I have Pages and Numbers installed. Whenever I can, I just use iWork instead of Office (2011), thanks to cool featurs that Office is unable to support: autosave+versions, Cocoa interface (customizable keybindings in Library/KeyBindings), modeless inspectors and maybe more. However, they still are poor:
- Pages keeps using a stupid "drawer" for the styles. That is a UI feature that Apple discourages in their Human Interface Guidelines, and rightly so: due to its nature of extending out of the window, it can't be visible from maximized or full-screen windows. Not only that, but it uses function keys (on a Mac!) for quickly setting styles. Function keys, which require Fn and most certainly two hands, whereas using something like CMD-1, CMD-2 etc. for the various headings would have been manageable with the left hand.
- I really like Numbers' unique design and it's too bad that all other Excel alternatives use the infinite spreadsheet model. Having discrete tables with exactly the data you need feels much better. But unfortunately Numbers doesn't feel powerful enough (or even designed) for any scientific calculation more advanced. I especially find annoying the way you refer to cells when typing formulae, not being able to reuse cells just by clicking on them while writing the formula.
I wonder if, on Retina MacBook Pros, Microsoft Office for Windows 7 looks great or not (i.e. if it looks good or just stretched with HiDPI scaling set to 200% on Windows control panel).