“Apple’s new iWork ’05 application suite is a small but significant assault on Fort Microsoft. Though this new two-application office suite for Mac OS X won’t replace Microsoft Office on most corporate Mac desktops, at just $79 (direct) it gives home, small-business, and education buyers—that is, the vast majority of Apple customers—an affordable alternative to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint,” Edward Mendelson writes for PC Magazine.
“iWork comprises a new word processor (called Pages) and an updated version of the Keynote presentation package that Apple introduced in 2003. The suite is strong in typographic and visual features—the areas where Office is weakest. Rumors that the suite would include a spreadsheet called Cells turned out to be false, but they do suggest that Apple has plans for a more full-featured suite in the future,” Mendelson writes.
“Pages resembles a cross between a page-layout program (think Adobe InDesign) and a word processor (à la Word), combining all their basic features and a few of their advanced ones… In our tests, Pages imported our Word test files with only minimal changes in page layout… All told, iWork ’05 is a fine effort. It gives most Mac users an affordable alternative to Word, and whets the appetite for a more filled-out suite, which we hope is in the works,” Mendelson writes.
Full article here.
I though Pages looked sexy as hell during the keynote, but it’s hardly even been mentioned since. I’d really like to hear more about it from people who have tried it out.
as a heavy Word user (have to, for all my co-workers are windows-heads), with complex Word templates (headers, footers, complex styles), i was incredibly impressed with Pages. i imported some of my most complex docs, and the worst that happened was the TOC being bolded font, instead of regular… and a few very minor layout problems. having tried open office and the like (which were horrible at importing Word), i liked Pages quite a lot. i am also hoping for more integration so i can just pitch Entourage while i’m at it
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I received my iWork box yesterday. It’s pretty good overall and I’m getting the feel for Pages. I already owned Keynote and really took a liking to that over PowerPoint. I don’t think iWork is going to be an MS Office:mac killer by any means and really I don’t think Apple is even trying to compete with Microsoft in the office productivity front, though iWork (once all AW apps are replaced) will do for consumers who don’t need to powerful and feature rich capabilities of MS Office.
Biff — take a look at my comments in
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/4846/
My impression of Pages is that it isn’t even close to being “release level” software. Keynote 2 looks good although I haven’t spent enough time with it. I haven’t tried what Brett has (importing from Word) but can say that exporting to Word is not functioning correctly at least with templates that have text overlayed on photos or colored backgrounds.
I think the review was fair and balanced, if not a little generous.
3.5 stars is about right. Pages needs a ton of functionality to be market ready and a bunch of quirks worked out. But it is v1 program, so all of this can be forgiven. And Keynote to simply outstanding.
My hope is that with the “05” in the name, Apple plans on updating iWork annually, and not making us wait years. With Keynote hitting v3 and if we see a major upgrade to Pages, iWork 06 will be killer. (Especially if it takes advantage of Tigers)
But, iWork 05 is a great start to building an Office killer. I think it’ll be a couple of years assuming 2 more updates, but I can see dumping MS office for good.
And that thought makes me happy.
I’m quite impressed with Pages so far. Pages is deceiving- in a good way. It has a lot of power under the hood that isn’t readily apparent. A lot of the more useful features and tools are at your fingertips by way of the inspector- more so than Word. Word, and Microsoft products in general, tend to bury a lot of the useful functionality deep within the menus, and sometimes not even in the most logical menu.
It is very easy to create stunning typography effects will very little effort. Very very impressive for a rev 1.0 product.
g$..
I’ve heard alot of great constructive criticism from the guys on this site.
Firstly.. the pallet thing. Too many pallets and the screen is filled. Why not a ‘dashboard’-esque integration..
Maybe Apple will let developers use dashboard to ‘hide’ annoying pallets when Tiger ships..
Damn.. How freakin’ cool would that be?
Maybe when Tiger ships, iLife ’05 will get a .1 update via Software Update, and it will be Dashboard-ed..
