iWork vs. Mac Office

[Cameront9]

I concur, that Pages can lag if you're a particularly fast typist using it on a relatively slow machine. I don't know if it's the page layout capabilities that create this issue, though I suspect not. Either way, Apple needs to fix this if Pages is going to gain more acceptance. However, I don't agree that Pages isn't a word processor, unless we have to accept a very dogmatic definition of word processing (e.g., it has to look and work like MS Word and handle graphics poorly, like Word). I write for a living. Pages has been my everyday word processor for nearly two years now and I have few issues with it in this role. I'm not sure what else to say in response to the suggestion that Pages isn't really a word processor.

Well, I certainly don't mean you can't use it as a Word Processor primarily...I just meant that it seems to lean more towards layout/design stuff than a Word Processor.

To return to the InDesign comparison: You could also use Adobe InDesign as a word processor. I'd imagine it does quite well, actually. But that's not what the majority of people use the program for, and that's not really what makes it a great program.

If you find Pages meets your needs, more power to you...That's great. But I'm a fast typist and can't stand the lag that is sometimes present. I need to see what's on the screen. So I'll stick to Word for my writing, and Pages when I need to make something that looks "lickable"

 

[brepublican]

You've got to love it when someone makes an unqualified statement like this and provides absolutely zero justification, no explanation or backup for their opinion of any kind!

Love it or hate it, you said it yourself, opinion is the word to take home from all this mumble jumble. Maybe I should have clarified that I was stating my opinion, but I figured that that was to be taken for granted. My bad

My PB came with test versions of both. And I bought both. I just get more usage out of Office:Mac than I do iWork. I wasnt hating on it, infact I may yet get iWork '07

 

[Yannick]

I promise you that a .txt file will look exactly the same on whatever platform you might need to send it to.

Sorry, it is not correct if you type characters with accents. Mac and PC are different for this. odt files (OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice), doc files (MS Office) take care of that but with txt files created on one platform, it can be a nightmare when opened on the other one. This is an example of a line typed on a PC in txt format and then opened on my Mac (sentence in French):
Groupe dÈcouverte de l'…vangile, sur l'…vangile de Jean, en 4 thËmes
And here is how it looked originally:
Groupe découverte de l'Évangile, sur l'Évangile de Jean, en 4 thèmes

 

[Yannick]

NeoOffice...its free, open source, and the new one is really look good...at least try it. My brother just replace MS Office with NeoOffice, and its also Universal, so it will run much faster then Office.

NeoOffice may be a universal but its also written in Java, so it may not be any faster the Office. I haven't tried it myself but one of the complaints I've seen posted about Neo is its kind of slow.

I've got some free time this weekend so I just might fire up the trial version of iWorks and give it a try.

I've found the postings about using Word/Pages for writing papers interesting. I'm back in school and seems like I'm writing a paper every few weeks. Two reasons that I'm using Word.
1.I have a template that will format my paper in the APA format that my school requires. It may be possible to create such a format in Pages, so I'll have to look into that.
2.The finite math class I'll be taking requires the use of MS Equation Editor.

I personnally suggest to use OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice. They are free and opensource. Yes, it is true that NeoOffice isn't a perfect solution because it is sometimes slow (apparently because it relies so much on Java), but you won't notice it unless the file has a lot of pages. NeoOffice is more "aquafied" than OpenOffice.org which needs X11 right now, so a lot of people prefers it over OpenOffice.org. But in a few months OpenOffice.org for Mac should go native (an alpha version is expected in Jan or Feb).

On the other side, MS Office for Mac 2004 is not up to date. It is run under Rosetta, so it is a lot of money for something outdated. If I was to need to buy it, I would at least try first NeoOffice to check if it can do my kind of job until a real Macintel version of MS Office comes out (in 12 to 24 months probably, and with the new MS Office formats docx,…).

What has been said on mythical perfect compatibility on MS Office documents is also true. And OpenOffice.org/NeoOffice do a really good job at it.

Another thing: with a Macintel, if you install windows on it, one must consider if it is not better to install MS Office for PC. You will get also a database (Access), and I know MS Office for Mac announced recently that they dropped some compatibility (the macros stuff if I remember correctly).

