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iWorks worth it
- Thread starter DeSnousa
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macrumors 6502a
iWork comprises two applications: Keynote, which is essentially a PowerPoint alternative, and Pages, which is supposed to be a word processor, but is more of a consumer desktop publishing app.
I'd certainly recommend Keynote over PowerPoint if you need to make presentations, but for your written work, Word has more to offer than Pages, which doesn't even include a word count feature.
I'm not sure of your education level, but in terms of producing better looking documents, I can't see that the templates in Pages would help you very much. Certainly, if you're writing reports and assignments for College or University, anything other than a well formatted, plain document would be inappropriate.
Check out apple.com/iwork/ for more info.
I'd certainly recommend Keynote over PowerPoint if you need to make presentations, but for your written work, Word has more to offer than Pages, which doesn't even include a word count feature.
I'm not sure of your education level, but in terms of producing better looking documents, I can't see that the templates in Pages would help you very much. Certainly, if you're writing reports and assignments for College or University, anything other than a well formatted, plain document would be inappropriate.
Check out apple.com/iwork/ for more info.
mad jew
Moderator emeritus
I'm in the same boat and I've been looking into it for a while. As much as I hate to admit it, I think Microsoft has made a better suite of apps for us studying types. There aren't HUGE advantages to be had in Pages and Keynote and considering you still have the MS programs, you may as well stick with them.
Personally, I'm just going to wait until iWork comes with a spreadsheet app and then I'll probably pretty much replace Office with it. 🙂
Personally, I'm just going to wait until iWork comes with a spreadsheet app and then I'll probably pretty much replace Office with it. 🙂
Solafaa
macrumors 6502a
I used both and in your case its not worth getting iWorks. I use Pages insted of Word just because it looks better when i am doing more then 1 thign at the same time. If you do a lot of things like print newsletters, marking papers and stuff like that then it is worth it, the templates are really nice.
I would stick with Office, in this area MS has a better product.
I would stick with Office, in this area MS has a better product.
iWork is tough to get used to if you are familiar with MS Office. My initial reaction is - ugh! I have no idea what I'm doing with Pages. I just loaded it on my iBook and took it to class to take notes. I, and just about everyone else in law school, use MS Word to take notes. It is great for outlining (although there are better programs out there for this sort of thing). The challenge I typically encounter with Word is when I want to quickly insert a graph, flowchart, etc. It is not as quick as I would like. For this reason, I like Pages a bit more. Pages is not the best for outlining from what I can tell so far but I have not spent nearly enough time learning how to use it. I think many others reviewing Pages are assuming it lacks certain features becuase they can't find them where they would be in Word. Once the dust settles and people really start to learn how to use Pages, myself included, maybe we can offer a better review of this product.
Anyone else use it enough to comment on this? I mean, we have all used Word (for years and years and years) and Pages is brand new. For instance, I haven't even figured out how to make it outline like word does automatically. Another oddity is that Word will automatically correct certain generic misspellings while Pages just seems to underline them. I'm going to give it more of a try before I give up on it.
Anyone else use it enough to comment on this? I mean, we have all used Word (for years and years and years) and Pages is brand new. For instance, I haven't even figured out how to make it outline like word does automatically. Another oddity is that Word will automatically correct certain generic misspellings while Pages just seems to underline them. I'm going to give it more of a try before I give up on it.
Think of iWork as Keynote 2 at half the price of Keynote 1 with Pages thrown in for free. In my opinion its a great deal.
I could be wrong here and I havent played with Pages that much but my first impression is that the nearest PC equivalent is probably Publisher rather than Word. Just as a PC user would not launch Publisher when wanting to take notes etc. I don't think Pages is built for that either. Create newsletters, flyers, brochures yes, but writing notes? I think Word in Office for the Mac is still your best bet.
Vanilla
I could be wrong here and I havent played with Pages that much but my first impression is that the nearest PC equivalent is probably Publisher rather than Word. Just as a PC user would not launch Publisher when wanting to take notes etc. I don't think Pages is built for that either. Create newsletters, flyers, brochures yes, but writing notes? I think Word in Office for the Mac is still your best bet.
Vanilla
I've used both and I will say that Pages has become my word processor application of choice. Although I find Word's spell-check to be better than Pages, I enjoy how Pages does not automatically try to guess what you are typing and format your document for you. It's my document and I will format it how I want (yes I know that you can turn off Word's autoformat but it is not very easy to do so and comes with it enabled). I really like Pages use of styles and fell that Apple has done a much better job than Microsoft on this aspect.
