Bern said:
It's possible that the recent announcements from MS that they want to support Windows well have something to do with a desire to stop spending money on Macintosh development completely.
They might indeed be doing what you're saying.
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Apple's iWork Selling Well
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It's possible that the recent announcements from MS that they want to support Windows well have something to do with a desire to stop spending money on Macintosh development completely.
They might indeed be doing what you're saying.
With 95% market-share (more than Windows's market-share), I wonder why MS hasn't been dragged to court yet. I mean, Office is practically a Monopoly. People here (and elsewhere as well) have commented that they need Office so they can interoperate. And Office costs a lot of money, and MS makes it as hard as possible for cometing products to interoperate with Office.
I think that MS should fully and completely open the file-formats Office uses, so that third-parties can implement them and create compatible products. That would go long way towards breaking MS's stranglehold on that particular market.
I think that MS should fully and completely open the file-formats Office uses, so that third-parties can implement them and create compatible products. That would go long way towards breaking MS's stranglehold on that particular market.
Well, I'm sure this is some type of statistical oddity, but I could care less.
I switched to Keynote when it was released, and then waited two years for iWork. At least iWork looks now to be on an annual upgrade cycle.
But what worries me is the anemic upgrades and lack of spreadsheet. I'm sure Apple took it easy on iWork to keep MS at bay--I doubt the agreement mentions iWork development since that would get MS in trouble with the government--but Jobs probably slowed development as a courtesy to MS.
I just hope Apple has strong iWork sales through-out the year so iWork 07 is a major upgrade. Keynote is missing about 10-15 key features, pages needs about 30-40, and obviously iWork needs a spreadsheet.
My main hope for iWork 07 is a major update to Pages. Make it a pro-sumer word processor and page formatter. Apple was brilliant in how they re-thought the word processor, focusing on making your words beautiful. But there are too many missing, core features.
I'd love to switch my company over to iWork next year and have Apple get the annual upgrades in the future. Let's hope Apple makes iWork 07 the Office killer we've all been waiting for.
I agree. Excel is the best product Microsoft makes.
I'd still dump it in a heart beat if Apple does a spreadsheet right and it integrates well into the rest of iWork.
I switched to Keynote when it was released, and then waited two years for iWork. At least iWork looks now to be on an annual upgrade cycle.
But what worries me is the anemic upgrades and lack of spreadsheet. I'm sure Apple took it easy on iWork to keep MS at bay--I doubt the agreement mentions iWork development since that would get MS in trouble with the government--but Jobs probably slowed development as a courtesy to MS.
I just hope Apple has strong iWork sales through-out the year so iWork 07 is a major upgrade. Keynote is missing about 10-15 key features, pages needs about 30-40, and obviously iWork needs a spreadsheet.
My main hope for iWork 07 is a major update to Pages. Make it a pro-sumer word processor and page formatter. Apple was brilliant in how they re-thought the word processor, focusing on making your words beautiful. But there are too many missing, core features.
I'd love to switch my company over to iWork next year and have Apple get the annual upgrades in the future. Let's hope Apple makes iWork 07 the Office killer we've all been waiting for.
Doctor Q said:
I agree. Excel is the best product Microsoft makes.
I'd still dump it in a heart beat if Apple does a spreadsheet right and it integrates well into the rest of iWork.
Evangelion said:
I am a happy iWork user, but still depend on Office for Excel and some document sharing at work. I'd like to point out that simply having 95% market share isn't enough to be "dragged to court", otherwise iTMS is well on its way. It's what you DO with that market share that's the issue. As long as MS makes file formats that Keynote and Pages can import, along with CorelSuite stuff, I'm not sure if there is much anyone can do.
Having said that, I'm all for more open standards, since I much prefer working in Keynote over PPT, for example.
What about 3rd party plug-ins
I wonder of Apple could release some of the code for Keynote and Pages and then a 3rd party(s) could develope a plug-in that would include some of these "missing" features.
- Spreadsheet plug-in that works with Pages and Keynote
- A plug-in that let's Pages publish to web folder
- etc...
I wonder of Apple could release some of the code for Keynote and Pages and then a 3rd party(s) could develope a plug-in that would include some of these "missing" features.
- Spreadsheet plug-in that works with Pages and Keynote
- A plug-in that let's Pages publish to web folder
- etc...
Imagine the possibilities if iWork was worth paying more than a dollar for and did more then make eye candy.
Please make it so! Excel will be TOUGH to beat though. Word CAN be beat, and Keynote needs to evolve.
Five years? Seems about right.
Bern said:
Please make it so! Excel will be TOUGH to beat though. Word CAN be beat, and Keynote needs to evolve.
