As a businessperson: iWork or Office for Mac?

Kevster89 · Dec 21, 2009

Many of the operations I perform related to business, such as setting up different tables, doing different functions, etc., are easily performed on Microsoft Excel for PC. I'm sure all of the other business professionals in this forum can agree that Excel for PC truly is the application of the business world, allowing a vast array of different functions to be performed.

However, I am simply not satisfied with Micrsoft Office for Mac 2008. I know a lot of this has to do with the suite of applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.) being designed to run on Mac OS X, as opposed to a Windows operating system, but the feel and functionality is completely different.

Therefore, I am considering purchasing iWork when a new version is released.. this will allow me to perform different business operations on my Mac while I don't have access to Excel for PC. I will therefore avoid the frustration of Excel for Mac.

As a businessman or businesswoman, would you recommend iWork? How do you cope with needing to perform different complex business operations when you do not have access to Microsoft Excel for PC?

Frustrated...

flopticalcube · Dec 21, 2009

Ideally, Parallels + Windows + MS Office 2007.

thegoldenmackid · Dec 21, 2009

I cannot see iWork as being the better solution. At least you have the option to try it. Check out OpenOffice.

As a student, I use: Word, Excel, Pages & Keynote.

I use: Word, Excel, Pages & Keynote.

We have talked about this, a couple of times...

For example:
This, and this, or this, and possibly this.

63dot · Dec 21, 2009

Both apps is common for many a Mac user.

If you have to share a lot of files with the PC side, I would recommend Office for Mac, but I have not tried the latest version of iWork and swapping files with MS Office in the PC world.

coops · Dec 21, 2009

Download iWork and demo it.... pretty sure you'll find almost all your excel spreadsheets will NOT open in iWork properly. Your word .doc's will open much better - but was suprised to find Pages cannot have mixed page layout within a document (ie both portrait and landscape pages!).

I've found the 'palette' in Word and Excel for Mac to be an improvement - certainly better than when I saw a guy wrestling with the 'ribbon' interface on a PC.... but if you're fan of 2007 then VMware fusion would be good.

Coops

GoCubsGo · Dec 21, 2009

As a professional Numbers is a bag of hurt for me. In order to perform higher level functions I've found I need to stick with Excel. As a student it was similar as I was studying a specific area of finance.

colourfastt · Dec 21, 2009

From a business standpoint the project management features of Entourage makes me vote for MSO 08.

MadeTheSwitch · Dec 21, 2009

As much as I love iWork and prefer it to Office in just about every way, if you are making spreadsheets for the business world you really should stick with Office. The file formats between the two programs are partially compatible, but not all the way, and therein lies the problem.

If things imported and looked identical it would be a no brainer for me to recommend iWork, but considering that is not the case, for you I can't recommend anything else but Office at this point in time. Now who knows. Perhaps the next version of iWork will address this file compatibility issue more throughly. Or, you might like the new version of Office which is also on it's way. We won't know till both are released I guess!

chill. · Dec 21, 2009

office for the compatibility factor alone.. what happens if a client/boss/whatever sends you a spreadsheet with scripts or encoding?

i actually have both office 2007 and 2008, 2008 for everyday stuff and 2007 for robustness and just-in-case

njean777 · Dec 21, 2009

def. go with office, the compatibility issues with iwork are not worth the hassle. I like Iwork but as a student even i find it annoying with the compatibilty issues with word and pages. I like keynote but cant use it due to my whole school using powerpoint.

malachiman · Dec 22, 2009

flopticalcube said:
Ideally, Parallels + Windows + MS Office 2007.

I ditched Parallels the moment I had to pay to upgrade to support SL, best thing I did because I discovered VirtualBox, not only free, but I found it more stable and faster, sure its missing a few things, but nothing I ever used

thegoldenmackid · Dec 22, 2009

njean777 said:
def. go with office, the compatibility issues with iwork are not worth the hassle. I like Iwork but as a student even i find it annoying with the compatibilty issues with word and pages. I like keynote but cant use it due to my whole school using powerpoint.

The following is for njean777, not really for the OP.

I got by with using Keynote, it was a struggle, but not as much as using Powerpoint.

1. Most importing of .ppt files and opening them via Keynote went fine. For most of them it was just a matter of notes for slides, so if things didn't line up dead perfectly - I could care less.
2. I was able to make and present almost all of my presentations by just plugging into our Smartboards using VGA out of my MacBook Pro.
3. I always made a back-up of the presentation via Quicktime, which all of the school's PCs had just in case something went awful.
4. When teachers required me to turn in a .ppt file. I made the presentation in Keynote and converted it to .ppt either via Keynote's Share feature or by making images of the slides and simply making those individual Powerpoint slides.

