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Should I buy iWork now?

MacFan26

MacFan26

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 8, 2003
1,219
1
San Francisco, California
I finally tried out the trial version that came with Tiger, and I'm kind of itching to buy it. I don't need it, so I was wondering if I should wait for iWork '06. Do you think it would be a free update? Or will this be the same as iLife, same price every year?
 
iWork 06' definitely won't be free... Keynote used to be $99 I think, before they lowered it to $49, after which it became iWork, so it could go down. It would be really cool if they released it at MWSF in January, but there's no guarantee... I think iWork is great, worth every penny, especially if you're a student. :)
 
As much as I'd like to use iWork...
I find Office for Mac essential.
Especially if you are a student or share files with Windoze based people.
 
DJY said:
As much as I'd like to use iWork...
I find Office for Mac essential.
Especially if you are a student or share files with Windoze based people.
Click to expand...

Yeh.. but in the UK its £39 for iWork and £110 for student MS Office. That's a big difference. One has to make the definition between necessity and desire. If you need Excel and plenty of text formatting options, go with Office. If you need a decent Word Processor with really good iLife integration and easy layout tools then get iWork.
 
Yeah, I'm a student, and I do have Office. So I think I'll just stick with that for a while and save my money for if they release a iWork 06 in January or so.
 
My daughter has been working all week on a back to school summer report.

She has The full Microsoft Office Suite available on both her P/C and my 2 Macs as well as iWork '05 and AppleWorks 6.

She's be using both OS platforms since she was old enough to reach the keyboard and she just told me that in reality she prefers AppleWorks over anything else.

She likes Pages, but thinks AppleWorks is easier to use.
 
FFTT said:
My daughter has been working all week on a back to school summer report.

She has The full Microsoft Office Suite available on both her P/C and my 2 Macs as well as iWork '05 and AppleWorks 6.

She's be using both OS platforms since she was old enough to reach the keyboard and she just told me that in reality she prefers AppleWorks over anything else.

She likes Pages, but thinks AppleWorks is easier to use.
Click to expand...

I too enjoy appleworks. I love the drawing/painting part (although it is very basic), which I don't think Office or iWork has. I would like to see iWork integrate (and improve) this in the next release. :)
 
DJY said:
As much as I'd like to use iWork...
I find Office for Mac essential.
Especially if you are a student or share files with Windoze based people.
Click to expand...

In my experience, iWork exports and imports Office documents beautifully, and quickly. Never had a hiccup.
 
The thing that makes iWork absolutely essential for me is Keynotes - it's so much better and easier to use than Powerpoint, it's unreal.

From no knowledge of how to create presentations, Keynotes is now the most regularly used piece of software on my machine. And if in the event I need to convert over to Powerpoint, it remarkably easy to export and do a little tinkering and everything runs fine, and without the usual amount of swearing which I can resort to if things don't quite go my way!

For the price it is, the package is superb value for money, and if the '06 version can just improve Pages a bit more, then it'd be my next essential purchase!
 
SpaceMagic said:
Yeh.. but in the UK its £39 for iWork and £110 for student MS Office. That's a big difference. One has to make the definition between necessity and desire. If you need Excel and plenty of text formatting options, go with Office. If you need a decent Word Processor with really good iLife integration and easy layout tools then get iWork.
Click to expand...

In what way does Office provide better text formatting options than Pages, for example? That is one of the good points about Pages.

In an educational environment it is highly unlikely that any Office document will be using esoteric functionality, and Pages or NeoOffice/J will handle the files without a problem.
 
I love iWork 05 trial and i think i will buy it. i either will buy it or wait till 06 i think. I dont really need it...
 
ph0rce said:
I love iWork 05 trial and i think i will buy it. i either will buy it or wait till 06 i think. I dont really need it...
Click to expand...
I have '05, and I really like it. It is so nice being in control! I'll definitely be buying '06, especially if it has an additional application alongside Pages 2 and Keynote 3 (Numbers 1?).
 
Chef Medeski said:
iWork dominates MS office
Click to expand...

Would you like to explain how iWork dominates MS Office other then it is an Apple product and the other is a Microsoft product? iWork is not even in the same league at this point as MS Office 2004. It may be sometime in the future with some changes and more applications, but not at this time. Also, if you mean it dominates on sales, I highly doubt that as well. In fact, I like almost everything Apple has on the software side and most of the hardware side as well, but at this point iWork is a flop.
 
I'm sure there are licensing, patent and trademark issues to consider, but Apple needs to put together a serious office application that includes all the features of both iWork and MS Office including MS ACCESS.
 
Abercrombieboy said:
Would you like to explain how iWork dominates MS Office other then it is an Apple product and the other is a Microsoft product? iWork is not even in the same league at this point as MS Office 2004. It may be sometime in the future with some changes and more applications, but not at this time. Also, if you mean it dominates on sales, I highly doubt that as well. In fact, I like almost everything Apple has on the software side and most of the hardware side as well, but at this point iWork is a flop.
Click to expand...

Would you like to explain how iWork is "not even in the same league" with MS Office? What league would that be -- the league of bewildering button bars and poorly implemented features?
 
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