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iWork.com - a waste of time and money?

So far in the right direction

I've tested the iWork.com Beta... so far I've found it useful. I see others wish there was some editing allowed from those that help me review a document, but so far I think it does help me in a way other file sharing services don't.

The way I work with my clients (I'm a consultant) I need them to take a look to a document and give me their thoughts. If they get the ability to edit it directly, it automatically turns into a nightmare, while each reviewer changes/deletes parts on the document and forgets to put a red colored note, or a small text box to explain him/herself. Before you know it you get 5 different versions of a document that you have to sit and compare each of them... and worst of all, each reviewer can't argue for/against or build on the opinion of another reviewer, since they seldom share or read other reviewer's review. There´s a way (in PC/MSOffice) to email a document to a chain of reviewers, but one can't review until another finishes, and it tends to take forever until all reviewers get a shot at the document.

I find it useful, since when me and my colleagues work, there's always one (and only one) person responsible for a document and its final edit while others collaborate. I guess this stands for dissertation and investigation papers.

I think this beta is in the right direction... of course there are things missing and we still have to see how much will it cost and the terms and conditions they will offer for the service... we'll see.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Apparently they don't think gmail will ever be done. Like it or not, that says something about the culture of the company, especially when they've left other products similarly undone. Trust me, Apple has taken a big thumping for botching the rollout of MobileMe. They admitted as much themselves. But please, don't try to make sound like this is something Apple does time and again, because I think we all know that they don't. In fact this was the exception that proves the rule.
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Seriously. The one really really bad thing they did somehow has peeved people on here. It's as if the fairly smooth iPhone rollout and crazy smooth Intel transition are to be forgotten. I personally didn't get MobileMe because I didn't see the usefulness and I'm not a big fan of being THE first to try out something new. I even waited about 10 months to buy an iPhone.

I downloaded a trial of iWork because I have never used it before and wonder if it's worth it. It definitely looks more polished than Office, and you gotta like the fact that it's way cheaper. If iWork.com doesn't cost much, it should be a neat service.
 
diazj3 said:
I've tested the iWork.com Beta... so far I've found it useful. I see others wish there was some editing allowed from those that help me review a document, but so far I think it does help me in a way other file sharing services don't.

The way I work with my clients (I'm a consultant) I need them to take a look to a document and give me their thoughts. If they get the ability to edit it directly, it automatically turns into a nightmare, while each reviewer changes/deletes parts on the document and forgets to put a red colored note, or a small text box to explain him/herself. Before you know it you get 5 different versions of a document that you have to sit and compare each of them... and worst of all, each reviewer can't argue for/against or build on the opinion of another reviewer, since they seldom share or read other reviewer's review. There´s a way (in PC/MSOffice) to email a document to a chain of reviewers, but one can't review until another finishes, and it tends to take forever until all reviewers get a shot at the document.

I find it useful, since when me and my colleagues work, there's always one (and only one) person responsible for a document and its final edit while others collaborate. I guess this stands for dissertation and investigation papers.

I think this beta is in the right direction... of course there are things missing and we still have to see how much will it cost and the terms and conditions they will offer for the service... we'll see.
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I'll second that. What criticts don't understand is that iwork.com offers the possibility to add comments to a pdf file - a costly feature you can find in Adobe Pro. The bad thing of course would be to actually pay for that, since we already have to pay for an iWork licence. I'm not a "free software / open source" maniac, but you have to take into account the fact people will always prefer a free service (Google docs) to a non-free one.
 
drichards said:
I still prefer office.live.com myself.
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I hadn't heard about that, but it looks pretty cool. And it doesn't look like it requires you to upgrade to a new version of Office, unlike iWork.com which requires iWork '09. I'll have to look into this some more. Thanks!
 
Macmanus said:
I'll second that. What criticts don't understand is that iwork.com offers the possibility to add comments to a pdf file - a costly feature you can find in Adobe Pro. The bad thing of course would be to actually pay for that, since we already have to pay for an iWork licence. I'm not a "free software / open source" maniac, but you have to take into account the fact people will always prefer a free service (Google docs) to a non-free one.
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Commenting a PDF doesn't require Adobe Pro. If that's all you want to do, Preview will take care of it.
 
danny_w said:
I hadn't heard about that, but it looks pretty cool. And it doesn't look like it requires you to upgrade to a new version of Office, unlike iWork.com which requires iWork '09. I'll have to look into this some more. Thanks!
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Yeah, you don't even need Office to use it. I just use my Xbox Live login with it and go on from there. My girl turned me on to it about a year ago or so.
 
Macmanus said:
What criticts don't understand is that iwork.com offers the possibility to add comments to a pdf file
Click to expand...

Most people don't understand that they can use Preview or Acrobat Reader to make comments on a PDF file.

If I am creating a document in Pages and I want comments from a group of people mostly using Windows, I would have to either convert the document to Word and send it around or try to explain to everyone that they could make comments on a PDF.

iWork.com will now allow me to put the document on the web and anyone with a browser can make comments on it. It's much less confusing for people with basic computer skills and I don't have to try to merge 5 versions of a Word document into something coherent.

The pricing of the service will important. Apple will have to think about cost/benefit to the user if they want people to adopt it.
 
Macmanus said:
You have to have Acrobat Pro to enable this feature for other people using Acrobat Reader.
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I don't know that this is true. I've sent PDFs commented in Preview to others without complaint.

As for Preview, it's a brainer ! I've never used it and I never will. It takes 11 steps to add a simple comment:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2143015_pdfs-preview-mac-osx-leopard.html
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Not really. This explanation over-complicates the procedure. Just one keystroke or menu selection does it.
 
Although I have not yet used iwork.com it sounds like a really neat service that could become very useful. However I believe that this should be included in MobileMe and not be an added cost since MobileMe is all about the cloud. I will be very interested to see what apple decides to charge for iwork.com
 
jwa898 said:
Although I have not yet used iwork.com it sounds like a really neat service that could become very useful. However I believe that this should be included in MobileMe and not be an added cost since MobileMe is all about the cloud. I will be very interested to see what apple decides to charge for iwork.com
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Well the current cost for iwork.com is a copy of iWork 09, so it is not really free. Microsoft has a somewhat similar Office web utlity that can be used with any app (not just Office), so it for now is completely free, and it does more. It will be interesting to see how these two play out.
 
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