Apple's iWork Selling Well

[amateurmacfreak]

Maybe with MS committing to 5 years of development of MS Orifice for Mac, Apple has agreed to hold of on a spreadsheet app in iWork….

I do think Apple needs MS Orifice as this most probably the best know Windows app out there – and a lot of folks seem to think they need it….

Yeah. Most people think they need it because Joe Bob over there has it and so does Sally. Although maybe another processor would work just as well, the little dude with the Mac just wants to be "compatible" with Sally and Joe Bob's documents, spreadsheets, etc. for "work" and "school."
Ok. 😱 Will never use those names again. 😛 🙄

 

[Peace]

Some people NEED a spreadsheet app and Excel is a good one..

As much as I too dislike the evil ones ( every corporation is evil btw ) I kind of look forward to seeing Office 2006 for the Mac.

 

[bousozoku]

Pages is a good enough word processing app. I'm betting not everytime people open it they're going to use it make a brochure or something. There are definitely things it does better than Microsoft Word in terms of word processing.

Indeed, things stay put, and that's a miracle in contrast to MS Word.

 

[Bern]

... I kind of look forward to seeing Office 2006 for the Mac.

Yeah people said the same thing about the updated Messenger before it came out and look what a disappointment that was.

 

[yoda13]

My university dept. runs entirely on office (word) and I have heard of some glitches in the way pages exports to Word files, and I can't be having that, so I have not banished Word yet. I bought pages last year, I haven't decided if I will upgrade to the new version of iWork or not. I have heard it is much better, but money is tight, so I don't know.

 

[Some_Big_Spoon]

I hate M$ for many, many reasons (currently living in Seattle gives you ample reasons beyond their software cartel tactics) but Entourage is actually a fairly good program, albeit crippled by the dark lord. It's due for a bit of an overhaul in terms of the GUI, but it's a one stop shop for mail contacts and calendar, and is a far more useful setup than the chewing gum and chicken wire approach of mail.app, address book, ical and isync (i guess now itunes is the new isync?).

The load times on every Office app, save for Entourage, make it frustrating enough without having to deal with the weird compatibility issues when you get into the finer points of the program (tables!). What gets me is that we all know Apple could do it better, integrate the mail and addy book, etc., but then Bill would take his ball and go home, so we don't get that.. at least that's my feeling. There's a real toe-in-the-water snail's pace for office productivity apps from apple and I don't think that's an accident.

Anyway, I can't banish Word, Keynote's fancy stuff won't work on an exported presentation to windows, Exchange support's still wonky, and excel is the devil's work on any platform. It's a mixed bag and that forces me to keep a mixture of things, including VPC, but hopefully not for long.

I had iWork '05 and ran Word alongside. I updated to iWork '06 and banished Word from my Mac forever. I am totally M$ free. 😀

Frankly for me M$ Office is overkill. Entourage is clunky, Word is bloated, Excel was useless to me and Powerpoint was a hit and miss experience. When I consider the stable and more user friendly Apple alternatives I can't imagine why I would ever have it back clogging up my ram and chewing up space on my hard drive.

Perhaps a lot of other Mac users have started to feel the same way (especially with the obvious disregard to Mac users M$ have recently displayed) and have migrated to iWork '06 as a stress free alternative.

 

[DaveClarkOne]

Huh?

Business users need this vital link of Mac-PC platforms than MS Office provides. Excel is superior to other alternatives, and even if Apple were to offer a competent spreadsheet, I wouldn't spend a dime on it because of the need to share files with 95% of those using the Wintel platform. If Apple produces a spreadsheet, who could blame MS to drop support for Office, denying those of reason to use the Mac in the business world. Open Office? puhleeze!

I cannot understand why people are buying ms office becaus openoffice is free and has more opions than 99% of all the people need.

 

[Doctor Q]

I have MS Office for Excel. In fact, I'll hug my copy again right now. When Apple is ready to play the spreadsheet game, I'm ready to try their app.

 

[Wonder Boy]

is there a demo?

 

[nagromme]

Didn't we just get the rumor a couple months ago that iWork wasn't selling? 😀

 

[Bern]

I have MS Office for Excel. In fact, I'll hug my copy again right now. When Apple is ready to play the spreadsheet game, I'm ready to try their app.

eeewww icky! 😛

 

[Deimo]

Put me in the group of people that must use MS Office purely for Excel. I picked up a copy of iWork '06 on Friday after I gave a presentation using PowerPoint that just didn't feel right. We'll see if keynote helps deliver that extra little flair to make everything look better. Compatibility with Word isn't that important for me, so Pages probably can replace it completely. But without a spreadsheet application, Excel must remain on my computer. I will go so far as to say that Excel is by far the best application Microsoft produces; when used to it's full capabilities.

 

[hoyboy9]

I have MS Office for Excel. In fact, I'll hug my copy again right now. When Apple is ready to play the spreadsheet game, I'm ready to try their app.

Right on the mark. This isn't about Word or Entourage or Powerpoint. It's ALL about Excel.

