iWork '09... Goodbye to Office '08???

[Diaresi]

I've noticed the above discussions about ODF and OOXML... but why haven't people considered that iWork is the most closed Office Suite in existance?!

You can only use iWork files on a Mac. That's it. At least with .doc you could run it on any platform (to varying degrees of full compatability). It wouldn't be so bad if there was an iWork reader for Windows or other such solution.

 

[bilboa]

I've noticed the above discussions about ODF and OOXML... but why haven't people considered that iWork is the most closed Office Suite in existance?!

You can only use iWork files on a Mac. That's it. At least with .doc you could run it on any platform (to varying degrees of full compatability). It wouldn't be so bad if there was an iWork reader for Windows or other such solution.

Yes and no. It depends on what you mean by "closed". What I would typically define as a closed format is one which is kept secret or purposefully obfuscated, which is not true of iWork. iWorks' file formats are based on easy to understand XML, and are actually publicly documented by Apple, to make it easy for developers to write their own programs to read and modify them. See here:
http://developer.apple.com/document...ork2-0_XML/Chapter01/chapter_1_section_1.html
Other developers have already taken advantage of this as well. There are several iPhone apps which can read iWork documents, and it would be straightforward to create Windows and Linux programs to do so as well, if there were a market for them.

It seems like you're defining closed as just meaning that Apple hasn't provided software for reading them on other platforms.

 

[kepardue]

Bilboa you beat me to the punch, I was just about to reference that.

It's entirely reasonable that someone could (and will) make an iWork document format importer for either MS Office or OpenOffice.org. Especially now that the file format is flat instead of being bundle-based. Much easier to work with on non-OS X platforms.

 

[MadGoat]

So true!

A few people have mentioned though Numbers cannot link cells between worksheets That'd be a showstopper right there for me.

If you mean

=Sheet 2 :: Table 1 :: A1+Sheet 3 :: Table 1 :: A1

That works.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Bilboa you beat me to the punch, I was just about to reference that.

It's entirely reasonable that someone could (and will) make an iWork document format importer for either MS Office or OpenOffice.org. Especially now that the file format is flat instead of being bundle-based. Much easier to work with on non-OS X platforms.

Is the .doc format publicly documented?

 

[psipsina]

My only big complaint about Pages is that you can't program keyboard shortcuts. I usually have the greek alphabet programmed because I use them constantly (science!!) and its a pain to have to keep the special characters window open and constantly stop typing and use the trackpad to go over and select "alpha" or whatever.

I did have some minor compatibility issues moving over .docx from MS office 2007 for windows. It with images that were in text boxes either floating in the text or within tables. I had to go thru the whole document and tweak about 50% of the images to get them to show up. It also gets really confused about how to keep the text boxes in the same place if you are working in the middle of the document.

 

[kepardue]

Is the .doc format publicly documented?

Not in its entirety, no.

 

[drichards]

When iwork 09 comes out for windows it may push Office out the market a little tiny incy wincy bit but i doubt thats ever going to happen and i doubt the industry standards going to be dropped any time this decade.

I have iWork, I have Office. iWork is a better looking set of programs, but I can't say its better functioning by any means. Will I buy Office again? Probably not. I only bought it this time around because it was on Microsoft's super secret deal site for less than the cost of iWork 08, and I was frustrated at incompatibilities in iWork at the time.

 

[IJ Reilly]

My only big complaint about Pages is that you can't program keyboard shortcuts. I usually have the greek alphabet programmed because I use them constantly (science!!) and its a pain to have to keep the special characters window open and constantly stop typing and use the trackpad to go over and select "alpha" or whatever.

All applications in Leopard can use keyboard shortcuts. Open System Preferences/Keyboard & Mouse. Click on Keyboard Shortcuts. Program away!

Not in its entirety, no.

So, the .pages format is more open than .doc. Well what do you know...

 

[psipsina]

All applications in Leopard can use keyboard shortcuts. Open System Preferences/Keyboard & Mouse. Click on Keyboard Shortcuts. Program away!

When I tried that it wanted me to enter the desired "menu command". But this isn't a menu command. I want to be able to program "insert: specific special character". Do you know how to get it to understand that?? I even tried dragging the specific character from pages into the system preferences window but the command I set didn't work.

 

[kepardue]

This post has me thinking about the implementation of iWork XML into OpenOffice.org. I've just filed an issue (that I'm not sure shouldn't instead be issues-plural-for each of the components) to support iWork in OpenOffice.org. I doubt it'll go anywhere, but for anyone here that's interested:

http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=98327

If nothing else, I would encourage everyone to set up an account and cast your votes for this issue. At least that way the OpenOffice.org devs will realize that this is something important to people. This might be an indirect way to get support for Pages files across all platforms.

 

[scotty96LSC]

iWork '09 is very nice and can be used full-time assuming you don't need to share your documents with any PC user, or you're able to export everything to PDF.

But, like it or not, Office is a de facto standard, so if you do a lot of collaboration, I'd advise holding onto Office 2008, even if it's not used very often.

That is the reason I must use Office -- PC clients and our constant sharing of spreadsheets.

