Briefly: Amazon's witty discretion on iWork '07 and iLife '07

[AppleInsider]

Online retailer Amazon.com is no longer listing Apple Computer's forthcoming iLife and iWork software suite upgrades on its website by name, but has alternatively drawn a chuckle or two.

The largest internet retailer on Wednesday turned up listings for four yet-to-be-announced Apple software products. Those products were iLife '07 and iWork '07, each of which was available in two versions -- a "Single User License" or a "Family Pack."

Apple, which attempts to keep a tight lid on even the most blatant of matters, appears to have disapproved.

As of Thursday evening, Amazon, rather amusingly, had renamed the four software listings to: Apple MacWorld 2007 Announcement #1, Apple MacWorld 2007 Announcement #2, Apple MacWorld 2007 Announcement #3, and Apple MacWorld 2007 Announcement #4.

Since introducing iLife at Macworld in 2003, Apple has used each consecutive Macworld to introduce new versions of the digital lifestyle suite, which includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and iWeb applications.

In 2005, Apple unveiled iWork, a similar suite of software that includes productivity applications Pages and Keynote.

Next week's Macworld Expo is expected to play out no differently, producing updates to both iLife and iWork while possibly tossing a new spreadsheet application into the latter as well.[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ] (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2354)

[SpamSandwich]

Hilarious! I love it. :lol:

[Ireland]

Next week's Macworld Expo is expected to play out no differently...
I'm willing to bet Apple bundles iWork '07 and iLife '07 into Leoaprd. People will have no choice but to upgrade, and it will also be absolutely brilliant value. So Apple wins by getting everyone on the same platform, and the customers win, by getting the deal of the millennia!! :wow:
/I hope to God I right on this one, and I hope to God Steve didn't mislead us with that "complete package" statement, cause the way I see it, without both iLife '07 and iWork '07 included he has no right calling it the complete package!

[Kickaha]

You know, I've seen you and others make that claim about what 'the complete package' means, and I've never bought it. To me, it simply means 'we provide complete solutions for the user to choose from', not 'we provide ONE FREAKING BIG BOX WITH EVERYTHING IN IT'.

Maybe you're right, but I really doubt it. Try not to get your hopes up too high, 'k? Post-MWSF is bad enough in the emergency depression triage around here without tossing around words like 'mislead'.

[nathan22t]

cute.

[Slewis]

As of Thursday evening, Amazon, rather amusingly, had renamed the four software listings to: Apple MacWorld 2007 Announcement #1, Apple MacWorld 2007 Announcement #2, Apple MacWorld 2007 Announcement #3, and Apple MacWorld 2007 Announcement #4.

4 Announcements?
It seems Amazon knows more then they were letting on... :lol:

Sebastian

[freeny]

I laughed out loud reading this! seriously! and not in acronym form:lol:

[rongold]

I'm willing to bet Apple bundles iWork '07 and iLife '07 into Leoaprd. People will have no choice but to upgrade, and it will also be absolutely brilliant value. So Apple wins by getting everyone on the same platform, and the customers win, by getting the deal of the millennia!! :wow:
/I hope to God I right on this one, and I hope to God Steve didn't mislead us with that "complete package" statement, cause the way I see it, without both iLife '07 and iWork '07 included he has no right calling it the complete package!

If everybody thinks Apple is to release the new version of iLife/iWork during MWSF, how will they bundle it with Leopard? Do you think Leopard will be released 4 days from now?

On a side note, I personally think the iLife bundles will not be released until a bit after MWSF. Steve may demo the apps during MWSF keynote but it is looking to me like they will be shipping later on. Later on meaning more inline with the actual ship date of Leopard... and no, that doesn't mean it will be included with Leopard.

[TednDi]

doesn't this happen every year?

[BWhaler]

4? Four?

OK, iwork and ilife are two of them?

What are the other 2?

Surely they have no idea. But it is interesting nonetheless...

[Shookster]

Could including iLife and iWork as part of the OS be seen as anti-competitive? MS had to offer versions of Windows without Windows Media Player in Europe because of that.