Excel is the end-all be all spreadsheet application. Nothing even comes close to its advanced statistics, solver and data analysis tools. As an engineer that uses all these advanced features, I will not even consider another alternative unless it can perform these tasks to my satisfaction.

If Apple wants to build an Excel replacement, they've got a massive hill to climb. I wish them luck, and I'll be keeping an eye on their progress.

 

[ibook30]

This is good news- and makes me feel more comfortable putting the cash down for the software. Lots of positive feedback for the software.

 

[GregA]

Maybe with MS committing to 5 years of development of MS Orifice for Mac, Apple has agreed to hold of on a spreadsheet app in iWork….

I think that's likely.

A pity though - especially since Appleworks is still being sold/bundled. Perhaps they'll end up bundling an Appleworks-update with iWork, and will be keeping within their 'agreement'?

 

[Bern]

Maybe with MS committing to 5 years of development of MS Orifice for Mac, Apple has agreed to hold of on a spreadsheet app in iWork….

I do think Apple needs MS Orifice as this most probably the best know Windows app out there – and a lot of folks seem to think they need it….

Didn't stop Apple's "Aperture" to Adobe's "Lightroom". I say give it time and it will come.

 

[Some_Big_Spoon]

Was the other way around, no?

Didn't stop Apple's "Aperture" to Adobe's "Lightroom". I say give it time and it will come.

 

[Coca-Cola]

I am very excited to try out iWork 06. I use Keynote 04 all the time. I love turning my presentations into Quicktime movies. Just knowing they will work properly on any machine with Quicktime installed is a relief. I don't have to worry about playing along with Powerpoint on the PC or Mac. If you export Keynotes as Quicktime files, they will work on any machine with quicktime. This has saved my butt many times. I really should try out my trial copy of iWork 05. However, I think I can skip that version altogether and just iWork 06. But first, I would like to pick up iLife 06.

 

[JoeKarame]

I am very excited to try out iWork 06. I use Keynote 04 all the time. I love turning my presentations into Quicktime movies. Just knowing they will work properly on any machine with Quicktime installed is a relief. I don't have to worry about playing along with Powerpoint on the PC or Mac. If you export Keynotes as Quicktime files, they will work on any machine with quicktime. This has saved my butt many times. I really should try out my trial copy of iWork 05. However, I think I can skip that version altogether and just iWork 06. But first, I would like to pick up iLife 06.

Keynotes '05 was my life saver last year - certainly the best piece of software I used for my work. Keynote '06 is pretty much more of the same, just slightly updated - and that's good enough for me. Pages is brilliant when it comes to laying out work with pictures. A quick export to Word and Powerpoint, and everything pans out brilliantly. I'm a confirmed used!

 

[Kelmon]

I've not used OpenOffice on the Mac but given that I need X-Windows to run it I think I'll pass. Therefore the only competing office products for me are iWork and MS Office:mac and it all comes down to the lack of a spreadsheet application. Until iWork offers a competent spreadsheet application then I'll continue to need Excel and Office:mac, so I might as well ensure compatibility through using Word and PowerPoint as well. I'd use Entourage as well but the lack of Spotlight support means that I need to use Mail instead, although Microsoft's promised updates to Office:mac 2004 may mean that Entourage gets the time of day later this year.

Compatibility, I think, will become less of an issue in the future. With the push for the Open Document format and even Microsoft attempting to have their XML document format recognised as a standard, data exchange should become much easier in the future. With any luck we may get to a time when it doesn't matter which application constructed the file - if you're application understands the file format then the document will display fine. The only aspect of this that worries me is that Omnigraffle Pro is supposed to be compatible with MS Visio using Visio's XML file format but files still look rubbish when moved between the applications. If this was to happen with the "open" standards then the whole point of them will be lost.

 

[EricNau]

is there a demo?

A demo usually comes with your Mac.

 

[oingoboingo]

Probably because Open Office is big, slow and un-mac-like. NeoOffice makes it more mac-like, but still big and slow.

That may be so, but it's quite a bit faster than Keynote and Pages. Speaking of which, has Apple improved the speed in the most recent release of these programs? I would consider upgrading from iWork '05 if they had...

 

[balamw]

A demo usually comes with your Mac.

A demo of iWork '06 was also included in the box of my iLife '06.

B

 

[kiwi-in-uk]

... Speaking of which, has Apple improved the speed in the most recent release of these programs? I would consider upgrading from iWork '05 if they had...

Not that I've noticed (but I'm running them on a 1.33 PB with a 2nd screen)

 

[Doctor Q]

If Apple wants to build an Excel replacement, they've got a massive hill to climb. I wish them luck, and I'll be keeping an eye on their progress.

Me too. I don't expect them to build an Excel-killer, and in fact I doubt the first version of iWorkTheNumbers (or whatever they call it) will be good enough to dislodge Excel for many of us. But Version 2 or Version 3 might be good enough to tempt us, given the expected bargain iWork should still be compared to MS Office.

And if iWork threatens MS Office with new features that Apple invents, the competition might spur Microsoft into adding the same features to Excel.