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iWork vs. MS Office

ero87

ero87

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 17, 2006
1,196
1
New York City
My iMac G5 and I currently use Microsoft Office, almost primarily for microsoft word (writing essays) and viewing powerpoint slides for college lectures. I'm attracted by iWork '06, and even though I probably won't use most of their templates in Pages2 I'm intrigued by the possibilities.

Does anyone have any advice? Pros and cons of iWork or Office? Thanks.
 
ero87 said:
My iMac G5 and I currently use Microsoft Office, almost primarily for microsoft word (writing essays) and viewing powerpoint slides for college lectures. I'm attracted by iWork '06, and even though I probably won't use most of their templates in Pages2 I'm intrigued by the possibilities.

Does anyone have any advice? Pros and cons of iWork or Office? Thanks.
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There are numerous threads on this already. Starting a new one will not clarify the issue. My philosophy is that iWork and Office are aimed at two different target markets. For many users, iWork will do everything that they need. It makes no sense for them to spend the extra money for Office. On the other hand, Office 2004 is the most compatible version of the Microsoft productivity suite on any platform. For people who need to exchange documents with other Office users or for those who need the features offered by the Microsoft suite, only Office [or one of the opensource clones] will do. Only you know which group you know which group you belong to.
 
You will get some good replies, but a quick search search for other threads on this topic reveals plenty of others as well. For example here, here, here, here, here ... hope these links help as well.

From what you described about the way you use Office, I doubt that you would need iWork unless you need to do more than write essays & view Powerpoint slides. I have never used Keynote, but do use Pages all the time. The reason is because I can produce good looking documents faster than if I was using Word. Pages handles graphics much better than word. But it is not so good in some of the areas in which Word excels (excuse the pun) such as handling large documents, tracking changes, footnotes/endnote/references and so on.

I'm not sure whether my comments help, but take a look at those other threads - they helped me when I was pondering the same question.

Edit: and what MisterMe said
 
MisterMe said:
For people who need to exchange documents with other Office users or for those who need the features offered by the Microsoft suite, only Office [or one of the opensource clones] will do.
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Why? The Office clones are not necessarily going to be any better at translating a Word document than another word processor. Keep in mind, the Word format is proprietary, so just because an open source application looks like Word, doesn't mean it's doing any better job at translating Word files than an application, like Pages, that doesn't try to look like Word.
 
MS Office is THE standard, and if you need to make sure that your documents 100% work with other users who might be using Office, then Office is the way to go.

Keynote is great, and is superior to PowerPoint in my opinion, and I much prefer it.

However, Pages is not nearly as sophisticated and robust as Word; it's nowhere close.

For most school projects and simple essays, Pages will do. But as I've said in similar threads, for serious acedemic works and professional papers, Pages has nothing to offer.

For high school and some college essays, Pages is great and will do OK.

When considering Office vs iWork, other than the obvious difference of a spreadsheet app, it really comes down to Word vs Pages.

Depending which one you'd most likely be better off with, I'd probably break things down like this:
 

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As a fellow student, I much prefer using Pages to Word. Its use of Styles makes it far easier to get a document up and running, allowing me to concentrate on writing and little on making the app work for me. I thoroughly recommend it.

And Keynote vs Powerpoint is a no brainer too. With the student discount, iWork is a compelling tool for students.
 
Why do we need to go through this nearly every week?

I keep hearing how Pages isn't an application worthy of consideration for serious work. What this means I suppose is that I'm not in a serious business, since I use Pages for all of my word processing, including some fairly lengthy reports.

Also, the moment you call a proprietary product a "standard" is the moment you endorse a monopoly. No thanks.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Why do we need to go through this nearly every week?

I keep hearing how Pages isn't an application worthy of consideration for serious work. What this means I suppose is that I'm not in a serious business, since I use Pages for all of my word processing, including some fairly lengthy reports.

Also, the moment you call a proprietary product a "standard" is the moment you endorse a monopoly. No thanks.
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I agree.
Pages is fine. I wouldn't use it for all tasks, but for my work - dealing with boards of directors, CEOs, CFOs, CIOs and so on, Pages is ideal - fast, simple (once you break away from the word processing norm), with great templates - and lacking the arcane interfaces that other tools have developed.
 
My Opinion

All the iWork stuff integrates well with media on the Mac and with spotlight

Keynote Very Good on a par and slightly better than PowerPoint in certain areas

Pages ummmm in terms of a low cost desktop publishing tool its ok but it does not really cut it as either a top flight wordprocessor or proper desktop publishing package.

