Apple Updates Pages and Keynote

[~Shard~]

I wonder if this iWork will eventually be a viable option out of MS Office. I hope so.

I think eventually that's Apple's master plan. The suite is just in its infancy right now, so I think we'll see quite a few exciting improvements and additions to it as time goes on.

 

[Rod Rod]

I think eventually that's Apple's master plan. The suite is just in its infancy right now, so I think we'll see quite a few exciting improvements and additions to it as time goes on.

I doubt Apple's master plan is to compete directly with Office. Office is a "Pro" suite. iWork is positioned a tier below.

 

[~Shard~]

I doubt Apple's master plan is to compete directly with Office. Office is a "Pro" suite. iWork is positioned a tier below.

Yes, I didn't mean it would be a direct competitor, sorry. I think the suite will become a lot more extensive and impressive though over time, and will be an attractive alternative to Office for people who don't require Office's power.

 

[Rod Rod]

Yes, I didn't mean it would be a direct competitor, sorry. I think the suite will become a lot more extensive and impressive though over time, and will be an attractive alternative to Office for people who don't require Office's power.

Yup, similar to how Final Cut Express has grown to become a suite (with LiveType and Soundtrack now included), positioned below Final Cut Pro (which comes with Soundtrack Pro, Compressor 2, Cinema Tools and LiveType 2).

 

[~Shard~]

Yup, similar to how Final Cut Express has grown to become a suite (with Livetype and Soundtrack now included), positioned below Final Cut Studio.

Precisely.

 

[dudemac]

Yes, I didn't mean it would be a direct competitor, sorry. I think the suite will become a lot more extensive and impressive though over time, and will be an attractive alternative to Office for people who don't require Office's power.

My hope is that it reaches the level of Appleworks. Pages is close to being a good competitor to a freeform type of word processor/page layout tool. In most ways it is easier to use. As for competing with Office it would need to much more integrated with things like address book. Which is one of the things that bothers me... no mail merge from address book. Why this isn't a system service like Dictionary is beyond me. The other thing is really gets my goose is no standard templates for Term papers. After all this is beign marketed as a student app, but fails to include MLA or APA prefromated templates. I have made my own but this should be there. Just because they don't look pretty doesnt' mean they should not be included. (word doesn't include these either even the student and teacher edition.)


The other thing that I would really like to see is Pages and Keynote and any other potential iWork app to use an open doc format. This way in 5 years I am not suck with files that I have to convert to another format and possibly lose things in conversion. Like Appleworks right now. I have many docs saved in this format, but if I get rid of appleworks what will be able to use the stuff I have already made? An open doc standard like the one coming with Open Office 2.0, that way everything is compatable and there would be no more well we use word so I have to convert my pages doc so that you can use/read/open it. Why this can't be like other digital media?

thedude

 

[BWhaler]

Strange how different people have such different perspectives on things.

I think Word is horrible to use (which is explains why I dont use it often).

And in my opinion the feature that epitomizes words problems is its numbering feature.

Excel, on the other hand is an amazing program. Apple will have to come out with something very nifty if they want to get excel users to switch.

Wow. My thoughts EXACTLY. (Even down to the Word numbering "feature" which drove me crazy last night for hours.)

Pages has great promise, and I really hope v2 is a strong revision so I can dump word. (I will keep using Excel since it is MS's best product, by far.)

I really hope Apple is not scared off by the poor sales of iWork and they keep investing. When they get to the critical mass of features and they get the stupid bugs out, it will take off.

In the meantime, I hope 06 gives Pages a serious upgrade. Nothing would make me happier than to dump Word. Word sucks something fierce.

 

[BWhaler]

I doubt Apple's master plan is to compete directly with Office. Office is a "Pro" suite. iWork is positioned a tier below.

I disagree.

Keynote is Pro quality.

Yes, Pages is Appleworks quality, but frankly, Pages is a train wreck of a v1. If Apple put into Pages about 10-20 core features and got the bugs out, people would dump Word like there is no tomorrow.

The fact of the matter is this: people use about 5% of Office's power. And the only reason people flock to it is due to the file formats and compatibility with others.

Get iWork to have true, 100% Office file compatibility and beef up Pages and add a solid spreadsheet, and iWork will take off in a big way. No point spending that much on Office when you can get something better for a fraction of the price.

