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Should I buy Pages now?

S

SHAMWOW50

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 10, 2011
9
0
Its in the mac app store for $20, but I believe it is the version that has been released a while ago. Should I hold out for a few months for iWork 11, or is that the final version for the year. I need it for school, and i'm hoping that I don't get screwed for buying it now.

Any input will appreciated. Thanks :)
 
You need it, so buy it. Even if iWork '11 is released soon, it will not revolutionize text editing. The basic functions have been the same for decades.
 
Hellhammer said:
You need it, so buy it. Even if iWork '11 is released soon, it will not revolutionize text editing. The basic functions have been the same for decades.
Click to expand...

true, but I always love to have he newest apple stuff. ;)
 
I was on the fence back in December about buying iWorks. All the rumors were wrong, so I am glad I went ahead and bought it.
 
You can use 1-month trial of iwork, than 1-month trial of office 2011 if you haven't used yet. In case the newest version is not released in 2 months, you can go with open office while waiting for the new staff.

No one can know what Apple is planning to do. I, myself haven't heard of any serious rumors about the new iwork :(
 
In my experience if everything you do is in iWork, it works great. However if like me you work on multiple machines and have to move documents from iWork to Word and back again. It's a nightmare. All sorts of formatting issues.

The current version of office for Mac is excellent. Had no troubles at all. I would recommend that every day of the week. Now if Microsoft would just release Office for iPad. Then I'll be a very happy customer :)
 
Thank you for the input everyone, I particularly like the idea of trying all the free trials. ill be sure to make up my mind
 
Hey shamwow, in the meantime download the free openoffice, it is a very good word processor and I use it because I don't want to pay 80$+ for microsoft office when I have a great word processor already.
 
darknite38 said:
Hey shamwow, in the meantime download the free openoffice, it is a very good word processor and I use it because I don't want to pay 80$+ for microsoft office when I have a great word processor already.
Click to expand...

does it look as good as office or iwork?
 
SHAMWOW50 said:
does it look as good as office or iwork?
Click to expand...
If you mean the visual appearance with "look", then no.
openoffice472.jpg
And then there is this: http://www.openoffice.org/ or http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php
 
I could care less about what it looks like, as long as it gets what I need it to get done, it works for me.
 
I just got a new MacBook, switching from a Windows laptop to Mac. I got iWorks for just $49 and I think it is a really good app. I used pages, and Numbers on the iPad so the compatability between the two will work well for me.

Since I also do a lot of things in Word and Excel I also bought Microsoft Office after trying it out for about 2 weeks. When I have to do work related items at home, using Office for Word and Excel just seems a lot easier than trying to reformat due to what is or is not supported between Office and Works.

For most home related stuff I do see myself using Works more, it's just easier and free form, especially Numbers. But for work related stuff and compatability with what we have at work, Windows, I will use Office more.
 
Don't do it!

Pages and Numbers are both garbage! Get Office 2011 for Mac. Yes I did the iWork thing. When I got my first Mac (this one), I went all the way.

Keynote is the only decent program in the package.

Office 2011 for Mac!

Try them both out though. You can download one month trials from both Microsoft and Apple. See for yourself.


Aaron
 
Pages and Numbers try too hard to have really different paradigms from their MS Office counterparts, and as such they are just frustrating to use. I challenged myself and used them fully for 3 months, prior to Office 2011 coming out - in an otherwise entirely Windows environment mind.

It is possible to create files that just about allow decent compatibility, but:
Pages always adds an extra line break after tables on export to Word;
Numbers always adds the book and sheet names together on export to Excel;
Numbers either sets gridlines to hidden in Excel or makes them print out;
Numbers always sets the font for cells outside the used range to Helvetica Neue size 11 on export to Excel.

These and various other inconsistencies just made working with them a pain - plus there is no support for docx, etc. export in the 2009 versions.

One plus though, Pages supports scrolling in the background, just like every other mac app apart from Word!! And at least Pages now supports sub-pixel rendering antialiasing, so it looks good. It looked pretty bad before '09.
 
Let's not forget LibreOffice

With all the mention of nice open-source alternatives I fould libreoffice recently. Converted from OpenOffice and have not looked back. Interface wise? They pretty much look the same, think office 2003 ish and you will have the idea. The thing that sold me pure and simple with my older hardware is load times. Even on my dual G5, openoffice took FOREVER to open a new document, let alone a huge excel book.... So it is yet another alternative out there, that is free and defiantly worth a look.
 
DrakkenWar said:
With all the mention of nice open-source alternatives I fould libreoffice recently. Converted from OpenOffice and have not looked back. Interface wise? They pretty much look the same, think office 2003 ish and you will have the idea. The thing that sold me pure and simple with my older hardware is load times. Even on my dual G5, openoffice took FOREVER to open a new document, let alone a huge excel book.... So it is yet another alternative out there, that is free and defiantly worth a look.
Click to expand...

Hi, what G5 do you have? Openoffice is quite fast on my G5 Quad.. seems the Quad was and still is the top dog of the PowerPC G5 Macs and still a good and capable machine for everyday tasks and even heavy tasks.
 
Should I hold out for a few months for iWork 11, or is that the final version for the year.

I asked myself the same thing almost a year ago when I moved over to Mac. I did the 30 day trial and within a week I bought iWork 09 with zero regrets - especially since I would have had to buy MS Office for a lot more instead. Now you can purchase it a la carte` and for only $20 you can't go wrong. Besides, whatever the new software brings 95% of it will be the same. I use Pages often, Keynote on occasion but haven't really used Numbers.

Get the trial to buy yourself some time and if you need it get it. Depending on what iWorks 11 brings I may or may not upgrade. Also, I really do not like being one of the first to buy a new version on any software/ Let someone else works out the bugs while I wait for the updates to fix any possible issues which can take weeks or months.
 
Like the previous poster said, you really cannot go wrong getting Pages through the app store for just $20.

I bought iWorks with my mac a few weeks ago since they had a special price in the store when purchased with a Mac. I thought I would just go straight to iWorks instead of Office, but have since purchased Office after doing the trial period for about 3 weeks.

I'll use Office to primarily stay compatable with work documents, but will more likely use Pages for everything else since it is much nicer and user friendly to work with.
 
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