SnowLeopard2008 · Dec 22, 2009

The answer is it depends. You might impress during presentations or the upper management with iWork's beautiful templates. But if you're the accountant type of person, Excel + Windows is a must.

hakuryuu · Dec 22, 2009

I actually prefer the interface and usability of Office 2008 for Mac over Office 2007, but MS really gimped the Mac version feature-wise. For instance I deal a lot in XML data and one of the key features of Excel for Windows is the ability to import XML maps which is just not possible (as far as I can tell from searching around quite a lot) on the Mac version. Hopefully the next version will be more feature complete, but Excel 2008 for Mac is lacking a lot. Word is just fine, though. But a word processor is the least of my worries.

miles01110 · Dec 22, 2009

Kevster89 said:
However, I am simply not satisfied with Micrsoft Office for Mac 2008. I know a lot of this has to do with the suite of applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.) being designed to run on Mac OS X, as opposed to a Windows operating system, but the feel and functionality is completely different.

Therefore, I am considering purchasing iWork when a new version is released.. this will allow me to perform different business operations on my Mac while I don't have access to Excel for PC. I will therefore avoid the frustration of Excel for Mac.

If your issue is "feel and functionality" that is different between Mac Office and Windows Office, how is iWork going to be any better?

exegete77 · Dec 22, 2009

You can go to Apple and check on their free online seminars. One of them is iWork for Business, and describes how various businesses have adapted iWork to their specific needs. Very well done and well thought out.

Winni · Dec 22, 2009

From a business perspective, ditch Mac OS X, iWork and Office:Mac and use Windows with Microsoft Office for Windows - it's the only solution that really works for business purposes. (Private use is a different story.)

Consultant · Dec 28, 2009

Winni said:
From a business perspective, ditch Mac OS X, iWork and Office:Mac and use Windows with Microsoft Office for Windows - it's the only solution that really works for business purposes. (Private use is a different story.)

Completely wrong. Windows has higher total cost of ownership so it's actually worst for businesses if long term costs are considered.

Plenty of businesses use Macs and somehow they are doing well. For example, CEO of Nintendo.

kainjow · Dec 28, 2009

Consultant said:
Completely wrong. Windows has higher total cost of ownership so it's actually worst for businesses if long term costs are considered.

Plenty of businesses use Macs and somehow they are doing well. For example, CEO of Nintendo.

Sure, maybe if you're the CEO of a massive company and can throw money at software and hardware like it's nothing. But for those who are managing their own small businesses, Macs aren't always the best option. My dad has his own private practice, and through the years he's had various versions of VMware and Parallels, along with the XP license, to run software that flat out doesn't exist for the Mac (trust me, I've looked). If you only need basic software, then Macs are fine, but a lot of businesses rely on very specific apps that are hard to come by for the Mac, unfortunately.

thejadedmonkey · Dec 28, 2009

Consultant said:
Completely wrong. Windows has higher total cost of ownership so it's actually worst for businesses if long term costs are considered.

Plenty of businesses use Macs and somehow they are doing well. For example, CEO of Nintendo.

Once again, this depends on the business. The business I work for had me in MORE due to OS X/Windows incompatibilities then they ever did when they were a Windows only office. I'm almost never in for Windows issues anymore.

OP: Go with Office 2008. It's the only way to even pretend to be compatible.

Sayer · Dec 28, 2009

There's also OpenOffice and the Google online apps which look like crap everywhere since its browser based (Google Chrome for Mac and Windows looks basically the same, too).

I took a college class dealing with business apps (e.g. MS Office) and used Excel on a Mac to do the work. I don't think I had much of a problem once I got the toolbars arranged more like the lessons in the book required.

Of course I had spent years making Excel workbooks for a small business so I was already aware of how to use Excel (unlike my classmates).

I personally do not care for the menus in Excel for Windows hiding most of the options by default unless you expand the menu. Usually the functions I need are in the hidden parts.

If you can't get past the visual/usability differences try OpenOffice.

akm3 · Dec 28, 2009

As a Mac fan I hate to say it, but "real" Office 2007 running on a Windows VM was the only way I could get full compatibility back at work. Office 2008 is pretty close, but not perfect.

I ran into issues where I would open a file in Office 2008 Mac and not realize that 'tracked changes' were on, which would have defaulted to displaying properly in 2007 Windows. Or, some of the Excel cell style would get stripped out if you edited it in 2008 Excel Mac.

No replacement for 'real', unfortunately.

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