One concern I have about Pages is that no other applicatons will import Pages documents so if I am at a computer without Pages and need to use a document but hadn't exported it to a more compatable format I am out of luck.
One concern I have about Pages is that no other applicatons will import Pages documents so if I am at a computer without Pages and need to use a document but hadn't exported it to a more compatable format I am out of luck.
Abulia
macrumors 68000
Thank you for your important contribution. 🙄iGary said:
Anyhow, I agree with the majority: stick w/ Office, it is, overall, a better suite. I'm a writer (and if you're a student, I'd imagine you are too) and Word just blows Pages away. Pages is cute and all, and the templates are nice for a "lite" layout program, but Word is much more feature-rich (and by association, has a higher learning curve).
Keynote is a nice app but it can't carry the iWork suite by itself. I guess ultimately it comes down to what you mean by making a "better looking document."
jsalzer
macrumors 6502a
Growing on Pages
I'm going to throw in some good words for Pages.
I've been using it to put together a manual (it's at 30+ pages at this point). Yup - it does take some getting used to, but having used Keynote made it easier.
Once you figure out the things that throw you initially, it's actually very nice - and much easier to make things look nice (and professional) than in Word.
I'm actually going to chuck PageMaker in favor of Pages for our next catalog. Pages exports to high-quality PDF, whic printers seem to favor now. I'm very excited about the freedom it's going to give me to be creative.
That said, there are bugs and some things that weren't thought out. When you send things "to back", it sends them behind the "text layer". Having all objects default to causing wrap is an issue for me. I tend to want objects to *not* cause wrap. Also, there are some printing bugs. If you use the text-in-a-shape feature, all of the shapes on the page take on the same text!!!! I have to export my manual to PDF and print it from there - not good. And some annoying things that are just needlessly different than AW.
But, still more stable than Word!!! 😉
And 2.0 will shine, just like Keynote came to age.
I'm going to throw in some good words for Pages.
I've been using it to put together a manual (it's at 30+ pages at this point). Yup - it does take some getting used to, but having used Keynote made it easier.
Once you figure out the things that throw you initially, it's actually very nice - and much easier to make things look nice (and professional) than in Word.
I'm actually going to chuck PageMaker in favor of Pages for our next catalog. Pages exports to high-quality PDF, whic printers seem to favor now. I'm very excited about the freedom it's going to give me to be creative.
That said, there are bugs and some things that weren't thought out. When you send things "to back", it sends them behind the "text layer". Having all objects default to causing wrap is an issue for me. I tend to want objects to *not* cause wrap. Also, there are some printing bugs. If you use the text-in-a-shape feature, all of the shapes on the page take on the same text!!!! I have to export my manual to PDF and print it from there - not good. And some annoying things that are just needlessly different than AW.
But, still more stable than Word!!! 😉
And 2.0 will shine, just like Keynote came to age.
Apple
macrumors 6502
WHEN I first loaded up pages I remember how plain it looked...
It looked like a notepad and not a word processer. However, I changed the default look of pages and I must say that it feels better. And all I did was change it to show the rulers. If Keynote was not as good as it is, I probably would be kicking myself for bying iworks but it is the real deal.
The best thing about keynote IMO is the ability to export as movies. I ran a slideshow I made in keynote on another mac at my school by just downloading quicktime.
Overall iWork is worth the $80, with Keynote 2 contributing to 90% of my decision.
It looked like a notepad and not a word processer. However, I changed the default look of pages and I must say that it feels better. And all I did was change it to show the rulers. If Keynote was not as good as it is, I probably would be kicking myself for bying iworks but it is the real deal.
The best thing about keynote IMO is the ability to export as movies. I ran a slideshow I made in keynote on another mac at my school by just downloading quicktime.
Overall iWork is worth the $80, with Keynote 2 contributing to 90% of my decision.
Apple said:
PowerPoint does that too: File / Make Movie.
Keynote is a very good product, but let's be serious about Pages: if it was not an Apple software, but a mere third-party word processor, would we even be talking about it?
Yeah... the whole emphasis on templates is kind of disappointing. I was hoping for a Word-killer. 🙄
I absolutely loathe using MS Word. I've always wanted a simple but powerful Word processor that didn't have all the useless, bloated crap of Word.
I nearly cried when I heard about Pages.
I haven't used it... but Pages seems to fit the bill for interface.