Five years? Seems about right.
bousozoku said:
Highly unlikely. Roz Ho announced at MWSF that 2005 was the MacBU's most successful and profitable year ever. You don't kill off a profitable part of your business just because a competitor emerges and especially not if you're Microsoft and you've got various governments breathing down your neck asking questions about unfair competition and monopoly status.
Les Kern said:
It is. It does.
bbyrdhouse said:
Both your examples are in iWork already.
iWork 06 got a 'spreadsheet plugin' - http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/features/tables.html
Pages already publishes to the web folder. It appears to generate code identical to iWeb - ie. a bit crap.
A plugin architecture would be great though so that for example, the equation editor/grapher workaround I mentioned earlier in this thread could be integrated. Or for that matter, OmniGraffle charts, outliner or just replacing the html export with a better one.
gauchogolfer said:
Having high market-share alone is not enough to get slapped with antitrust lawsuits. But fact is that MS is not actually making it easy for others to interoperate with their product. That wouldn't be an issue, if Office had a lower market-share, but since it's a de facto monopoly, that interoperability is crucial. And as many people have commented that they "need Office" so they could interoperate. And Office costs money. The fact that Office has all but eliminated all competition and that you need to pay money in order to use Office and interoperate with it, is (IMO) a form of abuse. They are asking for money for something that you basically can't be without (interoperability with .doc).
I'm not saying that MS should not ask for money for Office. what I'm saying that they should not be asking for money to work with Office file-formats. The format should be open. MS could still sell their office-suite just fine. They would just have to compete with features and usability, instead of relying on the fact that "I need Office to properly work with files created with Office-apps".
If ITMS gets 90+% of the market, some antitrust-scrutiny should take place. Just because it's by Apple does not mean that it's OK.
So everything is OK as long as iWork and Corel can import Office-files? Well, no. Those two would still be reliant on MS and their whims. And I wouldn't be surprised if MS got money for the specs of the file-format. And where does that leave Koffice, openOffice, Abiword and others? Why favour just those two?
I wonder when iWork will use OpenDocument as it's default file-format? I might be in for a long wait....
BWhaler said:
I really doubt that. Can you see Jobs asking his developers to produce something lacklustre on purpose? I don't doubt there's political capital to be made from producing or not producing an office suite in competition to Microsoft but that's not stopped Apple before. No, I think if anything, the iWork team have been busy with iWeb and the iLife apps as well this past year getting them ready for Intel. That was my one fear with the Intel switch, that Apple's app development would slow because of the extra workload.
The 06 updates may not have yielded all the pro features needed to compete with Office directly, feature for feature, but it's a pretty solid basis and a welcome performance update on 05. I really hope they don't get into a feature for feature war though and it seems they've not so far. They've thought of other ways to do features rather than parrot MS like OpenOffice.org does to a very large extent.
BWhaler said:
I hope so too. I think they deserve it this year. What features do you think it's missing though?
BWhaler said:
Works just great at my company but then there's only 3 of us using it and Office compatibility isn't a requirement at all. It's paid for itself multiple times over for quick leaflet and newsletter production.
Evangelion said:
Probably. However, they do publish some (not all) technical documentation to the format and how it works on http://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/iWork2-0_XML/index.html
iWork 06 changed the XML schema again from iWork 05 but there's no docs on the new schema and I've not checked to see what direction they're heading in. Someone with more XML knowledge than me may want to look at it.
Evangelion said:
Sorry I wasn't a bit more clear, I didn't mean to single out anyone, I was only using the top two current competitors as examples. You're right about the file format issue, I suppose, since constantly having to change one's own software code just to 'keep up' with changes from MS doesn't seem like real openness.
As for OpenDocument, I don't know enough about that to make an informed comment. Is is truly open, like (I think) .txt, .jpg, .xml, or more like .pdf where the viewing software (Preview vs. Adobe, for instance) changes what you see? If it's open (and effective) I'm all for it.
Glad to hear it, though I have to say my only experience with iWork 06 was disappointing. I have the original, and tried to switch from Word to Pages, but just couldn't do it full time. It's nice for some stuff, but I still use Word more. Keynote is great, though -- I never use PowerPoint.
Anyway, when 06 was announced, I felt really tempted. I used the trial version that came with iLife 06, but two things were very unsatisfactory. First off, the Keynote package is over 1 GB in size. WTF is in there?? Second, I couldn't manage to get any of my in-progress Keynote 2 slide shows to open in Keynote 3. I know there could be a whole host of reasons for this, but I don't have the time I used to have to devote to troubleshooting. More and more, I just need stuff to work right the first time. Most of the time, I get that from Apple. Occasionally, not so much.
