How is the new iWork app?

[OldCorpse]

It's been out for some time now... anyone have any reports? In particular the word processing... also what are the calulation tables(?)... I realize it won't compete with MS Office yet, but how does it compare to f.ex. KOffice in the level of development? TIA

 

[ezekielrage_99]

All jokes aside iWork is a pretty sweet application, iWork is made up of two parts, Pages and Keynote. Pages is a M$ Wordish type of application while Keynote is a presentation application. The best thing is iWork is heaps cheaper than M$ Office but it does need something like Excel packaged with it though.

Pages is not bad at basic graphic design jobs like flyers, catalogs and newsletters. It has some decent looking templates for the quick basic jobs plus it has some fairy configurable options and choices in the "Inspector" tab, I like it more than M$ Word plus you can save into all your favourite formats like PDF, Doc, RTF, Txt and HTML so Pages is very useful from that respect. I haven't had any problems opening files that I have made in Pages openning them in M$ Office, OpenOffice, InDesign or Acrobat. The only thing that is crappy in Pages is with the formulas for equations not really supported well at all. Overall for a new program Page is an excellent start for Apple.

Keynote is the Apple version of PowerPoint, every business professional loves PowerPoint with a passion, personal I hate PowerPoint the the wizard and the stupid paperclip helper thingy drives me nuts..... Keynote is brilliant, the themes are prettier, the interface for the Application is clearer and far more intuitive than the M$ alternative plus you have all the animations option and more compared to the other presentations programs. Keynote can save to Quicktime, PDF, Flash, PowerPoint and Image files so there's really no compatability problems with it.
I have found that Keynote is far easier to use and is quicker than PowerPoint equivelant.

Overall from an industry point of view iWork is an extremely solid package, looks good, easy to use, supports different formats and intergrates well but it is not at a stage where it is a complete M$ Office killer though it has may user options and feature which are superior to Office like the "Inspector" button (got to love it). Give iWork a year or two and add an Excel like application and you have some serious Office competition. Personally I love the the copy of iWork that I got with my iBook, its way better than OpenOffice.

 

[IJ Reilly]

The above summary is a good one, but you might also want to check some of the other iWork threads started this week for more impressions. I haven't been able to spend much time with the new versions of Pages and Keynote (they've only been available since Wednesday), but I can see some pretty evident improvements from the previous generation.

One rarely discussed feature of these applications is the ability to cut and paste back and forth between them with formating remaining intact.