to PDF to print out at the campus IT suite. Theres something about it though...it just *feels* much nicer than Word and even Mellel. Applying styles is a breeze. Im definitely looking forward to exploring the spreadsheet feature too.

Except that the iLife apps come free with the purchase of a computer. Also they are fairly mature.

Pages V1 was slow and really needed a tweek before it was completely up to par with other Apple products.

In my opinion Apple should have provided that tweek for free and then upgraded the product again for iWork 06.

I guess if Apple is going to do micro-bumps of iWork similar to iLife then it would be wise to wait for iWork 07 when both Keynote & Pages are more mature and a possible new app might be added.

bbyrdhouse

Jan 24, 2006, 10:19 PM

Beware of iWork's horrendous exporting ability. The PDF's it exports always look busted in Acrobat, which 95% of the people you'll be showing the PDF will be using.:mad:

This may sound strange and I am not sure why there would be a difference but I have noticed a difference between using the "Export to PDF" and printing to PDF.

The printing to PDF is way faster and maintains the exact layout and colors and everything. The exporting to PDF takes longer and usually will have something that is a little different. (Mostly on larger files)

The same is true for Keynote.

aegisdesign

Jan 24, 2006, 10:32 PM

Except that the iLife apps come free with the purchase of a computer. Also they are fairly mature.

iWork should be provided too and IMHO iPhoto5 was far from mature and iTunes is now smelling a bit ripe and needs a rewrite. I bought the iLife '05 upgrade for iPhoto alone last year and it was completely unusable all the way through the year - slow, beachballing at the drop of a hat and corrupting colour info. At least v4 was just slow.

Pages V1 was slow and really needed a tweek before it was completely up to par with other Apple products.

So far, I think iLife06 and iWork06 are finally up to par in the older apps. iWeb is looking a bit ropey in it's output and Photocasting seems to be badly done so those will probably be this year's complaints that we complain about all year which never get fixed before the '07 products come out and they're miraculously fixed. Then we'll be bitching about Numbers v1.0 and even more useless .Mac integration.

In my opinion Apple should have provided that tweek for free and then upgraded the product again for iWork 06.

I guess if Apple is going to do micro-bumps of iWork similar to iLife then it would be wise to wait for iWork 07 when both Keynote & Pages are more mature and a possible new app might be added.

Nah, they're £55 for two of the best apps going on the Mac. That's a bargain. They also seem to have had substantially more QA on them this year as we're not already waiting for the vX.0.1 updates like we were at this point last year when iPhoto was corrupting imported libraries and you couldn't delete pages in Pages.

-hh

Jan 25, 2006, 12:33 AM

are you guys forgetting that microsoft will be developing office for the mac for AT LEAST the next five years?

I think the response to this is:

"Yeah, we've heard that, but what does that statement actually mean?"

For example, there's a huuuuge differences between:

a) MS is merely obligated to spend some money in "development", but not actually obligated to deliver any retail product(s) whatsoever.

b) MS has agreed to release a 'Universal' update to Office sometime before 12/31/2010.

(examples of typical worst case scenario's, etc.)

z) MS has agreed to always have a 'Universal' Mac version of Office with 100% feature parity that ships THE SAME DAY AS all PC versions, and will deliver the retail box of the first of these no later than 4/1/2006. Furthermore, MS agrees to ship within the next 15 days to do 15 other Mac-friendly miracles as freeware, which will obviously make people seriously suspect that Bill Gates has incurable cancer and is trying to make amends for saving his immortal soul.

-hh

Bern

Jan 25, 2006, 01:02 AM

Here's an "out there" idea.

Perhaps Apple have only gotten M$ to commit for the next five years only because they plan for iWork to be well and truly competitive to Office within five years???

bousozoku

Jan 25, 2006, 01:11 AM

Here's an "out there" idea.

Perhaps Apple have only gotten M$ to commit for the next five years only because they plan for iWork to be well and truly competitive to Office within five years???

It's possible that the recent announcements from MS that they want to support Windows well have something to do with a desire to stop spending money on Macintosh development completely.

They might indeed be doing what you're saying.

Evangelion

Jan 25, 2006, 02:42 AM

With 95% market-share (more than Windows's market-share), I wonder why MS hasn't been dragged to court yet. I mean, Office is practically a Monopoly. People here (and elsewhere as well) have commented that they need Office so they can interoperate. And Office costs a lot of money, and MS makes it as hard as possible for cometing products to interoperate with Office.

