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

[soulreaper]

I was just wondering... with the launch of iWork '09, does it means we can ditch microsoft office anytime??? for me, the biggest reason to install microsoft office on a mac is for the equation function offerred by microsoft word and also to read office format files... since the new iWork can read office files and with the install of MathType 6, it basiclly gives pages to ability to insert equations...

What do you think, guys???

 

[Emerica]

You have to remember that Office has been the standard for the past decade and a half so I don't see it being phased out anytime soon.

 

[arkitect]

You have to remember that Office has been the standard for the past decade and a half so I don't see it being phased out anytime soon.

I don't think that was what the OP was asking.

No one doubts that MS Office will be around for ever and a day.

OP:
Can you now use iWork 09 instead of MS Office?

For me, the answer is yes.
But then again my needs are pretty simple. No huge spreadsheets or mass mail merges to '000s.

And Keynote is a lovely lovely program.

 

[Gray-Wolf]

Until iWorks offers to "save as" PDF, .doc, .docx, ect It isn't much use to me.

 

[kastenbrust]

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.

 

[lamadude]

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

 

[WinterMute]

It already does pdf and .doc don't know what else you'd need.

Works for me as long as you're not getting into complex macros in excel.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I have never used Office on any regular basis, so I suppose my answer is yes, of course you can ditch it. Most Office dependencies are in your head anyway, and it seems that most of the major complaints people had about Pages went away with this update.

 

[179202]

Not quite yet. Pages just pales in comparison, but it does have a hell of a lot of potential! Though, Keynote walks all over powerpoint.

Microsoft Word + Keynote = Great team.
Dan x

 

[QuarterSwede]

Until iWorks offers to "save as" PDF, .doc, .docx, ect It isn't much use to me.

From what I remember, as long as you can print in a program you can save to PDF. It's under the print settings not save.

Also, you can save to .doc in pages. Go to file > export not file > save. I don't know if pages 09 will do docx yet but I thought they added it (terrible format anyway).

The only real problem with using Pages instead of Word is for those moron companies who require documents to be in .doc. Pages gets most of the formatting right but not all of it so it looks a little different in Word. This is especially frustrating with resumes. That's what PDF is for!

 

[Winni]

It's still not a discussion

iWork 09 does not even import simple Microsoft Office files properly, but even if it would, you can still not properly export to Microsoft Office format either. And that is a huge problem in a world where everybody else uses that format and where you need to provide your files in a compatible format that others must be able to use, too.

The real show stopper here is Numbers. It might be a nice mini spreadsheet for home users and basic tasks, but it gets nowhere near Excel - and Excel still is the most important, non replaceable flagship application of Microsoft Office. And Numbers 09 already fires warning messages when it imports a primitive four column Excel table with a simple SUM function in it - at least it did so here when I tried it.

Keynote, however, probably is the one killer app that iWork 09 offers. But since I'm not giving any presentations these days, I couldn't care less. If presentations are your bread and butter, then you should probably buy iWork in addition to MS Office just to have keynote.

Pages vs Word is a nonsense discussion for me. Neither one is really good at what they do. For hardcore word processing, Mellel is a much better choice than either Pagas or Word, and for creative writing, Scrivener, StoryMill and/or Montage blow the Apple and Microsoft "competition" out of the water.

However, at least on the PC and Windows, Microsoft Office cannot be substituted when you rely on office automation or when you have third party business software installed that embeds or otherwise integrates the MS Office functionality. This has always been the ultimate killer feature of Microsoft Office and the real reason for its huge success - you can use it like Lego bricks in your own software solutions.

If none of this is even remotely important for you, than iWork 09 is an acceptable choice, and the price is okay. But depending on where you buy it, you can also get the Home and Student edition of Office:Mac for the same price, and then you also get a pretty good all-in-one-eMail/news reader/calendar software - Entourage - with the package. And you will also get much better compatibility to the world's de facto standard with much better and longer support and lifetime than any Apple software solution will ever give you. You'd be updating to iWork 10 next year while Microsoft will still give you software updates in five years from now. Longevity has always been an integral part of Microsoft's business solutions.