But, I am a college student/writer. No good for term papers? Or novel writing? Sigh. 🙁
I absolutely loathe using MS Word. I've always wanted a simple but powerful Word processor that didn't have all the useless, bloated crap of Word.
I nearly cried when I heard about Pages.
I haven't used it... but Pages seems to fit the bill for interface.
But, I am a college student/writer. No good for term papers? Or novel writing? Sigh. 🙁
iWork is keynote 2 with pages thrown in. If you have office and don't use keynote, don't bother with iwork till the next revision.
jsalzer
macrumors 6502a
Term Papers
See - I'm not sure where this part is coming from. Pages handles Chapters (sections) quite nicely. I'm using an A.1 - A.12 section 1, a B.1 - B.15 section 2, etc. with no problem.
I haven't used the footnotes function yet, but it's there.
And graphs and graphics are easily included (and less likely to flip out on you than in Word).
So, what has changed in the world of Term Papers that I'm missing? Do they now include dancing monkeys that only Word has? I'm confuzzled by continually hearing the statement that it's no good for students. What exactly is missing? (Besides, of course, the ability to print directly without going to PDF first to avoid the print bugs.) 😉
dferrara said:
See - I'm not sure where this part is coming from. Pages handles Chapters (sections) quite nicely. I'm using an A.1 - A.12 section 1, a B.1 - B.15 section 2, etc. with no problem.
I haven't used the footnotes function yet, but it's there.
And graphs and graphics are easily included (and less likely to flip out on you than in Word).
So, what has changed in the world of Term Papers that I'm missing? Do they now include dancing monkeys that only Word has? I'm confuzzled by continually hearing the statement that it's no good for students. What exactly is missing? (Besides, of course, the ability to print directly without going to PDF first to avoid the print bugs.) 😉
I haven't used Keynote really, but it looks to be as good as, if not better than Powerpoint 2004.
Do not buy the program just for Pages, though, unless you do a lot of reports w/graphics embedded within text. Then, and only then, it MIGHT be worth it. I'm actually pretty disappointed in Pages ... it's not very intuitive for an Apple product. For example, it took me forever to find the "double spacing" feature, because it's a slider thing and I was looking for an icon or labeled button. There's also no thesaurus or dictionary, something small that I realize I use a lot in Word. The "Inspector," which is Pages' version of that formatting palette in Word 2004, has a lot of options you will probably not use a majority of the time if you're just writing an essay.
Pages is really just a glorified text editor, which is a little disappointing, but the poor usability (for Apple) is what really gets me.
Do not buy the program just for Pages, though, unless you do a lot of reports w/graphics embedded within text. Then, and only then, it MIGHT be worth it. I'm actually pretty disappointed in Pages ... it's not very intuitive for an Apple product. For example, it took me forever to find the "double spacing" feature, because it's a slider thing and I was looking for an icon or labeled button. There's also no thesaurus or dictionary, something small that I realize I use a lot in Word. The "Inspector," which is Pages' version of that formatting palette in Word 2004, has a lot of options you will probably not use a majority of the time if you're just writing an essay.
Pages is really just a glorified text editor, which is a little disappointing, but the poor usability (for Apple) is what really gets me.
jsalzer said:
After forcing myself to work with it some more I've come to realize it has a lot more to offer than you might expect after reading many of the reviews here and on other sites. I found that PDF feature by mistake and absolutely love it. It is a time saver and will guarantee a uniform look on the pc platform as well. No importing and reconfiguring required. Also, it is much more flexible in terms of inserting graphs and working with pictures. I have both Publisher and Word and find this program is a suitable replacement for both in terms of price and features. The next version should be an improvement on this one but I am satisfied with it so far. I'm still on the low end of the learning curve and am sure I will discover more as I continue working with it. It's a refreshing alternative to Word and Publisher. The price isn't half bad either. The student version was less than $60.
After I fiddled about with Pages for a few hours I realised that it is an App that doesn't know what it is yet.
Exporting Keynote animations in the Flash format and only working with frames in Pages, built in access to iTunes, iPhoto and all my iMovies, I managed to create some nifty looking multimedia webpages in next to no time. I was well impressed.
I think Pages 2 will be a hammer.
Exporting Keynote animations in the Flash format and only working with frames in Pages, built in access to iTunes, iPhoto and all my iMovies, I managed to create some nifty looking multimedia webpages in next to no time. I was well impressed.
I think Pages 2 will be a hammer.