I think that MS should fully and completely open the file-formats Office uses, so that third-parties can implement them and create compatible products. That would go long way towards breaking MS's stranglehold on that particular market.

BWhaler

Jan 25, 2006, 03:08 AM

Well, I'm sure this is some type of statistical oddity, but I could care less.

I switched to Keynote when it was released, and then waited two years for iWork. At least iWork looks now to be on an annual upgrade cycle.

But what worries me is the anemic upgrades and lack of spreadsheet. I'm sure Apple took it easy on iWork to keep MS at bay--I doubt the agreement mentions iWork development since that would get MS in trouble with the government--but Jobs probably slowed development as a courtesy to MS.

I just hope Apple has strong iWork sales through-out the year so iWork 07 is a major upgrade. Keynote is missing about 10-15 key features, pages needs about 30-40, and obviously iWork needs a spreadsheet.

My main hope for iWork 07 is a major update to Pages. Make it a pro-sumer word processor and page formatter. Apple was brilliant in how they re-thought the word processor, focusing on making your words beautiful. But there are too many missing, core features.

I'd love to switch my company over to iWork next year and have Apple get the annual upgrades in the future. Let's hope Apple makes iWork 07 the Office killer we've all been waiting for.

I have MS Office for Excel. In fact, I'll hug my copy again right now. When Apple is ready to play the spreadsheet game, I'm ready to try their app.

I agree. Excel is the best product Microsoft makes.

I'd still dump it in a heart beat if Apple does a spreadsheet right and it integrates well into the rest of iWork.

gauchogolfer

Jan 25, 2006, 03:11 AM

With 95% market-share (more than Windows's market-share), I wonder why MS hasn't been dragged to court yet. I mean, Office is practically a Monopoly....I think that MS should fully and completely open the file-formats Office uses, so that third-parties can implement them and create compatible products. That would go long way towards breaking MS's stranglehold on that particular market.

I am a happy iWork user, but still depend on Office for Excel and some document sharing at work. I'd like to point out that simply having 95% market share isn't enough to be "dragged to court", otherwise iTMS is well on its way. It's what you DO with that market share that's the issue. As long as MS makes file formats that Keynote and Pages can import, along with CorelSuite stuff, I'm not sure if there is much anyone can do.

Having said that, I'm all for more open standards, since I much prefer working in Keynote over PPT, for example.

bbyrdhouse

Jan 25, 2006, 05:36 AM

I wonder of Apple could release some of the code for Keynote and Pages and then a 3rd party(s) could develope a plug-in that would include some of these "missing" features.
- Spreadsheet plug-in that works with Pages and Keynote
- A plug-in that let's Pages publish to web folder
- etc...

Les Kern

Jan 25, 2006, 07:15 AM

Imagine the possibilities if iWork was worth paying more than a dollar for and did more then make eye candy.

Here's an "out there" idea.

Perhaps Apple have only gotten M$ to commit for the next five years only because they plan for iWork to be well and truly competitive to Office within five years???

Please make it so! Excel will be TOUGH to beat though. Word CAN be beat, and Keynote needs to evolve.
Five years? Seems about right.

aegisdesign

Jan 25, 2006, 07:34 AM

It's possible that the recent announcements from MS that they want to support Windows well have something to do with a desire to stop spending money on Macintosh development completely.

They might indeed be doing what you're saying.

Highly unlikely. Roz Ho announced at MWSF that 2005 was the MacBU's most successful and profitable year ever. You don't kill off a profitable part of your business just because a competitor emerges and especially not if you're Microsoft and you've got various governments breathing down your neck asking questions about unfair competition and monopoly status.

Imagine the possibilities if iWork was worth paying more than a dollar for and did more then make eye candy.

It is. It does.

I wonder of Apple could release some of the code for Keynote and Pages and then a 3rd party(s) could develope a plug-in that would include some of these "missing" features.
- Spreadsheet plug-in that works with Pages and Keynote
- A plug-in that let's Pages publish to web folder
- etc...

Both your examples are in iWork already.

iWork 06 got a 'spreadsheet plugin' - http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/features/tables.html

Pages already publishes to the web folder. It appears to generate code identical to iWeb - ie. a bit crap.

A plugin architecture would be great though so that for example, the equation editor/grapher workaround I mentioned earlier in this thread could be integrated. Or for that matter, OmniGraffle charts, outliner or just replacing the html export with a better one.

