Comments on: Can Mac Web Workers iWork with Pages ‘08?

By: Paul Jacobson

Paul Jacobson — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 21:24:28 +0000

One thing I am disappointed about is that there is all this talk about interoperability with open standards and with Microsoft’s Office formats and yet there is no support in iWork for the Open Document Format. That would really get me back to using iWork.

By: Ashmin

Ashmin — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:34:47 +0000

I just installed my fresh copy of iWork 08. I love it already. I was a bit scared to get rid of iWork 06 considering I’ve been a Mac user for about a month only, but everything seems fine. This article has made feel that I have spent my money wisely.

By: Reidar

Reidar — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 11:02:02 +0000

I have used Excel a lot, including macros. Rumors tell us that Excel in MacOffice 2008 excludes the posibility of using macros, or have I totally misunderstood?? Likewise I have read that Numbers does not include the macro-possibility. I have used MacOffice 2004, only realizing that Excel for Mac (2004) is a second-rate product compared to Excel for Windows. All this sums up to the conclusion that the situation for advanced users of spreadsheet on Mac is getting worse for every year. Any comments??

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:37:43 +0000

I’m surprised you don’t use wiki and forget about Track Changes which I find to be a terrible distraction.

By: Chris Papadopoulos

Chris Papadopoulos — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:31:56 +0000

The entire suite is perfect for a small business’s needs. I really can’t imagine going back to Word now.

By: Devon

Devon — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:22:25 +0000

LUIS: It really comes down to what you do. I am a J2EE Architect so I read lots of word and excel documents from other people, and I generate lots of documentation. I absolutely love Pages and Numbers and while I do still have Office 2004 installed, I haven’t opened those microsoft applications since iWork ‘08 came out. Pages opens all the word documents I’m sent more quickly than Word does, ditto with Numbers. I find that for documents I’m authoring the Pages interface feels far cleaner and more efficient (to me) than Word does. Plus the formatting and layout abilities mean I can make a nice looking document with different layouts by page type, drag and drop my diagrams from OmniGraffle, and so on, more quickly and with more ease than I could with Word. The PDF export always looks good, and keeps people from making changes and sending it on as if it was from me (maybe not an issue for you).

So in my case, iWork has totally replaced Office for me. (Likewise Aperture has replaced Photoshop for 99.9% of the time) :)

Devon

By: Luis

Luis — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:51:18 +0000

I think iWork still is far from being an Office replacement. Simple things as superscripts and subscripts are still a pain in Pages. Why do not include font options in the same text dialog? Numbers misses pivot tables and quite a few functions present in Excel. What about creating your own user functions? By far, the most solid component — which I use all the time — is Keynote.

An analogy: iWork vs Office is still like iPhoto vs Photoshop. Yes, you can use iPhoto for simple jobs, but I would not run my business on iPhoto.

By: Corey

Corey — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:36:19 +0000

Great run-down of your experience Judi. Thanks for taking the time to share it with the rest of us “Get out of (the) Office” types :)

By: Taco John

Taco John — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:23:52 +0000

It would appear that Microsoft thinks the tabbed interface is better, considering they displaced menus (which are kind of like collapseable lists of options) with the Ribbon, which is a tabbed interface that’s just oriented horizontally instead of vertically. So seems to me like Apple wins this round.

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:00:04 +0000

George, that’s not what Pages is for. They’re probably thinking of iWeb, which is part of iLife ‘08.

By: George Mandis

George Mandis — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:41:48 +0000

That’s too weird – I just got an email from a client asking if they could make their own web pages in Pages and upload them. I realized I knew next to nothing about Pages and came here just to kill a few minutes…. Now I’m going to figure out how to talk them out of this.

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 16:11:17 +0000

I’ve tried NeoOffice, OpenOffice and ThinkFree over the years. Invariably, its compatibility with Word, particularly with documents with tracked changes, fell far short of the mark no matter how many other positive features the application had. Plus, I’ve found NeoOffice and OpenOffice in particular to be much slower on my Macs than Word. Never stuck with it for more than a few test documents. YMMV.

By: rjh

rjh — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 16:07:56 +0000

Did you also compare NeoOffice? Is it also a viable alternative or is it better to spend the extra $79?

By: GigaOM iWork vs Microsoft Office: The Great Debate «

GigaOM iWork vs Microsoft Office: The Great Debate « — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:55:17 +0000

[...] She found that, “Pages blazes on an Intel Mac compared to Word 2004,” and she gives it a thumbs up. She’s not so kind to Numbers spreadsheet application in her mammoth review. [...]