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Hey guys,
I'm a new college student, and I was wondering, what'll be better for me? Microsoft Office 2011 or iWork 09 and WHY? Also, incase I end up buying iWork, are they coming out with new iWork soon or no?


That's not even a contest: Microsoft Office, for the simple reason that it is the de facto standard all around the globe. You will be receiving and submitting a lot of documents from and to people who probably have never heard of iWork before, and although iWork can theoretically open and save Microsoft Office documents, it's not very good at it and will lose or screw up text formattings, doesn't know what to do with Office makros and will have a lot of other incompatibilities.

iWork is a nice solution for pure home users and people who do not need real Microsoft Office compatibility at all.

Anyway. If you're looking for a serious writing tool that helps you work on complex and long manuscripts, I recommend that you take a good look at Scrivener, either on www.literatureandlatte.com or in the Mac App Store.
 
Why was the iWork update pushed out through Software Update and not the Mac App Store? :rolleyes: iWork is purchased through the Mac App Store, so it would only make since to receive updates from it as well.

I never purchased it through the Mac App store like many others. Maybe this is why.
 
Sending as a PDF to a person that doesn't need to edit your document will make the decision to use iWork easier. For example, turning in homework to your instructor.
 
I love Pages.. I'd say it is one of my most used apps right now. As for the full screen mode.. is it just me or do others feel that it is lacking something? I feel like there should be something more to it... too bad that it did take on the look of the iPad.

For those on the fence about purchasing the update.. I just did.. I feel like Apple just had an explosion of updates and will most likely not put out something else for fear of it being lost amongst the crowd.
 
I love Pages.. I'd say it is one of my most used apps right now. As for the full screen mode.. is it just me or do others feel that it is lacking something? I feel like there should be something more to it... too bad that it did take on the look of the iPad.

For those on the fence about purchasing the update.. I just did.. I feel like Apple just had an explosion of updates and will most likely not put out something else for fear of it being lost amongst the crowd.

The full-screen mode is exactly the same as it was in 2009, they just moved the button :p
 
The full-screen mode is exactly the same as it was in 2009, they just moved the button :p

Yes.. and I never used it because I felt like it was missing something.. then the iPad version came out and I was like oooh... so I just feel that Apple needs to carry over the look and feel/functionality.
 
I wonder if I should update from iWork '08 or wait a bit longer...if only it was obvious whether Apple planned on releasing a new paid version anytime soon...?!

My sentiments exactly. I didn't upgrade in 2009 because I thought I'd sit out that one and get iWork '10 when it came out. Two years later, I'm using a three-year old app suite and waiting for iWork '12, 'cause I don't think they'd even call it '11 now, ⅔ through the year. I don't get it. There was '08, and then '09, and now… '12? Or are they EOL-ing it? Urgh. :(
 
My sentiments exactly. I didn't upgrade in 2009 because I thought I'd sit out that one and get iWork '10 when it came out. Two years later, I'm using a three-year old app suite and waiting for iWork '12, 'cause I don't think they'd even call it '11 now, ⅔ through the year. I don't get it. There was '08, and then '09, and now… '12? Or are they EOL-ing it? Urgh. :(

They've been working on the iOS versions. iWork for iPhone came out pretty recently, so I don't think we'll see a major update for a while. Possibly a point update in the Fall for iCloud support, and then iWork '12 or '13 sometime early to mid 2012.
 
Whose idea was it to use years instead of cryptic version numbers (like CS5.5)? That has built-in "out-of-date" perception as soon as the calendar page turns to Jan. 1.

I'm not thrilled with having autosave. It has been available for quite a while in third-party "autosave4iWork.app".

I would be really thrilled to see Keynote allow more than one song to be applied to multiple slides (like PowerPoint has for many years), or for Pages to make it default for a table to run past one page (like all other word processors), or to have Open Office XML editing and saving (like NeoOffice and OpenOffice), or.... and yes, I have submitted all these as suggestions to Apple, many times over the past three or four years.
 
iwork 09 and office 2008

Will office 2008 or iWork 09 be getting the full screen update at all? because if not then it defeats the purpose of apple advertising the full screen capability.
 