Evangelion

Jan 25, 2006, 08:03 AM

I am a happy iWork user, but still depend on Office for Excel and some document sharing at work. I'd like to point out that simply having 95% market share isn't enough to be "dragged to court"

Having high market-share alone is not enough to get slapped with antitrust lawsuits. But fact is that MS is not actually making it easy for others to interoperate with their product. That wouldn't be an issue, if Office had a lower market-share, but since it's a de facto monopoly, that interoperability is crucial. And as many people have commented that they "need Office" so they could interoperate. And Office costs money. The fact that Office has all but eliminated all competition and that you need to pay money in order to use Office and interoperate with it, is (IMO) a form of abuse. They are asking for money for something that you basically can't be without (interoperability with .doc).

I'm not saying that MS should not ask for money for Office. what I'm saying that they should not be asking for money to work with Office file-formats. The format should be open. MS could still sell their office-suite just fine. They would just have to compete with features and usability, instead of relying on the fact that "I need Office to properly work with files created with Office-apps".

otherwise iTMS is well on its way.

If ITMS gets 90+% of the market, some antitrust-scrutiny should take place. Just because it's by Apple does not mean that it's OK.

It's what you DO with that market share that's the issue. As long as MS makes file formats that Keynote and Pages can import, along with CorelSuite stuff, I'm not sure if there is much anyone can do.

So everything is OK as long as iWork and Corel can import Office-files? Well, no. Those two would still be reliant on MS and their whims. And I wouldn't be surprised if MS got money for the specs of the file-format. And where does that leave Koffice, openOffice, Abiword and others? Why favour just those two?

Having said that, I'm all for more open standards, since I much prefer working in Keynote over PPT, for example.

I wonder when iWork will use OpenDocument as it's default file-format? I might be in for a long wait....

aegisdesign

Jan 25, 2006, 08:06 AM

But what worries me is the anemic upgrades and lack of spreadsheet. I'm sure Apple took it easy on iWork to keep MS at bay--I doubt the agreement mentions iWork development since that would get MS in trouble with the government--but Jobs probably slowed development as a courtesy to MS.

I really doubt that. Can you see Jobs asking his developers to produce something lacklustre on purpose? I don't doubt there's political capital to be made from producing or not producing an office suite in competition to Microsoft but that's not stopped Apple before. No, I think if anything, the iWork team have been busy with iWeb and the iLife apps as well this past year getting them ready for Intel. That was my one fear with the Intel switch, that Apple's app development would slow because of the extra workload.

The 06 updates may not have yielded all the pro features needed to compete with Office directly, feature for feature, but it's a pretty solid basis and a welcome performance update on 05. I really hope they don't get into a feature for feature war though and it seems they've not so far. They've thought of other ways to do features rather than parrot MS like OpenOffice.org does to a very large extent.

I just hope Apple has strong iWork sales through-out the year so iWork 07 is a major upgrade. Keynote is missing about 10-15 key features, pages needs about 30-40, and obviously iWork needs a spreadsheet.

My main hope for iWork 07 is a major update to Pages. Make it a pro-sumer word processor and page formatter. Apple was brilliant in how they re-thought the word processor, focusing on making your words beautiful. But there are too many missing, core features.

I hope so too. I think they deserve it this year. What features do you think it's missing though?

I'd love to switch my company over to iWork next year and have Apple get the annual upgrades in the future. Let's hope Apple makes iWork 07 the Office killer we've all been waiting for.

Works just great at my company but then there's only 3 of us using it and Office compatibility isn't a requirement at all. It's paid for itself multiple times over for quick leaflet and newsletter production.

I wonder when iWork will use OpenDocument as it's default file-format? I might be in for a long wait....

Probably. However, they do publish some (not all) technical documentation to the format and how it works on http://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/iWork2-0_XML/index.html

iWork 06 changed the XML schema again from iWork 05 but there's no docs on the new schema and I've not checked to see what direction they're heading in. Someone with more XML knowledge than me may want to look at it.

gauchogolfer

Jan 25, 2006, 10:00 AM

So everything is OK as long as iWork and Corel can import Office-files? Well, no. Those two would still be reliant on MS and their whims. And I wouldn't be surprised if MS got money for the specs of the file-format. And where does that leave Koffice, openOffice, Abiword and others? Why favour just those two?

Sorry I wasn't a bit more clear, I didn't mean to single out anyone, I was only using the top two current competitors as examples. You're right about the file format issue, I suppose, since constantly having to change one's own software code just to 'keep up' with changes from MS doesn't seem like real openness.

