Many Mac users “can find acceptable substitutes for Office. Or they can purchase superior programs that still offer enough Office compatibility to get by,” David Morgenstern blogs for ZDNet.
“Keynote continues to be the best presentation tool on the market. It’s been that way since its introduction and the update in iWork ‘08 just continues its progress. I was impressed with a demonstration following the iMac introduction earlier this week. And it reads and writes PowerPoint files,” Morgenstern reports.
“Looking at the iWork applications, they appear to start conceptually with the rich, finished document and then work backwards toward the data entry and construction. It seems to me that most productivity applications start with the data and data entry and then suddenly discover that we want to print highly formatted documents,” Morgenstern reports.
“Pages recognizes that customers want to create polished documents with images, 2D graphics and flexible typography; and then it presents the combination of easy templates, tools and content integration that make it easy for the ordinary users to accomplish,” Morgenstern reports.
“This is also well expressed in Apple’s Numbers. The grid and formulas are always present, but the primary goal in this spreadsheet is helping users understand the data they are manipulating and then communicate this data in some kind of output,” Morgenstern reports.
“At the introduction event, I spoke with Alan Eyzaguirre, iWork product manager, [who said], ‘You launch the app and [the average user] should just be able to use it. But we also have all these pros. For them, a click on the Inspector opens up all these controls they need for their documents.’ This has been the Mac paradigm from the beginning, yet the result still seems fresh. Some things haven’t changed in 10 or 20 years,” Morgenstern reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Do you really enjoy Microsoft-induced security problems and bloated, old, overpriced code on your Mac? We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Many Mac users think they need Office, but really don’t. Give Apple’s free 30-day iWork ’08 trial a try and see for yourself.
As an attorney, I rely upon MS Office 2004’s Project Center, because it integrates my documents, contacts, e-mails, and tasks for each of my files. For me to move in a different direction, I’ll need something similar from Leopard, with the addition of to-do lists, and the improvements of iCal, Mail.app and Notes functions. I sure hope that there will be some kind of project center that integrates iWork with Leopard. I believe other small business owners would benefit a great deal. Apple, are you listening?
re: I’m Polish and there is no Polish Language Tool in Office 2004. I am waiting for iWork 08 now (it’s in the mail). For me lack of Polish is a killer. When I go to Tools/Languages I can select Polish as my language, but right after that Office tells me that I need to install the Language Pack. Than I am being directed to the help file on how to install one. I insert CD, go through the process, enter key and … nothing, nada, there is no Polish dictionary on the disc. So Office tells me that I should install Polish from the disc, but someone forgot to put it there. I checked, Polish is not officially supported by office for Mac.
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My heart goes out to you.
THIS is the very reason why no one likes Microsoft or its software.
Multiple languages should be standard in ALL software.
I know it will be a surprise for Microsoft to finally learn this but… NOT EVERYONE ON THIS PLANET IS AMERICAN OR USES AMERICAN ENGLISH AS THEIR LANGUAGE!
Yet another reason to dump MS Office where it belongs, in the dustbin with all the other trash.
I’m a teacher and reluctantly have to use Office. When it comes to translating graphs from windows to mac and ditto with large Powerpoint presentations I really don’t have an alternative.
After the “straw poll” from the above posts maybe MDN should say that most users don’t need Office but for some of us we have to use this bloatware. We may not enjoy using Office but we have no choice. And yes it is bloatware but necessary bloatware.
With the exception of a few things, Numbers is an Apple product – that means great. Once again I feel that when people at Apple design a product, they have me in mind. Something as simple as moving the table around on the page gives me such a feeling of freedom and control. Something I always liked about AppleWorks, I am glad they decided to offer that ability in Numbers.
I ABSOLUTELY love how Numbers shows you the column header and row header in the formula.
Academics…yes, agreed…Pages would need Endnote support to be a viable alternative in this setting…I hope Endnote will look to the future
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Without an realtime Reference manager like Endnote Pages is useless in the academic field and unfortunately we have to stick with Office and if Office for Mac is killed we all have to switch to Windooze. Sad reality. I can’t get it why this has not been integrated.
Yes Endnote support in iWorks would make it useable in academic environments. I have used Endnote for so long now that I don’t remember how to format footnotes and biblios. SIGH!