[halo1982]

4? Four?

OK, iwork and ilife are two of them?

What are the other 2?

Surely they have no idea. But it is interesting nonetheless...

Not really interesting...they're for the family packs. Read the original AI article.

[aplnub]

If everybody thinks Apple is to release the new version of iLife/iWork during MWSF, how will they bundle it with Leopard? Do you think Leopard will be released 4 days from now?

On a side note, I personally think the iLife bundles will not be released until a bit after MWSF. Steve may demo the apps during MWSF keynote but it is looking to me like they will be shipping later on. Later on meaning more inline with the actual ship date of Leopard... and no, that doesn't mean it will be included with Leopard.

I hope not. I am hoping for a few enhancements in Keynote for a Jan 19 presentation submittal deadline. There are some rumors flying around that they will make some improvements on sounds and slides. I am crossing my fingers.

[solipsism]

They also list a .Mac 2007, which should be .Mac 05 if Apple follows suit from the previous offerings. I suspect that Apple has big plans for .Mac in 2007.

[LINK REMOVED FROM AMAZON]

I've posted this on several forums since this Amazon announcement came out 2 days ago, and I've absolutely no one has taken notice. I think it's more newsworthy than the soon to be released iLife and iWork which we all know is coming next week.

[solipsism]

If everybody thinks Apple is to release the new version of iLife/iWork during MWSF, how will they bundle it with Leopard? Do you think Leopard will be released 4 days from now?

On a side note, I personally think the iLife bundles will not be released until a bit after MWSF. Steve may demo the apps during MWSF keynote but it is looking to me like they will be shipping later on. Later on meaning more inline with the actual ship date of Leopard... and no, that doesn't mean it will be included with Leopard.

I suspect they will keep doing what they've been doing. They'll bundle it with new Macs. However, iWork will be a fully functional, trial version.

[demenas]

4? Four?

OK, iwork and ilife are two of them?

What are the other 2?


There were single and family pack listings for each, thus 4 listings total.

Steve

[aegisdesign]

I hope not. I am hoping for a few enhancements in Keynote for a Jan 19 presentation submittal deadline. There are some rumors flying around that they will make some improvements on sounds and slides. I am crossing my fingers.

If history repeats itself though, you'd be better off waiting for for the .01 release following a couple of weeks after the first release as there's some glaring bug or they've forgotten some important feature - like deleting pages in Pages v1. Doh!

Hopefully I'm wrong this time though. Pages v2 and Keynote v3 have been remarkably stable for me. I'm really looking forward to a proper spreadsheet program though so I can finally pension off Excel and with that the whole of MS Office.

[aegisdesign]

And ThinkSecret is alleging the Spreadsheet application WILL ship and includes a screenshot.

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0701iwork.html

The screenshot looks a little basic to me. There's no function inspector or function toolbar showing so it's difficult to tell how entering functions is done. I'd guess it'd be the Apple way using an inspector rather than the Microsoft/Lotus way of having a function entryfield in the toolbar, so get ready to buy that huge screen for all the floating inspectors. That will probably annoy switchers from MS Office just as many can't get their simple little heads around inspectors, simple toolbars and drag and drop in the Word to Pages switch.

[BenRoethig]

And ThinkSecret is alleging the Spreadsheet application WILL ship and includes a screenshot.

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0701iwork.html

The screenshot looks a little basic to me. There's no function inspector or function toolbar showing so it's difficult to tell how entering functions is done. I'd guess it'd be the Apple way using an inspector rather than the Microsoft/Lotus way of having a function entryfield in the toolbar, so get ready to buy that huge screen for all the floating inspectors. That will probably annoy switchers from MS Office just as many can't get their simple little heads around inspectors, simple toolbars and drag and drop in the Word to Pages switch.

It's no less basic than Pages. Remember, this is a consumer oriented suite (ala Appleworks and MS Works), not a professional one like office.