As for OpenDocument, I don't know enough about that to make an informed comment. Is is truly open, like (I think) .txt, .jpg, .xml, or more like .pdf where the viewing software (Preview vs. Adobe, for instance) changes what you see? If it's open (and effective) I'm all for it.

beverson

Jan 25, 2006, 11:24 AM

Glad to hear it, though I have to say my only experience with iWork ’06 was disappointing. I have the original, and tried to switch from Word to Pages, but just couldn't do it full time. It's nice for some stuff, but I still use Word more. Keynote is great, though -- I never use PowerPoint.

Anyway, when ’06 was announced, I felt really tempted. I used the trial version that came with iLife ’06, but two things were very unsatisfactory. First off, the Keynote package is over 1 GB in size. WTF is in there?? Second, I couldn't manage to get any of my in-progress Keynote 2 slide shows to open in Keynote 3. I know there could be a whole host of reasons for this, but I don't have the time I used to have to devote to troubleshooting. More and more, I just need stuff to work right the first time. Most of the time, I get that from Apple. Occasionally, not so much.

So, just one guy's experience. I was worried the ’06 trial version would tempt me to fork over for the full version to upgrade from Pages 1/Keynote 2. Maybe next year instead.

kenaustus

Jan 25, 2006, 11:33 AM

I think Apple is doing a pretty good job with iWork, and that it will continue to grow in terms of features and apps.

When I think about iWork I think it's fair to compare it to Office, but look behind the apps. How many programmers does MS have on Office compared to Apple's iWork team. How Many years has MS been working on Office? I used Work & Excel on Macs in the late 80s - it's clear that MS has had a huge head start and Apple is catching up fast.

Since both iLife and iWork were ready to ship the day they were announced we can figure that both went gold in mid to late November. It may well be that there were features (and additional apps) that were not ready and were left out - meaning that they will be in iWork 07.

As for me, I'm quite happy to upgrade annually - just like I upgrade OS X whenever there is a new version.

Evangelion

Jan 25, 2006, 12:22 PM

As for OpenDocument, I don't know enough about that to make an informed comment. Is is truly open, like (I think) .txt, .jpg, .xml, or more like .pdf where the viewing software (Preview vs. Adobe, for instance) changes what you see? If it's open (and effective) I'm all for it.

It's truly open and royalty free. Koffice is going to be using it as their default file-format, as is OpenOffice. There are others working on it as well (Corel might be, as is IBM, IIRC)

bbyrdhouse

Jan 25, 2006, 01:41 PM

http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/features/tables.html[/url]

Pages already publishes to the web folder. It appears to generate code identical to iWeb - ie. a bit crap.

A plugin architecture would be great though so that for example, the equation editor/grapher workaround I mentioned earlier in this thread could be integrated. Or for that matter, OmniGraffle charts, outliner or just replacing the html export with a better one.

Well, as I stated in my post a 3rd party would do a much better job at creating plug-ins. Sure Apple gave us a plug-in, but what was it? A really scaled down, limited table maker that will do some formulas.

As for pages publishing to web... well that it can export to a selected folder, but this is not at all what I was referring to. When you export in Pages now it will export to html. But if you have ever tried to export more than one page it will make one really long page in your browser.

So what I was saying was that I believe that 3rd party developers have a way of being extremely creative and persistant until they figure out a way to make things work.

Counterfit

Jan 25, 2006, 05:00 PM

If ITMS gets 90+% of the market, some antitrust-scrutiny should take place. Just because it's by Apple does not mean that it's OK.
Just because one company has 90+% of the market doesn't mean they're a trust. Apple hasn't bought out any competitors, nor have they changed any of their pricing models yet. It's all about the service (iPod+iTunes), and the word-of-mouth.

aegisdesign

Jan 25, 2006, 05:51 PM

Well, as I stated in my post a 3rd party would do a much better job at creating plug-ins. Sure Apple gave us a plug-in, but what was it? A really scaled down, limited table maker that will do some formulas.

And for most people, in the context of a plugin in a word processor it's fine. If you need more, buy a spreadsheet.

As for pages publishing to web... well that it can export to a selected folder, but this is not at all what I was referring to. When you export in Pages now it will export to html. But if you have ever tried to export more than one page it will make one really long page in your browser.

And Apple gives you iWeb instead. However, people shouldn't use word processors as web development tools. It's like using a domestic cat to spread butter on your toast.

So what I was saying was that I believe that 3rd party developers have a way of being extremely creative and persistant until they figure out a way to make things work.

I agree there. It'd be really cool if it was opened up like that and strong sales of iWork are of course the encouragement 3rd parties need to integrate with it.