Will office 2008 or iWork 09 be getting the full screen update at all? because if not then it defeats the purpose of apple advertising the full screen capability.

not sure about office, but iWork 09 has full screen, was added in last update
 
Ughhh if the next full release of iWork doesn't include referencing in Pages it'll be the Office suite for me. I need referencing for my university coursework and dissertation.

I want it now :(
 
They've been working on the iOS versions. iWork for iPhone came out pretty recently, so I don't think we'll see a major update for a while. Possibly a point update in the Fall for iCloud support, and then iWork '12 or '13 sometime early to mid 2012.

Gah! I wish I had just bought iWork ’09 three years ago. :( I was hoping they might announce a new version of iWork—with some of the look-n-feel of the iOS version—today along with the announcement of the new iPhone and iOS 5. Or at least quietly come out with a new version even if they didn’t announce it. Now I see I have waited yet more time (another three months) for nothing. I guess you’re right about your second prediction— nothing until maybe next year. :mad:
 
I hope they support vertical text and ruby. Otherwise, it would be useless for Japanese and Chinese.

And does iWork support regular expression? Office for Mac is able to use a sort of regular expression like tool for search and replace.
 
That's not even a contest: Microsoft Office, for the simple reason that it is the de facto standard all around the globe. You will be receiving and submitting a lot of documents from and to people who probably have never heard of iWork before, and although iWork can theoretically open and save Microsoft Office documents, it's not very good at it and will lose or screw up text formattings, doesn't know what to do with Office makros and will have a lot of other incompatibilities.

iWork is a nice solution for pure home users and people who do not need real Microsoft Office compatibility at all.

Anyway. If you're looking for a serious writing tool that helps you work on complex and long manuscripts, I recommend that you take a good look at Scrivener, either on www.literatureandlatte.com or in the Mac App Store.

Hogwash wtr to the formatting. My wife has been using it for medical presentations and everyone has been asking how she gets her slides so nice. Only very complex formatting is likely to be lost (and it was probably a stupid way to do it, such as nesting ridiculous numbers of tables to get a few columns lined up.) I could also regale you with other anecdotes but life marches on --- and I'm slacking off. Office macros are a given, but what other incompatibilities are you claiming?
 
iWork or Office

1. Compare the price, if it is important to you
2. MS Office can do more - it is a more complex bunch of programs. However, what iWork doesn't do, I generally find I don't need (and I am a lawyer, so WP layout is very important as is spreadsheet functionality)
3. Having said that, there are some things that iWork handles far far better. Examples:
(a) Keynote is far better than Powerpoint - all round
(b) Pages handles 'wrap around' text when diagrams or pictures are placed in a document in a far superior way to MS Word, which is close to impossible to use for this. If you do this, Pages makes the whole thing so easy (place the picture on the page and Pages manages the wrap around in a visually pleasing way - that is all there is to it)
(c) MS Excel does not like multiple tables on one sheet, which limits the output of any reasonably complex analytical tool
4. For some time, the 'share' function from iWork means that the iWork documents are automatically converted to pdfs or MS Office documents. The process from within Pages, for example, to send an email with the document as an attachment makes this easy, streamlined and requires no additional steps. For me, this was a breakthrough.
5. I found MS Office (particularly Word, but this might be because 95%+ of my work is word processing) was unstable on a Mac and would sometimes 'crash'. Usually at 2 in the morning before an important case. I have found iWork to be far more stable (although I have had an issue with the Duplicate/Revert function in the current build)

Updates: the way in which iWork (on a Mac) links with iCloud needs reviewing and bringing closer to the ease with which iWork on iOS works. The interface between iCloud on the web and iWork could be simplified and managing documents saved on iCloud is frankly far easier from an iDevice than from my Mac.

The change from Save As to Duplicate/Revert suits me fine.

There is a small instability within the Pages program involving the Duplicate/Revert function but it has not yet caused me to lose any work due to Autosave.
 
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