“In the workplace, Microsoft Office is as inevitable as drawn-out meetings and bad coffee. But Microsoft’s combination of Word, Excel and PowerPoint is not the only way to write, crunch numbers or prepare slideshows. And for home users, it isn’t even the best way anymore,” Rob Pegoraro reports for The Washington Post.
“Two of these Office alternatives are free Web sites that you can use in any new browser: Google Documents and Zoho Office,” Pegoraro reports. “The other, Apple’s $79, Mac-only iWork ’08, is a traditional program that incorporates some refreshing changes to the standard productivity bundle.”
“Apple’s iWork ’08 outdoes Microsoft Office most notably by helping you make more use of the information already on your computer,” Pegoraro reports. “Apple has also made these features easier to discover than the tools in Microsoft Office…”
“iWork’s Numbers program is the most fascinating part of this bundle. There hasn’t been a new spreadsheet program in years, much less one that could be described as ‘fascinating.’ Numbers ditches the traditional, intimidating graph-paper look and instead invites you to mix multiple tables, slick 3-D charts and graphics on a single page,” Pegoraro reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Whit” for the heads up.]
I’ve hated MS Word since 1.0. It’s pagination was shitty then, and it’s shitty now. MacWrite, especially MacWrite II was the killer app.
I don’t get why Apple created Pages and didn’t build in a capability to read old MacWrite files? It doesn’t make sense.
@mike
I agree Ragtime was a great integrated suite.
What i miss most of all was that the font selection list always had the fonts used in the doc, listed at the top. Sure wish Adobe and Pages would implement that. It was a scrolling and memory time-saver– one glance and you would know what faces were in use in the doc… Are you listening Apple and Adobe?
what IS this “Equation Editor” argument about? I’ve used both WP and SS at home and at work for a quarter of a century now, and never needed to use such a feature. I’m sure there are Engineers out there who live and die by it, but Doctors? Lawyers? IT geeks (like me)? Businessmen? What would they use that feature for? “Nuthin’ … absolutely nuthin’.” Never used “Pivot Tables”, either.
Dave
Just came back from the Apple Store with iLife ’08.
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I installed and an iMovie icon in my applications folder and aan iMovie(previous version) folder in the applications folder….
Just my $0.02
Are you all serious about this? iWork is like crayola to MS Office 07. There is nothing more powerful, full featured office suite than Microsoft Office 07. Bill Gates and Ballmer once again came through with the best office suite ever. I know its not available to simple minded Apple users, but you have Office 04 and maybe 08. MS should just forget about Apple customers, they are simple enough for iWork 08 and anything more is too difficult and will probably generate too many support calls.
“In the workplace, Microsoft Office is as inevitable as drawn-out meetings and bad coffee.”
That’s one of the best sentences I’ve ever read.
A copy of Office is mighty expensive if all you care about is an Equation Editor.
If you REALLY need one, go to VersionTracker and do a search… there are lots of them, shareware and freeware.
The school I work at unfortunately uses M$ and I am stuck unless I want to purchase a computer and bring it in there (which they will let us do). They recently forced us to upgrade to M$ Office 2007 and I hate it. I cannot find anything. So, I asked them to install M$ Office 2003 instead. There was an issue with my printers a few days ago, and the tech guy came out and could not find anything since I had changed the layout of everything to look and function like 2000. The tech guy said after he installed M$ Office 2003 that if 2007 bothered me that it would really hate it when they upgraded me to Vista. Now I am really considering getting a new Mac mini to take in so I don’t have to suffer under M$ anymore, especially Office & Vista.
However I would still need M$ because I teach AutoCAD. But at least I would not have to use Office or upgrade to Vista.
downt forgit I kan cawl utha peepul stupid becuz mi grammer is sew good.
You’ll notice that like most intellectually-challenged trolls, all OriginalReciepes can do is brag about the “power” of whatever. Listen to me, child. No-one cares about “power” anymore, when computers are so fast it’s ridiculous. No-one wants to have a “do-it-all” app anymore. Your thinking is so 1980. Get over the lure of the shiny buttons and understand that people want something that helps THEM (that is, the individual) do what they want to do. The best way to achieve this is by making software EASY and by not catering to GEEKS.
@ mike & NeonRed
Huh; and all this time I thought Ragtime referred to some other (monthly) event.