 

[Quillz]

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.

 

[chewietobbacca]

As others said, if you do a lot of collaboration, keep Office

And if you do spreadsheets, this isn't even up for debate: Excel is far and away irreplaceable

 

[IJ Reilly]

From what I remember, as long as you can print in a program you can save to PDF. It's under the print settings not save.

All OSX applications can print to PDF. Pages adds PDF export under the File menu, which has the added option of reducing image quality for smaller file size.

As far as Word files being the "industry standard," I think that's a crock. I have so many problems with this concept, it's hard to know where to begin. Unless everyone in your theoretical collaboration group is using the same version of Word on the same platform and only the most basic of fonts, you're setting yourself up for problems. From the outset, you need to consider whether you are comfortable working in this creative concrete overcoat.

 

[Brammy]

As far as Word files being the "industry standard," I think that's a crock. I have so many problems with this concept, it's hard to know where to begin. Unless everyone in your theoretical collaboration group is using the same version of Word on the same platform and only the most basic of fonts, you're setting yourself up for problems. From the outset, you need to consider whether you are comfortable working in this creative concrete overcoat.

Well, it's certainly more of a standard than Pages files. You can hand someone a .doc file and they usually find a way of opening it. Not so with many other formats.

 

[ksmith80209]

I ended up using iWork ('08 & '09) mostly just for Keynote. I keep Office 2007 for Win (in my opinion, way better than Office 2008 for Mac) on Fusion for when I need Word or Excel. For me - paying $79 for Keynote seems like a bargain with a few other apps thrown in!

 

[IJ Reilly]

Well, it's certainly more of a standard than Pages files. You can hand someone a .doc file and they usually find a way of opening it. Not so with many other formats.

It's more common, but compatibility is mainly an illusion, since you can't assume that any Word document you send to someone else will look exactly the same to them as it did to you, unless you stick to extremely basic formatting and known, common fonts. With the same parameters, you can export a Pages file to .doc, and the recipient will have no idea that you didn't create it with Word.

 

[ukmacpro]

The only way I can explain the difference between to two software suites is this...

I do my accounting and word processing in Office, but if I want to create a great eye-catching document or presentation I will use iWork. It's so much easier to create something that looks great and really professional.

It reminds me a little of the I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC stereotypes.

Although I must say that since iWork '08 I now use pages for all my word processing as well. However, Excel still beats numbers for pure accounting purposes, but Numbers is slowly winning me over these days... It's only on it's second version, so it can only get better right?!

I can still export readable DOC documents from pages for non-iWork users, but if the formatting is particularly important I will print to PDF.

 

[PirateBob]

I personnaly just find office easier to use. i am very used to how stuff is layed out and when i tried iwork it was just anoying. i will stick with offce

 

[Brammy]

It's more common, but compatibility is mainly an illusion, since you can't assume that any Word document you send to someone else will look exactly the same to them as it did to you, unless you stick to extremely basic formatting and known, common fonts. With the same parameters, you can export a Pages file to .doc, and the recipient will have no idea that you didn't create it with Word.

True, but I think we've all read our share of "Ok, I sent a Pages file to my Windows co-worker and they can't open it" threads of various message boards to realize that many people take Apple's "it just works" a little too literal.

I haven't had any noticeable problems shoving documents around between Office 2003/2004/2007/2008. I have had significant issues between Word and Pages, in both directions.

I'm an advocate of "if you need to round trip with Word users on a non-trivial basis, you're better off just using Word. If you don't need to do it much, or aren't too worried about what it looks like, then it's not a big deal."

 

[IJ Reilly]

True, but I think we've all read our share of "Ok, I sent a Pages file to my Windows co-worker and they can't open it" threads of various message boards to realize that many people take Apple's "it just works" a little too literal.

I don't say this too often, but this is an example of operator error. People send me Excel and PowerPoint files quite frequently. Why would they assume that I own Excel or PowerPoint, let alone, recent enough versions that I can open the documents they send? It's not as if anybody ever asks! The problem here is not understanding that file formats are significant things. The proliferation of Office file formats has made people really lazy about this, but that doesn't make it right.