Spreadsheet well non existant really and YES I am referring to iWork 6.

(Another thing I am getting sick of people jumping down new members throats about posting new threads. I for one could not be ***** reading through 100 post long threads that tend to go off topic in all directions. If people want to whinge about something get moderators to make then "Sticky")
 
DerChef said:
Pages ummmm in terms of a low cost desktop publishing tool its ok but it does not really cut it as either a top flight wordprocessor or proper desktop publishing package.
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Again, despite all the evidence to the contrary... :rolleyes:
 
IJ Reilly said:
I keep hearing how Pages isn't an application worthy of consideration for serious work. What this means I suppose is that I'm not in a serious business, since I use Pages for all of my word processing, including some fairly lengthy reports.
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This is a possibility.

IJ Reilly said:
Also, the moment you call a proprietary product a "standard" is the moment you endorse a monopoly. No thanks.
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Please then, despite Word and the .doc format being used by more people, more businesses, than any other word-processor and format, share with us what the standard is, if it is not Word.
 
Josh said:
This is a possibility.
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What can I say, but thanks -- that's really nice. Completely out of line and uncalled for, but nice.

Josh said:
Please then, despite Word and the .doc format being used by more people, more businesses, than any other word-processor and format, share with us what the standard is, if it is not Word.
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You're missing the point. Once any proprietary commercial product is called a "standard" (meaning, that everyone must own it), you've arrived at a good working definition of a monopoly. If the .doc format was open, that would be a different story. But it isn't.
 
IJ Reilly said:
What can I say, but thanks -- that's really nice. Completely out of line and uncalled for, but nice.
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Wasn't trying to be rude/offensive. Just saying that I have no idea what you're writing, so I cannnot assume one way or the other whether it is "serious" or not, so either possibility is, well, possible.

My apologies.

(I haven't wrote a paper in months, so I can assure you, whatever it is you're writing, it is indeed more serious than what I'm writing lol)
IJ Reilly said:
You're missing the point. Once any proprietary commercial product is called a "standard" (meaning, that everyone must own it), you've arrived at a good working definition of a monopoly. If the .doc format was open, that would be a different story. But it isn't.
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Isn't this the case though?

Not everyone owns Word, but everyone who does not is using something that claims compatibility w/ Word and the .doc format.

If I remember correctly (which means probably not) there was some talk from MS about making the .doc format open in the very near future.

Not sure about that, but this aritcle rings of good news.
 
Josh said:
Wasn't trying to be rude/offensive. Just saying that I have no idea what you're writing, so I cannnot assume one way or the other whether it is "serious" or not, so either possibility is, well, possible.

My apologies.

(I haven't wrote a paper in months, so I can assure you, whatever it is you're writing, it is indeed more serious than what I'm writing lol)
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Don't sweat it. But I did say I wrote lengthy reports in Pages. What I find to be persistently irritating is people saying that you can't do in Pages what a lot of people report that they are in fact doing in Pages. Makes me feel like I'm doing something weird, like defying gravity.

Josh said:
Isn't this the case though?

Not everyone owns Word, but everyone who does not is using something that claims compatibility w/ Word and the .doc format.

If I remember correctly (which means probably not) there was some talk from MS about making the .doc format open in the very near future.

Not sure about that, but this aritcle rings of good news.
Click to expand...

Sure, but if you're not Microsoft, then reverse-engineering the Word format is the best you can hope to do. This is always going to be an imperfect method. Microsoft is being pressured to support the OpenDocument format created by the Oasis group, but they are resisting and I'd be very suspicious of any suggestion by Microsoft that they're going to open their own formats or truly support public domain standards. In the former case, they just never really have. In the latter, their support of open standards have historically employed the "embrace and extend" tactic -- like with Java and XML. They add something proprietary so that the result works only with Microsoft products but still claim that they support the standard.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Why? The Office clones are not necessarily going to be any better at translating a Word document than another word processor. Keep in mind, the Word format is proprietary, so just because an open source application looks like Word, doesn't mean it's doing any better job at translating Word files than an application, like Pages, that doesn't try to look like Word.
Click to expand...
You want to start a fight over something that I put in brackets? I guess you're having a bad day.
 
I use iWork, MS Office '04, and Appleworks all together. iWork is for word processing and presentations, Office for spreadsheets, and Appleworks for drawing, etc. (sometimes it works better than Photoshop).
 
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