 

[IJ Reilly]

When I tried that it wanted me to enter the desired "menu command". But this isn't a menu command. I want to be able to program "insert: specific special character". Do you know how to get it to understand that?? I even tried dragging the specific character from pages into the system preferences window but the command I set didn't work.

I see. Your other possible solution is to use the auto-correct feature in Pages Preferences. Any keystrokes can be set to auto-correct to another. Maybe that will work.

 

[psipsina]

I see. Your other possible solution is to use the auto-correct feature in Pages Preferences. Any keystrokes can be set to auto-correct to another. Maybe that will work.

Thanks soooo much!!! This totally worked

 

[Macmel]

That doesn't change how much you paid for the program. Upgrading every year or not is completely optional. It's not like the old program suddenly got worse.



Scientific?

I can see financial, but when I need to do scientific work, I'm going to be using something a lot more advanced than Excel, like SAS. Excel isn't worth much to me for scientific work, because once my needs get past basic spreadsheets and plots (for which Numbers is fine), Excel just isn't going to cut it for the analyses I want to do.

I am a scientist and I am using Excel for very complex plots I wouldn't be able to do with Numbers

 

[kuwisdelu]

I am a scientist and I am using Excel for very complex plots I wouldn't be able to do with Numbers

I'm just saying there are alternatives out there more powerful than Excel, making it useless to me, scientist or not. Though a certain degree of knowledge of statistics is necessary.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

I find Pages weak sauce. It can't even save as HTML which is one of my most used features in Office. Oddly enough I believe the first version of Pages did save as HTML but was pretty flakey so rather than improve it Apple just pulled it from the feature list. Bad move I think. M$ doesn't do much right, but Apple has yet to make a Word or Excel competitor, much less killer. Keynote is better that Power Point though, no doubt.

 

[kepardue]

I find Pages weak sauce. It can't even save as HTML which is one of my most used features in Office. Oddly enough I believe the first version of Pages did save as HTML but was pretty flakey so rather than improve it Apple just pulled it from the feature list. Bad move I think. M$ doesn't do much right, but Apple has yet to make a Word or Excel competitor, much less killer. Keynote is better that Power Point though, no doubt.

What do users see when they visit iWork.com? I mean, I know you can download the file in various formats, but isn't the actual presentation an HTML conversion of the original document? From what I've seen, it looks pretty close to pixel perfect.

UPDATED to also ask, also, isn't there a Send to iWeb that converts it to HTML?

 

[mynameisraj]

I do not think iWork '09 means goodbye to Office '08.

Numbers is not on par with Excel and Pages is not on par with Word. Keynote, however, destroys Powerpoint.

The main reason I chose office over iWork was because of compatibility (this was in 2008). Even the people at the local Apple Store told me to get Office.

Now, I understand '09 has vastly improved compatibility, but compatibility wasn't my only reason (it was just my main one). I need to type equations (mathtype is EXPENSIVE), do spreadsheets (I don't find numbers to be that good), and really don't have a use for Powerpoint/Keynote.

Need to present? Get iWork. Need to crunch numbers? Get Office. Need to write papers? Get Office.

iWork 2010 is going to be AWESOME. I can just feel it.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Need to present? Get iWork. Need to crunch numbers? Get Office. Need to write papers? Get Office.

Ridiculous.

 

[dukebound85]

Ridiculous.

we know you love iwork and that it works for you. it comes down to what solution will work for your needs. for you its clearly iwork

however for many, numbers doesnt hold a candle to excel and word is still much more convienent for many applications over pages when collaborating. yes i know there are pdf's but word has that ability as well and also be able to share the native file if need be due to the fact that pretty much every company deals with office

cant say the same for the iwork

i still cant recommend iwork over office when someone deals in an office environment (for the most part, school and work)

 

[IJ Reilly]

we know you love iwork and that it works for you. it comes down to what solution will work for your needs. for you its clearly iwork

What was ridiculous in that comment is that was no more than personal preferences and vague generalities disguised as authority. So yes, you should use what works for you. That would be the point.

 

[donstenk]

multilingual spelling

And until iwork allows me to seriously work with references, and to easily change the language of the built in spell check (a problem with all of apple's apps I might add) it's useless to me.
Long live office 08

Actually the ability to spell check in various languages simultaneously in most applications is it's strength: in Pages open the Inspector, T tab, more and choose your language or ALL. I use it in Mail as well but don't remember how I got there, maybe automatically.

Fantastic feature since 08.

What I am still badly missing is ODF support in iWork. I like having my documents in a broadly supported format that is going to be around for a long time.

 

[mynameisraj]

What was ridiculous in that comment is that was no more than personal preferences and vague generalities disguised as authority. So yes, you should use what works for you. That would be the point.

Maybe you were misunderstood - what I meant is that in my eyes, based on your needs you should get the different products.

Everyone has different needs but that's my input and opinion.

+1 on getting what works for you, btw

 

[IJ Reilly]

Maybe you were misunderstood - what I meant is that in my eyes, based on your needs you should get the different products.

Everyone has different needs but that's my input and opinion.

+1 on getting what works for you, btw

Well, if you're going to say "if you need to write papers, get Office," then you're going to hear objections from me. No way is Office required to write papers. You could choose any one of ten different word processors for that purpose, and many other purposes besides.