I haven't had any noticeable problems shoving documents around between Office 2003/2004/2007/2008. I have had significant issues between Word and Pages, in both directions.

Again, only if you stick to very basic formatting and common fonts. Any deviation from that, and you're going to have problems -- which you probably won't even know about, since you're not going to see what the recipient sees. If you don't hear a complaint, then you assume all is well. But of course you really don't know -- which is why I say that compatibility is really an illusion.

I'm an advocate of "if you need to round trip with Word users on a non-trivial basis, you're better off just using Word. If you don't need to do it much, or aren't too worried about what it looks like, then it's not a big deal."

I can agree with the first sentence, but not with the second. If you're concerned about what your document looks like, you'll create it with a tool that allows you do what you want, and send to the world as a PDF. This way, the look you've created is the one everybody else sees.

 

[jive turkey]

I will be sticking with Office for the time being, but I will also use Numbers and Pages more to get accustomed to them so I can perhaps move over in the future. Like others say, right now Excel trounces the snot out of Numbers, even though iWork '09 is very much improved.

With Word, I just started to heavily use the notebook view feature as a note taking and outlining tool, and I'm kind of wedded to that at the moment for some projects. So I will be keeping Word as well.

As always, Keynote kills Power Point. I don't like Entrourage, either, mainly because you can't subscribe to remote calendars.

In the end, I will keep using Excel and Word as my primary apps, but probably use Numbers & Pages more often for the less complicated stuff. I would buy iWork for Keynote alone, so it isn't going to cost me anything to use the other two programs from time to time.

 

[ZiggyPastorius]

iWork 09 does not even import simple Microsoft Office files properly, but even if it would, you can still not properly export to Microsoft Office format either.

I will counter this with a simple anecdote:

For my school newspaper, all stories had to originally be written in Microsoft Word. I was the copy editor, meaning everyone sent me their stories/pictures/cutlines/et cetera. I didn't open Microsoft Word once that entire class. I used Pages exclusively, both for editing others' papers and writing my own. I never had one compatability issue the entire year. About three quarters through the year, a friend gets a new laptop with Office '08. Writes an article, saves it, loads it onto one of the school laptops in both Word (2004) and the program we used to format the paper, and boom, the formatting was completely messed up.

Pages can't handle MSOffice files properly? My ass it can't.

 

[yoyo5280]

I will counter this with a simple anecdote:

For my school newspaper, all stories had to originally be written in Microsoft Word. I was the copy editor, meaning everyone sent me their stories/pictures/cutlines/et cetera. I didn't open Microsoft Word once that entire class. I used Pages exclusively, both for editing others' papers and writing my own. I never had one compatability issue the entire year. About three quarters through the year, a friend gets a new laptop with Office '08. Writes an article, saves it, loads it onto one of the school laptops in both Word (2004) and the program we used to format the paper, and boom, the formatting was completely messed up.

Pages can't handle MSOffice files properly? My ass it can't.

I ditched MS Office for iWork 06 and there is no way i'm going to buy MS OFFICE08! Why? iWORK IS GREAT

I have never had serious compatibility issues, mainly just fonts. Thats also why iWork.com looks like a god send

Also I have countless issues with the new office FOR WINDOWS. Everytime I make a document on a school PC, save it on my iDisk/pen drive, bring it back a week later and BOOM. It says its corrupted.

 

[ZiggyPastorius]

I ditched MS Office for iWork 06 and there is no way i'm going to buy MS OFFICE08! Why? iWORK IS GREAT

I have never had serious compatibility issues, mainly just fonts. Thats also why iWork.com looks like a god send

Also I have countless issues with the new office FOR WINDOWS. Everytime I make a document on a school PC, save it on my iDisk/pen drive, bring it back a week later and BOOM. It says its corrupted.

I agree. I don't so much have a problem with Office (for Windows, that is), besides the price. I don't understand why I (that's I as in me, personally, not generally) should pay $150-200+ for Office when I get iWork which is comparable in many ways, better in some other ways, and regardless of either of those things, just as good for me (better because I like the interface more) for $79.