Apple is going to move slowly here. Not scare MS with a one-time major release. But iWork will be pro. Just give it time.

 

[aldo]

I disagree.

Keynote is Pro quality.

Yes, Pages is iWork quality, but frankly, Pages is a train wreck of a v1. If Apple put into Pages about 10-20 core features and got the bugs out, people would dump Word like there is no tomorrow.

The fact of the matter is this: people use about 5% of Office's power. And the only reason people flock to it is due to the file formats and compatibility with others.

Get iWork to have true, 100% Office file compatibility and beef up Pages and add a solid spreadsheet, and iWork will take off in a big way. No point spending that much on Office when you can get something better for a fraction of the price.

Apple is going to move slowly here. Not scare MS with a one-time major release. But iWork will be pro. Just give it time.

I agree that Pages is a terrible application. It's really unfinished, slow, and many parts of it extremely poorly thought out.

I have to also agree massively on the diasterous file format choice that Pages uses. What on earth were they thinking using a folder as a container? You'd of thought they'd of learnt from application bundles but having a word processor use a document format that is impossible to email/IM is very stupid. Did noone try emailing a pages document while they developed it?

I would suggest they use the OASIS file format from OpenOffice 2.0 or use .doc as the default. It's now all XML-ized and MS provides the specification for it, thanks to their recent EU court battle. This would force Apple to get the .doc import/export filter 100% perfect.

I also like Keynote but again, file formats play hell with it. Very, very few business/school computers have Quicktime/Keynote installed.

 

[Rod Rod]

I disagree.

Keynote is Pro quality.

I agree that Keynote gives excellent results. So does iDVD, especially when you modify the templates with your own images.

<snip>
The fact of the matter is this: people use about 5% of Office's power. And the only reason people flock to it is due to the file formats and compatibility with others.

That's the point I'm trying to make. Most people only use about 5% of Office's power. However, the reason people use it is just in case they ever need any of the remaining 95%. There are people who need all of Word's features so for them it's good that its file format is widespread.

By the same token, all Apple needs to do with iWork is build in the 5% of functionality that most people need, and if they include more than that it's all gravy.

<speculation> iWork's most likely purpose is to provide an elegant and easy solution for completing relatively simple "office" type tasks.</speculation>

Get iWork to have true, 100% Office file compatibility and beef up Pages and add a solid spreadsheet, and iWork will take off in a big way. No point spending that much on Office when you can get something better for a fraction of the price.

Apple is going to move slowly here. Not scare MS with a one-time major release. But iWork will be pro. Just give it time.

I agree that there's no point in spending the dough on Office when all you need is 1/20th of its features. If all you need is iMovie, it's a bad deal to be compelled to buy FCP. Similarly, iWork fills the hole left when AppleWorks development was (pretty much) abandoned.

MS Office is very important to the Mac. I suppose it's easy to underestimate its significance. It would be a disaster if MS stopped developing and supporting Office for Mac. There are plenty of office environments where OS X and Windows are on the same network and MS Office files need to be shared among them. Where I used to work we kept track of project status by editing an Excel file. The secretary and boss used Dells and the editors were all on Macs.

 

[~Shard~]

MS Office is very important to the Mac. I suppose it's easy to underestimate its significance. It would be a disaster if MS stopped developing and supporting Office for Mac. There are plenty of office environments where OS X and Windows are on the same network and MS Office files need to be shared among them. Where I used to work we kept track of project status by editing an Excel file. The secretary and boss used Dells and the editors were all on Macs.

I completely agree with this. Even from a non-business perspective, one of the questions I receive the most from potential switchers are, "Can I still use my Word and Excel on a Mac"? and I'm always happy to say "Yes!" - it helps debunk the whole "compatibility myth" PC users have when they think that nothing on Mac will interact with anything on their PC. I can think of lots of people who would be a lot more hesitant about switching to Mac (rightly or wrongly) if Office wasn't available.

As for how many of those people use Office to its fullest capacity is another question, but the point remains...

 

[DakotaGuy]

I wonder if this iWork will eventually be a viable option out of MS Office. I hope so.

I think for Apple it would be a bad idea to try and knock Office out. Office for Mac has it's place among thousands and thousands of Mac users like myself that have to work in a Windows world. Office 2004 is an excellent set of programs considering it comes from Microsoft.