[jasenj1]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a Leopard only iWork and iLife. According to here (http://theocacao.com/document.page/397) there are significant improvements in Objective-C 2.0, and many new APIs & libraries available in Leopard. I would expect Apple's internally developed software to take the best advantage of those improvements.

But if they do go 10.5 only, then 10.5 had best be released. Otherwise MacWorld turns into a big "in a few months..." and Apple doesn't do that.

- Jasen.

[jamezog]

Brilliant.

[troberts]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a Leopard only iWork and iLife. According to here (http://theocacao.com/document.page/397) there are significant improvements in Objective-C 2.0, and many new APIs & libraries available in Leopard. I would expect Apple's internally developed software to take the best advantage of those improvements.

But if they do go 10.5 only, then 10.5 had best be released. Otherwise MacWorld turns into a big "in a few months..." and Apple doesn't do that.

- Jasen.
I think iLife '07 and iWork '07 will be the last versions that will run on 10.3.9 because this time next year Leopard will be out and this will allow Apple to incorporate Spotlight into the core of the applications. If Apple really wanted to push Leopard then I can see the iLife and iWork apps being reworked to support plugins. This would be a win-win situation for everyone because Apple can focus on the core of the applications and 3rd party developers can flesh them out.

[Celemourn]

iWork = meh. I'm still gonna pick up a copy of AppleWorks, even though it's getting discontinued. When I switched to windows a few years back, the one thing that I missed most of all was Claris Works. Having the fully integrated suite is just damn convenient. I've never really had a need for Office level aps. They are too big and bloated, and take too much work just to figure out something simple (like the slope and y intercept values for a trendline in excell) that should be RIGHT THERE. The integrated suite is just better. I'll switch over to iWork when Apple finishes putting all the capabilities of AppleWorks into it.

Of course, now I'm reminded of Grandpa Simpson: "BITCH BITCH BITCH!!!"

[blue2kdave]

Links are dead now...

[Louzer]

Links don't work anymore. Sad....

[Kickaha]

Celemourn: How is an 'integrated suite' better than independent apps?

[willrob]

Would AppleWorks even run in Leopard?

[Lemon Bon Bon.]

...Apple will have their Apple 'works' soon enough.

They have FileMaker as well. How hard can it be to destroy M$'s 'Word' hedgemoney.

Seeing as they hired 3 ex-Claris guys sometime ago...I'm guessing they have a 'pro' suite ready to go as soon as M$ pulls the plug in five years time.

The pattern is that they have pro' versions of all iapps? Makes sense an Office killer is in the wings...while they work Adobe Photoshop over with Aperture.

Lemon Bon Bon

[Celemourn]

Celemourn: How is an 'integrated suite' better than independent apps?

Convenience. One of the things that I've found most appealing about Claris, and I presume AppleWorks, is that it's really really easy to insert drawing or spreadsheet or database content into a document. Also, you only have to open one application, which saves load time (very goood for those of us with ADD). Primarily, though, it just has everything that I need, and in the right ammount. I have no need for separate apps. I've never used the full functionality of ANY of the Office programs. Not even close. Having it all in ONE place, and one STABLE place at that, is just really really nice. I'm not Fu-Fu, I just have never needed the 16 tons worth of bells and whistles that come in Office, and I really do like being able to generate a new text document with just two clicks (well, ok, four, technically). I've made much more use of WordPad on windows than I have of Word, because it opens fast, and gets me straight into what I need. Integrated suite suits my needs.

I hold no illusions that separate aps aren't better for some. For me though, meh.

[audiopollution]

The pattern is that they have pro' versions of all iapps? Makes sense an Office killer is in the wings...while they work Adobe Photoshop over with Aperture.

Aperture has a lot of features to gain, before that's even a remotely reasonable comparison.

[mjstaceyuofm]

perhaps MS has also realized how overboard their office apps can be.... I thought I read that Office 2007 for the Mac would also be coming out this year too.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15893060/site/newsweek/

[Louzer]

Celemourn: How is an 'integrated suite' better than independent apps?