Anyway.. my point is.. while it looks great.. too many pallets on the screen.. Or you could have a Safari-style ‘tabs’ thing like other programs do.. unless that’s too messy..
PS.Off-topic.. I just got my silver iPod mini today.. Apple has taken over another part of my life…
Damn this thing is slick..
Just wondering if anyone could find out how big iWork is compared to installing word and powerpoint. Im sure that it weighs in quite a bit less.
Paul, Mike, et. al.,
Thanks. These are intelligent criticisms. It clearly is not completely there yet. It’s a shame, since Apple, like Pixar, seem to be batting nearly 1000 with all their recent new releases. But it is the first release I have to believe they will listen to their users and continue to evolve it as they have with OS X.
I’ve ordered iWork. I think Pages will be great for doing the final layout of doctoral theses and the like. You can assemble all the text and references in Word and EndNote, then import to Pages to do the layout. Because layout is where Word sucks big time (32 MB maximum!).
We used to do this in MacWrite Pro, a great application, but on the new machines MWP does not install properly anymore. And besides, Classic mode sucks.
Frigging Apple can blow the doors off of OfficeMac on both platforms in a blink of a eye.
This is Apple catering to M$ again, so M$ won’t pull OfficeMac and thus millions of Mac’s get thrown out of offices.
I say Steve Jobs should grab Gates by his scrawny neck and kick the living shit out of him.
M$ is grey, dull and depressing.
Apple is bright, light and cheerful.
Your happy with a Mac, your depressed with anything else.
Can someone tell me if Pages has web based clip art? If so, does it link to the same art as AppleWorks?
I use the ‘clippings’ web search in AppleWorks all the time since the artwork prints beautifully on my printer.
I like pages and it suits the average Joe like me. The instant access to iPhoto, etc, and the interface similarities with Keynote is alone worth $79.
In the keynote speech, when describing iWork, Steve said, “we are building…”, he didn’t say, “we’ve built…”.
To me this version of Pages seems sluggish doing the same exact things I do in Keynote 2, but we all know that the next versions marketing will be focused on drastically improved performance, plus added Cells, and eventually a consumer lever web design program. The idea is to slowly and subtly take bites out of Office and Adobe and not lose money instantaneously. After the next upgrade or two of Pages, just how will Micro$in justify their huge cost of Office, when a $79 app eats their lunch in every category? Then I think Apple should nail the coffin by offering it free w/a Mac purchase. Imagine getting all this for the cost of a Macmini?? I can see it now..For a purchase of Tiger, iWork, and iLife, you get a free Macmini. ha Longterm(not Longhorn), Office is doomed unless Micro$in is willing to pad their 49 billion reserve with less profits and lower their HUGE price.
Holy Mackerel…
I don’t see where there is any linking to web based clip art in Pages, however, the integration with iPhoto is fabulous.
After installing iWork on Wednesday, my 11 year old daughter sat down at the computer and opened up one of the stock templates. I spent a whole 5 minutes giving a brief run down on the basics of using the program, highlighting text to change, drag and dropping of images, and that was it. 2 hours later she had created and printed out a beautiful 4 page family newsletter. 10 minutes after that it was exported as a .pdf and emailed it to her grandparents.
Maybe I’ll turn her loose on Keynote this weekend and she what she can come up with!
NoM$OfficeYou!, if you’re bright, light, cheerful and happy, maybe you’d lighten up a bit on Gates. If I didn’t have Office:Mac, I probably would be using windoze at work right now. Office:Mac keeps Macs in a lot of businesses, and that’s good. I’m not saying he’s a nice guy, and I’m no fan of windoze in any way, but I’m grateful for Office:Mac, and he could kill it if he wanted to.
NO! Spreadshit or projectmanagement shit!
Stevie! WHAT THE FOCK DO YOU DO?
We need that spreadetshit and the projectmanagmentshit!
ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SHUT! THE AAPL is still below $150 🙁