So, just one guy's experience. I was worried the 06 trial version would tempt me to fork over for the full version to upgrade from Pages 1/Keynote 2. Maybe next year instead.
Anyway, when 06 was announced, I felt really tempted. I used the trial version that came with iLife 06, but two things were very unsatisfactory. First off, the Keynote package is over 1 GB in size. WTF is in there?? Second, I couldn't manage to get any of my in-progress Keynote 2 slide shows to open in Keynote 3. I know there could be a whole host of reasons for this, but I don't have the time I used to have to devote to troubleshooting. More and more, I just need stuff to work right the first time. Most of the time, I get that from Apple. Occasionally, not so much.
So, just one guy's experience. I was worried the 06 trial version would tempt me to fork over for the full version to upgrade from Pages 1/Keynote 2. Maybe next year instead.
I think Apple is doing a pretty good job with iWork, and that it will continue to grow in terms of features and apps.
When I think about iWork I think it's fair to compare it to Office, but look behind the apps. How many programmers does MS have on Office compared to Apple's iWork team. How Many years has MS been working on Office? I used Work & Excel on Macs in the late 80s - it's clear that MS has had a huge head start and Apple is catching up fast.
Since both iLife and iWork were ready to ship the day they were announced we can figure that both went gold in mid to late November. It may well be that there were features (and additional apps) that were not ready and were left out - meaning that they will be in iWork 07.
As for me, I'm quite happy to upgrade annually - just like I upgrade OS X whenever there is a new version.
When I think about iWork I think it's fair to compare it to Office, but look behind the apps. How many programmers does MS have on Office compared to Apple's iWork team. How Many years has MS been working on Office? I used Work & Excel on Macs in the late 80s - it's clear that MS has had a huge head start and Apple is catching up fast.
Since both iLife and iWork were ready to ship the day they were announced we can figure that both went gold in mid to late November. It may well be that there were features (and additional apps) that were not ready and were left out - meaning that they will be in iWork 07.
As for me, I'm quite happy to upgrade annually - just like I upgrade OS X whenever there is a new version.
gauchogolfer said:
It's truly open and royalty free. Koffice is going to be using it as their default file-format, as is OpenOffice. There are others working on it as well (Corel might be, as is IBM, IIRC)
Both your examples are in iWork already. iWork 06 got a 'spreadsheet plugin' - [url said:
Well, as I stated in my post a 3rd party would do a much better job at creating plug-ins. Sure Apple gave us a plug-in, but what was it? A really scaled down, limited table maker that will do some formulas.
As for pages publishing to web... well that it can export to a selected folder, but this is not at all what I was referring to. When you export in Pages now it will export to html. But if you have ever tried to export more than one page it will make one really long page in your browser.
So what I was saying was that I believe that 3rd party developers have a way of being extremely creative and persistant until they figure out a way to make things work.
Just because one company has 90+% of the market doesn't mean they're a trust. Apple hasn't bought out any competitors, nor have they changed any of their pricing models yet. It's all about the service (iPod+iTunes), and the word-of-mouth.Evangelion said:
bbyrdhouse said:
And for most people, in the context of a plugin in a word processor it's fine. If you need more, buy a spreadsheet.
bbyrdhouse said:
And Apple gives you iWeb instead. However, people shouldn't use word processors as web development tools. It's like using a domestic cat to spread butter on your toast.
bbyrdhouse said:
I agree there. It'd be really cool if it was opened up like that and strong sales of iWork are of course the encouragement 3rd parties need to integrate with it.
I haven't read all of the above posts, but I'd like to just say that iWork deserves it. I've written documents in Word all through uni and I've decided to use Pages (05) to write my final year dissertation.
It's brilliant! Footnotes are simple, content pages automatically update - I just use more features than say, Word.
The formatting and wrap options are great, and I must say, I'm a convert to "Styles".
LOL, I'm not sure about the content, but my dissertation sure looks great!
The only negative points I'd say is lack of a thesaurus/dictionary (since I'm on 10.3.9) but that'll be sorted as soon as I get Tiger. Grammar check in Word is next to useless, so I won't be missing those squiggly green lines anytime soon.
It's brilliant! Footnotes are simple, content pages automatically update - I just use more features than say, Word.
The formatting and wrap options are great, and I must say, I'm a convert to "Styles".
LOL, I'm not sure about the content, but my dissertation sure looks great!
The only negative points I'd say is lack of a thesaurus/dictionary (since I'm on 10.3.9) but that'll be sorted as soon as I get Tiger. Grammar check in Word is next to useless, so I won't be missing those squiggly green lines anytime soon.