Well, the way I read the comment wasn't so much about 'an integrated suite' as it was about that 'integrated suite' (hence the comment "I'll switch to iWork when it gets all the features of Appleworks"). Appleworks is still a very fine program that still blows away iWork in terms of features and capabilities. iWork has 'pretty', but beyond that....

[aegisdesign]

It's no less basic than Pages. Remember, this is a consumer oriented suite (ala Appleworks and MS Works), not a professional one like office.

Since both Pages and Keynote do things you simply can't do at all or can't do easily in Word or Powerpoint, never mind Appleworks, that distinction is kind of silly. Apple don't make it, just people who don't actually use iWork professionally.

Sure, Office does some things that iWork doesn't but It's early days still and Apple are closing the gap rapidly and Microsoft seem to be making the target easier to hit by removing functionality. Not every business needs the full Office features either. I don't. It runs my business just fine, except for spreadsheets, which I personally have little need for since I use MYOB for my accounting. The only time I use spreadsheets is importing/exporting SQL data.

[jvb]

perhaps MS has also realized how overboard their office apps can be.... I thought I read that Office 2007 for the Mac would also be coming out this year too.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15893060/site/newsweek/

That would be really nice if Office 2007 for Mac came out this year. Right around Leopard's release!

[aegisdesign]

How hard can it be to destroy M$'s 'Word' hedgemoney.


Very hard.

It's not the program they have to destroy, it's the near ubiquitous use of MS .DOC format files in businesses and the presumption that everybody has a copy of Word. Same goes for .XLS, .PPT and to a lesser extent Access files.

And it's about to get harder again with MS switching to their new XML based office format which even the MacBU were estimating would take them multiple person years to support.

[aegisdesign]

Appleworks is still a very fine program that still blows away iWork in terms of features and capabilities. iWork has 'pretty', but beyond that....

In what way does AppleWorks 'blow away' iWork? That's a fairly sweeping statement.

[Kickaha]

I hold no illusions that separate aps aren't better for some. For me though, meh.

We'll have to agree to disagree then. With solid, ubiquitous drag and drop, I prefer to choose my own apps for creating specialized content, and then just merge it into whatever final document form makes sense. I've yet to use an 'integrated suite' (Office, OpenOffice, AppleWorks, ClarisWorks, etc) that didn't feel hobbled and like a closed ecosystem. You get the features that *one* app developer thought were necessary, regardless of what you actually need. And no, that's not an appeal for *more* features, it's an appeal for the *right* features. The 'drawing' tools in Keynote are very primitive... and that's *fine* with me. PowerPoint's richer drawing tools still don't meet my needs, but OmniGraffle is *perfect*. Since I can drag an OG drawing right over to Keynote, I'm happy. *shrug*

[Louzer]

In what way does AppleWorks 'blow away' iWork? That's a fairly sweeping statement.

Well, we could look at it in terms of apps, then its fairly easy. iWork has no spreadsheet functionality. It has no database functionality. Can't say that I've used Keynote, but its geared more towards presentations then drawing (whether line-based or 'artistic').

While Pages may be a good 'start' for a Word processor, the truth is that its more geared as a Page Layout program then a Word replacement. Its not really geared for the student writing the term paper/thesis. And the simple integration of several different types of editing (esp. spreadsheet/drawing/word processing) just doesn't come easy for the non-integrated software.

But let's be serious here. Appleworks (nee Clarisworks) was developed over a period of 10 years or so (I got Clarisworks 2.0 free when I bought my Classic II). iWork is a 'start-from-scratch' new program. Why they felt they needed to start from scratch is beyond the thought processes of most users, because it leads to the "yeah, but where's all the useful features of xxx", but its what they chose to do. (On another note, how is anyone supposed to make a decision on whether the software might be a worthwhile investment if they don't know the direction Apple is going with it - are they trying to make it more of an office app, or just kind of like it is. Are they planning a spreadsheet or not. What else is coming up? Their secrecy doesn't help let users make educated decisions.