Like I said before what Apple really needs is iWork to become the replacement for Appleworks. They need a spreadsheet program and then all 3 applications should come bundled on consumer Macs as a replacement for Appleworks. I think this is the plan and once we see a spreadsheet program and some improvements in Pages, iWork will become the standard for the consumer and education models.

I also believe there is a chance we will see a Windows version of iWork as well at least for educational markets. Many school districts are cross platform and right now they use either Appleworks for Mac and Windows or MS Office. If they are going to be serious about iWork, they need to look at a PC version as well.

 

[Rod Rod]

Office 2004 is an excellent set of programs considering it comes from Microsoft.

Microsoft has historically made Office better for Mac compared to the Windows version, so there should be no surprise there.

The Mac Business Unit at MS does a great job with Office. Where they lag badly is Messenger and WMP.

 

[yojitani]

Pages for images

Pages has been invaluable for my academic work when I've needed to deal with images - most of the time. Word simply cannot handle large numbers of images and does all kinds of crazy things with in-text images. The problem is that I've had to set up a kind of procedure making documents between word and pages: type up in pages and insert images, convert to word and then fill-in all notes with Endnote. This works so long as I don't decide to change anything (rare). If only Pages did endnotes! If only Endnote worked in Pages!
Still, I'm actually very fond of Pageshttp

 

[kretzy]

Where they lag badly is Messenger and WMP.

I totally agree!!!

Surely it can't be that difficult to add more features to Messenger for Mac - personal display pictures, animated emoticons, winks, nudges etc...many of these have been available to windows users for ages now, so i dont see why it is taking so long to integrate them into the Mac version.

As for WMP, its crap. Apple should just give Quicktime the ability to play WMP files.

 

[dcollierp]

My wife is about starting to work on a presentation and I thought to help her do it in Keynote (instead of a PC running powerpoint) but one thing I don't know is if the Keynote presentation can be run on a PC. No?

I have saved Keynote presentations to PDF and used Acrobat Reader on a PC viewing as full screen. You just dont have the fancy transitions that you have in Keynote.

 

[Rod Rod]

Apple should just give Quicktime the ability to play WMP files.

For $10 US: WMV Components allows playback of WMV content in QuickTime Player. It costs more to get additional functionality (import, export, HD export). At the moment it doesn't work in Tiger (their page says support is coming soon).

Apple is probably not building in WMV playback ability because it wants QuickTime to dominate, and maybe there'd be licensing fees involved if they included WMV export in QT Pro.

 

[BWhaler]

I use keynotes everyday. Pages is still too buggy.

i couldn't agree more.

Keynote is amazing. I get complements on my presentations all of the time, which makes my company look great.

I was so excited when I saw Pages at the Stevenote. But it didn't take long playing around with it to know it was a "developer's preview" in terms of quality.

I hope Pages in iWork 06 adds the 20 featues a word processor needs, gets the bugs and design flaws out, and adds speed. If so, I will be most pleased to dump word.

I can only hope...

 

[BWhaler]

I wonder if this iWork will eventually be a viable option out of MS Office. I hope so.

It will, but it will take time. Apple is going to move slowly on this, in part because iwork sales are not great and they want to spread the investment over the years. And in part, to keep MS happy and thinking iWork is just an Appleworks replacement.

But OpenOffice, et al, is weakening MS Office's hold on corporate IT. And with MS less able to play the file format games of the past, it is only a matter of time until Office doesn't have the stranglehold and people use common file formats.

And when that happens, Apple will go for the throat. Until then, they will keep giving us nice but modest upgrades each year or so.

 

[diehldun]

Keynote to PowerPoint (Classic)

I just bought iWork '05, and have been using Word and PowerPoint for a long time; I'm impressed with Keynote (it will replace PowerPoint for me), but not with Pages (I'm just too familiar/used to Word, I like Word just as it is )

Anyways, so if I'm exporting my Keynote presentation to a PowerPoint computer (MacOS 9/Classic @ School, Windows XP @ anywhere else), I'll loose all the visual effects, if not most? Like transitions...

That would NOT be good at all...

 

[MontyZ]

iWork is still missing an iCalc.

 

[~Shard~]

iWork is still missing an iCalc.

You mean a spreadsheet program, or just a really fancy schmancy calculator?