“According to NPD Group, Apple’s efforts with iWork have paid off. The revamped suite has captured 16 percent of the office productivity application sales on the Mac, with Microsoft’s Office taking the rest. While that figure is ‘a success for Apple,’ NPD says, the market-research firm doesn’t feel that number is sustainable once Office 2008 arrives on the Mac,” Jim Dalrymple reports for Macworld.
MacDailyNews Take: The article really doesn’t say how Microsoft is going to recover those Mac users they’ve lost to iWork. 16-percent of office productivity sales is quite impressive; even more so when you factor in that iWork costs US$79 vs. Office’s double or higher retail price).
“‘Office 2008 is going to be a successful product and its going to take the air out of iWork’s tires,’ said Swenson,” Dalrymple reports.
MacDailyNews Take: We know many, including ourselves who dumped PowerPoint for Keynote years ago, Word for Pages last year, and Excel for Numbers this year. We’re not going to run out to buy Office now that we’ve finally been liberated.
When Apple released the updated iWork ’08 “back in August, executives said the goal was to create applications that offered a Mac-like approach to tasks such as word-processing and spreadsheets. ‘[Some people] want to enjoy the way they work, they want their work product to look great, and [they want to be] fundamentally integrated into iLife,’ Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of applications product marketing told Macworld in August,” Dalrymple reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Many Mac users — the majority, we believe — think they need Office, but really don’t. Give Apple’s free 30-day iWork ’08 trial a try and see for yourself.
I love iWork and have converted all of my office docs to Pages and Numbers. I even made Numbers the default for excel files and they work perfectly.
I run by business without one single Micros**t product of any kind.
And, I advertise the fact.
Please.. Office 2008 simply provides eye candy to already underutilized office 2004. I still use office v.x.
I have bought Pages from its first iteration, and I like iWork 08 very much!! Thanks to Microsoft Office, it will stay out of my computer!
Cheers.
Nice Apple – Well done!!!!
Er, that would be *my* business.
On the photo website NigelAshton.com on the Back Page at the bottom.
I just couldn’t resist.
iWork is great – kudos to Apple all around for these liberating apps.
There is only one hesitation about the future and that is if Steve takes any part of iWork down the iMovie road and drives another knife in the back of the faithful.
16 percent – is that all?
iWork 08 rocks.
I’d like to use iwork, but it is so slow responding to keys on my old g4 as to be practically unusable. It’s so slow even NeoOffice does better. And that, dear Apple, is truly sad.
Our (smallish) company will see if we can live without Office 2008. We have Office 2004 for Mac, and now we have iWork. We’ll see how that works and re-evaluate at the end of next year.
Nigel… nice work.
iWork is my productivity suite of choice now. Numbers, Pages and Keynote work really well. I know I won’t even think twice about upgrading MS Office 2004 to whatever the next version is.
I’ll say it again MDN, you underestimate your readership if you think “the majority” of Mac users who use Office can’t work out that they don’t really need it.
….maybe it would be better to say
“….can’t work out whether they really need it.”
I exorcised my computer of all things Microsoft. It is all gone, gone, gone forever.
Micro Me,
Your argument is illogical. MDN only underestimates their readership if they think most every Mac user on the planet reads them.
Clearly, MDN is talking about a different sort of Mac user than the hardcore users who read MDN.
iWork ’08 is pretty nice.
Pages is finally usable. Older versions were dog-slow.
Numbers is pretty nice. being able to setup a spreadsheet the way I want it, and print it the way I want it, is a joy, compared to the misery of dicking around with print previews and the like in Excel.
I don’t use Keynote. I’ve never even launched it!
The interface of pages and numbers still need some work.
Formatting tables in Pages is tedious. placing and maneuvering graphics is not a seamless as it should be.
The one HUGE negative, is that Pages CANNOT import AppleWorks files if they have imported graphics and/or spreadsheet objects in them. This is DREADFUL, since nearly EVERY AppleWorks file I’ve created for my business over the past 12 + years (since ClarisWorks 3) has BOTH!
FIX IT, Apple!
Now all we need is FileMaker Lite. Bento, at this stage, is pretty bad.
Eventually Apple will get it right.
Your point is taken Mr Spock, but many readers on this site would nevertheless agree with me.
Although MS Office for Mac isn’t nearly as bad as some make out, on balance I’d prefer to use iWork.
However, my preference is irrelevant. If I want to remain a hold-out Mac user in my PC workplace, I need Office.
Although I like and use the iWork applications, I will also be buying Office 2008 — but not for the usual compatibility reasons. It comes down to one thing: Entourage. The combination of Mail/iCal/Address Book is nowhere near as useful or as convenient to use as Entourage. And since Entourage syncs with the Apple applications, my iPhone stays up-to-date. If somebody would sell a program with Entourage’s functionality, and an interface like the iWork apps, I would buy it in a second, and walk away from MS Office forever.
The biggest issue I have is teaching my wife how to “save as” Word and Excel docs. She is constantly befuddled on how to send docs to her work and school! This is a Microsoft world. Why oh why can’t they make a nice big “Save as MS Word” file menu option or menu bar button?
We’ve switched to iWork here. The only snag we’ve encountered is that Numbers won’t accept some raw data formats, where Excel will. And Numbers won’t Save As HTML.
MGJ. This is a Microsoft world. Why oh why can’t they make a nice big “Save as MS Word” file menu option or menu bar button?
Set her up a way in “Automator”. Just don’t ask me how.
I wrote about this earlier (along with a few other tech headlines):
“Look at the deals MS has felt compelled to make on Office lately… Bottom line is iWorks doesn’t need to impact Office _sales_ so much as _profilts_. Office is a major cash cow for MS, and taking a bite out of that begins to reduce the free money MS gets to print.”
I agree with both Ralph M and mtngoatjoe.
Entourage is the One application I will give the Mac Business Unit credit for making indispensable (I won’t even give credit to ms for this one). Before Entourage I was using NowContact, NowUpToDate, and Eudora. I HATED having those 3 separate Apps open all the time. With notes and tasks, that’s 5 Apps in one. Then they added the Project Center. No way I’d ever go back to separate Apps again.
I switched to Keynote only last year and use it exclusively for my own presentations (awesome App). For client work, however, it’s PowerPoint (ugh). I know I could work in keynote and export, but little things need tweaking and cool transitions etc. get lost. Until the world switches in significant numbers, I’m stuck using Office.
For once, I agree with the “analysts.” If we’re talking about pure percentage of current sales, obviously Microsoft will recover a lot of that 16 percent when Office 2008 is released. That does not mean Microsoft will recover Mac users who are now using iWork. It just means that CURRENT sales of Office will increase greatly when Office 2008 is released.
iWork was recently released. Office 2004 is old. So common sense says current sales of iWork will be high right now. Once Office 2008 is released, the percentage for Office (versus iWork) will increase as existing users upgrade. This does not mean sales of iWork will decrease; it just means that there will be a reason for a significant increases in Office sales.
On principle I will not give microshaft any money. No X-box will ever cross my doorstep. no HD-DVD, no Zune (hahaha what a joke).
For those of us forced to USE office – we don’t have to *buy* office. Find someone with an installer, get an install code and give copies to every mac user you know. Same with Parallels/VM ware – buy one of those (worth the money) and get a *friend’s* copy of XP Pro.
Screw microsoft!
(not that I would ever do any of this or condone such behavior ;^)