However, I hate it when people try to use that as an excuse. Aegisdesign says "but It's early days still and Apple are closing the gap rapidly". That's nice. How soon will they close the gap, though? Should we just sit and wait, hoping apple fills all the holes people see in the product? And what's your definition of 'rapidly', as I see updates to this software coming at most once a year (until Apple decides they're tired of it and trash it without so much as a 'sorry, folks', like they have a tendancy to do with stuff).

[Flounder]

Who else here remembers MacWrite and MacPaint, the ancestors of Claris/appleworks?

I impressed the hell out of my teachers in 5ht/6th grade using those two.

Ahh, for the days of making something in Paint, putting in on the clipboard, ejecting the disk putting in the MacWrite disk! :)

[Celemourn]

We'll have to agree to disagree then. With solid, ubiquitous drag and drop, I prefer to choose my own apps for creating specialized content, and then just merge it into whatever final document form makes sense. I've yet to use an 'integrated suite' (Office, OpenOffice, AppleWorks, ClarisWorks, etc) that didn't feel hobbled and like a closed ecosystem. You get the features that *one* app developer thought were necessary, regardless of what you actually need. And no, that's not an appeal for *more* features, it's an appeal for the *right* features. The 'drawing' tools in Keynote are very primitive... and that's *fine* with me. PowerPoint's richer drawing tools still don't meet my needs, but OmniGraffle is *perfect*. Since I can drag an OG drawing right over to Keynote, I'm happy. *shrug*

and Appleworks is $30, rather than $300.

[anantksundaram]

Is it perhaps only randomly generated to appear in the three Macs that I actively use, or do others see it too --Ads on "Apple"Insider for GoToMeetings, Windows Live, and Zune?

What are the advertisers betting on? That there is a large market for Windows in Intel-pples (perhaps larger than we realize)? That some of us might be tempted to switch?

Or perhaps they are stupid? Or, AI REALLY needs the $$.... or... In any event, it's very puzzling....

:???:

[Kickaha]

Er... iWork + OmniGraffle = $130 last I bought them. Not sure where you're pulling the $300 from, but whatever.

I've used AppleWorks. To me, it just feels like a toy compared to iWork's offerings. (Not to mention that it doesn't utilize any of the modern frameworks in OS X, it's a dead code base written to APIs that have been deprecated for a couple of years now, and that while it was nicely done for the era it was written in, the world has moved on...) In other words, it's worth every penny of $30. OTOH, IMO iWork is worth every penny of 3x that.

You've got your opinion, I've got mine, and we've got software to match. C'est la vie.

[Bulky Cranium]

A Thought...

Doesn't Apple usually tie in new features of iLife to the newest operating system, so if they will be offering new iLife packages then, then hopefully Leopard will be out too.

:D

[JeffDM]

You get the features that *one* app developer thought were necessary, regardless of what you actually need. And no, that's not an appeal for *more* features, it's an appeal for the *right* features.

The problem is that what is necessary for one person isn't for another person. Everyone might use a different set of features, many of them would look useless to other people that don't need to do the same things.

[Kickaha]

Exactly, JeffDM, and that's the problem with kitchen sink apps like Word, or suites, IMO. They try to be everything to everyone, and do no particular task all that well. I'd much rather have a variety of small, focussed tools dedicated to the things *I* need them to do, and use the ubiquitous data sharing at the OS level to combine the results.

But, that's just my philosophy. Others like the everything-in-one-app approach, and there are apps that cater to that just fine.

[Token]

Most often features show up in iApps before they are integrated as frameworks in the OS.

[JeffDM]

Exactly, JeffDM, and that's the problem with kitchen sink apps like Word, or suites, IMO. They try to be everything to everyone, and do no particular task all that well. I'd much rather have a variety of small, focussed tools dedicated to the things *I* need them to do, and use the ubiquitous data sharing at the OS level to combine the results.

But, that's just my philosophy. Others like the everything-in-one-app approach, and there are apps that cater to that just fine.