 

[2ndPath]

Sorry, it is not correct if you type characters with accents. Mac and PC are different for this. odt files (OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice), doc files (MS Office) take care of that but with txt files created on one platform, it can be a nightmare when opened on the other one. This is an example of a line typed on a PC in txt format and then opened on my Mac (sentence in French):
Groupe dÈcouverte de l'…vangile, sur l'…vangile de Jean, en 4 thËmes
And here is how it looked originally:
Groupe découverte de l'Évangile, sur l'Évangile de Jean, en 4 thèmes

Yes, that is a problem, because the Mac uses a different encoding for non-ASCII characters than Windows and Linux. I found that to be quite annoying, when I first used a Mac. But I guess with the increased use of unicode that problem should disappear.

 

[miles01110]

Sorry, it is not correct if you type characters with accents. Mac and PC are different for this. odt files (OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice), doc files (MS Office) take care of that but with txt files created on one platform, it can be a nightmare when opened on the other one. This is an example of a line typed on a PC in txt format and then opened on my Mac (sentence in French):
Groupe dÈcouverte de l'…vangile, sur l'…vangile de Jean, en 4 thËmes
And here is how it looked originally:
Groupe découverte de l'Évangile, sur l'Évangile de Jean, en 4 thèmes

Ah ok. I write in English, so I guess it's not a problem for me. Good to know, though.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Well, I certainly don't mean you can't use it as a Word Processor primarily...I just meant that it seems to lean more towards layout/design stuff than a Word Processor.

To return to the InDesign comparison: You could also use Adobe InDesign as a word processor. I'd imagine it does quite well, actually. But that's not what the majority of people use the program for, and that's not really what makes it a great program.

If you find Pages meets your needs, more power to you...That's great. But I'm a fast typist and can't stand the lag that is sometimes present. I need to see what's on the screen. So I'll stick to Word for my writing, and Pages when I need to make something that looks "lickable"

Again, I fully understand the lag issue, but I don't agree that Pages is a junior version of InDesign that also allows you to type. I've been using Pages for far too long to accept that and I rarely use it for anything but word processing. I still take this as an overly Word-centric view of what a word processor must be. It has to look like/act like and even have the same deficiencies as Word. This only serves to reinforce for me the sadness of the Word dominance in this area. It's created a box outside of which many people are not prepared to think.

FWIW, I don't use any word processor for a great deal of my writing. I prefer to compose in plain text in TextEdit, which keeps all issues but the writing completely out of my way.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Love it or hate it, you said it yourself, opinion is the word to take home from all this mumble jumble. Maybe I should have clarified that I was stating my opinion, but I figured that that was to be taken for granted. My bad

I've been stating my opinion as well, but mine comes with justification. Yours did not. Even opinions require reasons if they are going to be taken seriously. I think every Mac user can understand the difference. I imagine we've all been told a million times that "the Mac is a toy" or some such nonsense by people who can't even begin to tell you why they think so.

 

[brepublican]

I've been stating my opinion as well, but mine comes with justification. Yours did not. Even opinions require reasons if they are going to be taken seriously. I think every Mac user can understand the difference. I imagine we've all been told a million times that "the Mac is a toy" or some such nonsense by people who can't even begin to tell you why they think so.

I think I mentioned that my main justification was that Pages would serve you better use if you're doing something image intensive. As a pure word processor, for me, it completely fails (in my opinion) mainly because of the lag issue, which I CANT STAND. A lot of people seem to agree with this:

If you find Pages meets your needs, more power to you...That's great. But I'm a fast typist and can't stand the lag that is sometimes present. I need to see what's on the screen. So I'll stick to Word for my writing, and Pages when I need to make something that looks "lickable"

If I'm doing something image intensive, I like to use Pages. Or if I want the layout to be ridiculously good. Otherwise, I use word, which is over 80% of the time. Again as I said before, get both if you can (to the OP), there's a student version of Office:Mac

 

[IJ Reilly]

I think I mentioned that my main justification was that Pages would serve you better use if you're doing something image intensive. As a pure word processor, for me, it completely fails (in my opinion) mainly because of the lag issue, which I CANT STAND. A lot of people seem to agree with this:

I agree that lag is an issue. I've said so twice already at least. You did not mention lag in your first post. You did not mention any issues at all in fact, except the thing about term paper templates, which suggested to me a lack of familiarity with the features and strengths of Pages. But enough of that... I won't agree that handling graphics properly makes Pages something less than a "pure" word processor. I guess I still don't get this concept.