I use Pages on a regular basis and it’s probably one of the most useful apps for me personally. It’s intuitive and works very, very powerful even without practice. You can’t say that about MS Word for example (which is also good).
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Apple Updates iWork Apps for Mac and iOS With New Features
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Still no character spacing on iOS version. Even though Pages has been marketed as design-oriented.
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They are significantly poor compared to those two. The only one that has a chance is Keynote, but Numbers and Pages cannot compete with Excel and Word, or Google’s offerings.
Despite being a heavy Pages user, I wouldn't use it for that when Serif sell something far more competent for not much money. I use Pages for writing the odd letter here and there and that's about it.
I am primarily a writer, producing 1000s of words per week. I started using MS Word in 1989. It was OK back then, but it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
I switched to Pages in 2006, and it is a far superior word processor for 98% of people’s needs. I have an Office 365 subscription through work and I still have to open and occasionally edit Word files, but I would NEVER go back to using MS Word to write in.
I hear what people are saying about Numbers being a “lightweight” spreadsheet program, but like Keynote, Pages is simply a superior product to its MS counterpart.
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I disagree, Apple clearly tried to compete for a while, even came up with a website (maybe it is still up) comparing features and even formula by formula to MS Excel. They finally gave up and made the apps free (they were all paid apps in both iOS and MacOS before).
It is not just because it is ubiquitous, Excel is simply better. It has more formulas, better features, powerful add-ins and more.
I don't know, but I can tell you that I have an MS Office subscription but only use Numbers and Pages.
I don’t know if anyone remembers the iWork dark ages when it wasn’t clear if Apple was ever going to update them again, but I’m really happy they‘rep getting more regular love now.
My company uses Google Docs (absolutely horrific experience), and I keep an active copy of Office on my work machine for compatibility, but I prefer iWork wherever I can use it. I create my own documents in iWork first and export if necessary.
You‘d be surprised how many times iWork does a better job of importing Office files exported by Google or from old versions of Office better than Office itself does.
My company uses Google Docs (absolutely horrific experience), and I keep an active copy of Office on my work machine for compatibility, but I prefer iWork wherever I can use it. I create my own documents in iWork first and export if necessary.
You‘d be surprised how many times iWork does a better job of importing Office files exported by Google or from old versions of Office better than Office itself does.
I use all three regularly, including their blahtex-based mathematical expressions in Pages and Keynote.
Ditto. If Microsoft sold Office instead of renting it, I'd probably buy a copy, but for the use it would get, I don't want a lease so gave up on it when it no longer worked with the macOS update.
Apple should put a few people on these continually to make improve them. If you have more than a billion iOS devices, think of the market there is for something "free" with the OS. Talk about getting more locked in.
Before iWork was a heavy user of AppleWorks and before that ClarisWorks.
Yes, I own Affinity Suite and use them extensively. The thing is character spacing is very useful when you want to increase legibility. Especially with Helvetica with such a tight spacing. That’s why love using Pages on Mac.
As I mentioned above, I have an Office subscription but don't use it. If Numbers goes away in the future, I'd be up the creek, but if that day came I'd move to OfficeLibre. The only time I use Office is to review archived docs which is rarely, but I won't create new docs in its native formats.
I used DOS versions of WordPerfect and Lotus 123 before using Microsoft Office. Moving beyond Microsoft Office to use Pages and Numbers was easy for me. I will use Word and Excel when I need to share in those formats in the office.
True, but it is such a shame that Excel sucks. UI designed by a kindergarten class, ribbon bar? Terrible. One mega table per sheet. antique. I got away from excel years ago, I am plenty happy with Numbers. I do get your point that as long as big organizations specify Excel, then that is the way of things. It is amazing to me how many modern orgs are going away from Office and getting free versions from Google and others. Must be a reason
Haha, that is only because of familiarity. I got away from Excel, because quite frankly, I hate it. Numbers is so much easier. Multiple tables per sheet, table headers and footers, I could go on and on. But the truth remains, the one that is easier for you, is the one you are most familiar with
Does anyone know the answer to this? My updates in App Store on Mac are not automatic foe Numbers/Pages/Keynote/iMovie. I have to search for the app, then click on the application image and select Update?
I read there was a fix awhile ago, but am I missing a setting somewhere?
I read there was a fix awhile ago, but am I missing a setting somewhere?
In my opinion, the iWork suite is the poster child for the quality of software Apple is capable of producing when not tied to such a rapid release schedule, like MacOS and iOS now are. I’m so glad to see Apple keeping up the development of these applications despite what is likely a rather low adoption rate, comparatively.
Exactly my use case.
I think one reason is that documents is often something you collaborate on or use a template for, so everybody has to use the same software. Presentations are often personal, and you want you presentation to be different so to be noticed, so using something else than Powerpoint is an advantage.
I use Microsoft Excel, word, one note. My wife is a professor and students have submitted documents that she can't open, so I have a few apps that allows me to open them. funny many students use Google Docs and their documents are a bear to open, although they can save them either as a pdf or in word format.
I do use these apps if I am in a hurry and don't want to wait for apple to verify them.
I do use these apps if I am in a hurry and don't want to wait for apple to verify them.
numbers could be so great if only it lets you move through cells with the direction pad as you enter a formula.
I don't really know what else you can ask for.
Microsoft sells a non-subscription based version of Office: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mic...2021/cfq7ttc0h8n8?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
And it also works completely fine on versions of macOS from 10.15 Catalina or later, which is in-line with most of Apple's software support policies as well.