My thoughts are if you don't need a feature, you don't have to use it. Maybe your method would work if there was a reliable way of moving files between different programs, where you can send a file to someone and they can open it with their program, save it, send it back to you and expect it to work reasonably well, no matter what their profession or software preference is. But I haven't seen that. Your method works great if you never have to have other people work with your document, but I think that's about it.

I haven't used Word in a while, but I thought it has the capability to hide or rearrange user interface items so that you have something that works for you and what you do.

[JeffDM]

I'd like to know why listing a next-year product is so problematic. iLife has been an annually numbered and updated program, and iWork is numbered annually as well, both are updated every January. Anyone with basic pattern recognition skills would realize that most likely both products will be updated this January. Anyone that assumes otherwise is kidding themselves.

[Kickaha]

Yeah, I don't think the Amazon listing was a big deal, but who knows. *shrug*

As for the features, showing or hiding specific UI elements is trivial compared to the larger issues of the data model used in the app. Maybe you have to be a seasoned programmer to really grok how much it affects every aspect, but having a do-everything model under the scenes means that, even if the upper level UI is minimized, it's still not going to be optimized. I don't know if this makes sense or not, but it's just the way it is. To have a solid app that is useful for the user in the UI, effective at its task, and reasonably maintainable by the developers, you have to have a single conceptual model from top to bottom. Suite apps... don't, almost by definition. Instead of focus, you get featureitis, and that's just a bad sign.

You are right though, that I have the luxury of doing most of my work solo, so my produced documents are, for the most part, final PDFs for others' consumption. I have found, however, that when I do need to collaborate, I can almost always find a common data format that does the trick. For documents made in OmniGraffle, I can export/import with Visio files pretty well. .doc is easy to generate now, as is the venerable RTF. Tab or comma delimited tables are easy to move in or out of Excel, etc. Usually, it's not a problem, but you are right that it isn't that way for many folks.

Unfortunately, until data formats are understood to be more important for collaboration than applications, this won't change.

[ThinkingDifferent]

I've used AppleWorks. To me, it just feels like a toy compared to iWork's offerings. (Not to mention that it doesn't utilize any of the modern frameworks in OS X, it's a dead code base written to APIs that have been deprecated for a couple of years now, and that while it was nicely done for the era it was written in, the world has moved on...) In other words, it's worth every penny of $30. OTOH, IMO iWork is worth every penny of 3x that.

You've got your opinion, I've got mine, and we've got software to match. C'est la vie.

I agree but until iWork has a spreadsheet I'll be using AppleWorks.

[JeffDM]

I have found, however, that when I do need to collaborate, I can almost always find a common data format that does the trick. For documents made in OmniGraffle, I can export/import with Visio files pretty well. .doc is easy to generate now, as is the venerable RTF. Tab or comma delimited tables are easy to move in or out of Excel, etc. Usually, it's not a problem, but you are right that it isn't that way for many folks.

That will pass the raw information, but it often doesn't do so well for formatting. I have no experience with Visio compatibility though. I won't buy MS Office but I do understand why people do use it.

[JeffDM]

and Appleworks is $30,

I didn't realize it was that cheap, but I thought it was included with all PPC Macs for the last three years of its reign. I can't say I've used it much though, I only keep it as a redundancy in case Pages and NeoOffice fails me in a given task. It has been a long time since I've truly liked any office-type suite. On my Windows system, I'm still using Word Perfect Suite 8. I generally like iWork but it's not an office suite and for anything but simple page layout stuff, I really don't like how Pages does several things. The hyphenation system even breaks the standard hyphenation rules so badly it's puzzling, I have to completely turn it off.

[aegisdesign]

Well, we could look at it in terms of apps, then its fairly easy. iWork has no spreadsheet functionality.

In Pages v2 they added tables that could use spreadsheet functions. For many people it's enough.

Sure, they need a proper spreadsheet program and that appears to being addressed in 07. I'm not denying that.

AppleWorks Spreadsheet program has always been too limited for the one thing I use spreadsheets for - editing CSV exports from databases. Up until the 6.2 releases it didn't support more than 255 columns/rows IIRC.

It has no database functionality.

Yep although I've only ever found the AppleWorks DB module as useful for very simple card files that many people use spreadsheets for these days. But then I'm used to lashing things up in MySQL and HTML for most things so its not like I'd use it.

Can't say that I've used Keynote, but its geared more towards presentations then drawing (whether line-based or 'artistic').

Appleworks has a presentation module, not to be confused with it's drawing module. It's no where near as powerful or as polished as Keynote. iWork of course doesn't have a dedicated drawing module and the integrated drawing tools aren't as rich but again, enough for most people and they work the same in both apps or you can drop in images/drawings from other apps - eg. Intaglio.

While Pages may be a good 'start' for a Word processor, the truth is that its more geared as a Page Layout program then a Word replacement. Its not really geared for the student writing the term paper/thesis. And the simple integration of several different types of editing (esp. spreadsheet/drawing/word processing) just doesn't come easy for the non-integrated software.

I hear this criticism a lot, that because it's so good at layout (really, there's nothing to touch it this side of InDesign - it just works), that it's not a good wordprocessor. There's very little it doesn't do as a word processor. I write my contracts and specifications with it. I'll be using it a lot more this year for PDF newsletters with magazine quality layout. I think maybe some people get blinded by the layout functionality to the point that they think something that good at layout can't be good at just typing text. The rumours for Pages v3 strengthen the word processing side of things again. It'll easily beat AppleWorks feature for feature in the word processing stakes.

iWork has a different kind of integration - simple drag and drop from pretty much any other application. That's alien to some people too.

Old habits seem hard to break.

But let's be serious here. Appleworks (nee Clarisworks) was developed over a period of 10 years or so (I got Clarisworks 2.0 free when I bought my Classic II). iWork is a 'start-from-scratch' new program. Why they felt they needed to start from scratch is beyond the thought processes of most users, because it leads to the "yeah, but where's all the useful features of xxx", but its what they chose to do. (On another note, how is anyone supposed to make a decision on whether the software might be a worthwhile investment if they don't know the direction Apple is going with it - are they trying to make it more of an office app, or just kind of like it is. Are they planning a spreadsheet or not. What else is coming up? Their secrecy doesn't help let users make educated decisions.

Appleworks is decades old. If you hadn't noticed, the underlying technology in OSX is NOTHING like MacOS. iWork and ILife build on the frameworks under OSX and often it's where new frameworks evolve from. iWork is perhaps the most extreme example of using the OS frameworks. The guys writing it must be ex-NextStep because there's zero concessions to the old Mac way.

I don't quite get what you mean about Apple's direction. Surely all a user need do is ask if they are happy with the functionality each release gives. If they need a spreadsheet program then iWork06 wasn't for them. Apple don't do upgrade pricing so it's not like they're buying into a life of upgrades like MS Office.

However, I hate it when people try to use that as an excuse. Aegisdesign says "but It's early days still and Apple are closing the gap rapidly". That's nice. How soon will they close the gap, though? Should we just sit and wait, hoping apple fills all the holes people see in the product? And what's your definition of 'rapidly', as I see updates to this software coming at most once a year (until Apple decides they're tired of it and trash it without so much as a 'sorry, folks', like they have a tendancy to do with stuff).

It takes a long, long time to write a complete office suite. The fact they can come out with fairly well polished and stable v1 applications every year (I'm counting iWeb v1 as an iWork application since it should have been - it's parentage is clear) and then update them each year significantly is my definition of 'rapidly'. What they seem to do is develop the object frameworks first so that ALL the iWork and iLife apps get common features and then they add the applications on top.

How long does it take MS between Office updates - 3-4 years by comparison and there's often no real new functionality beyond jiggling with the menus or playing catchup with the OS - something they've been terribly bad at. It took them years to add anti-aliased fonts and even then they did it their way and they look terrible when you highlight the text.

[iJay]

so no iWork 07 and no iLife 07 announced at macworld. :despise:

amazon was WRONG. :lol: