iWork dents Office share; Nokia/Universal music; iPod giveaway

[AppleInsider]

Apple's iWork is luring some customers away from Microsoft Office, according to an NPD report. Also, Universal is attaching unlimited songs to Nokia cellphones, and Apple is assuaging victims of southern California's wildfires with iPods.

Study: iWork stealing some MS Office share

Apple is enjoying at least a temporary surge in sales of its iWork suite at Microsoft's expense, says a newly published NPD data.

About 16 percent of all recent productivity software sales for the Mac are going to Apple's software, which this year gained its first spreadsheet program. Virtually all of the remaining share belongs to Microsoft Office 2004. The result is a "success" for Apple, NPD says, as the company has struggled to gain ground with iWork since its inception.

The low price of iWork is considered one of its greatest assets. At $79, it costs roughly half the price of Office 2004's low-cost Student and Teacher Edition.

Nonetheless, the growth may largely be the result of the delayed arrival of Office 2008, which is now expected in January. iWork's sales are likely to drop once the Microsoft suite upgrade is release, the research group says.

Universal enlists Nokia for first bundled music experiment

Nokia this week said it would launch a new music strategy that many are already finding controversial.

Named Comes With Music, the plan has been co-developed with Universal Music Group and eliminates the per-song purchases or subscription fees of mobile phones. Instead, a year-long subscription to unlimited music downloads from Universal's catalog will be built into the price of some handsets.

Once completed, the service lets the owner keep any downloads made during the year. The company has not said what the cost will be to maintain unlimited access after the one-year period expires. Other labels are reportedly discussing joining the service but have not yet come to an agreement.

Objections are being raised, however, over the copy protection and motivations behind the service. Since the announcement, Nokia has confirmed that songs will be sold in a protected Windows Media format, locking out many cellphones and non-Windows PCs from playing downloaded tracks. The exact playback rights are unclear.

Universal is also believed to be using the Nokia deal as a test of the former's Total Music concept, which would build the cost of unlimited music into device costs and service plans. The music label has shown multiple signs that it objects to Apple's dominance of digital downloads and is willing to explore alternate business models. Universal first dropped its annual contracts to supply music to iTunes in favor of short-term deals and later launched DRM-free sales through Amazon and Wal-Mart while consciously excluding the Apple service.

Apple hands out iPods to young, homeless wildfire victims

At least 100 teenagers in the Poway school district are receiving free iPod nanos as partial consolation for losing their homes to the southern California wildfires in October, the region's local media reports.

The gift is the result of an e-mail sent to Apple chief Steve Jobs by Steve Boyack, husband of local councilwoman Merilee Boyack, when he felt that high school students had been excluded from the relief efforts in the area.

Though Jobs didn't contact the Boyacks personally, the iPod maker's state and government affairs senior manager Michael Foulkes coordinated the donation and also downplayed the act, saying that Apple was not looking for publicity.

Brain Age equivalent for iPods reaches iTunes Store

iTunes Store visitors awoke on Tuesday to find that Apple has posted Brain Challenge, a new game for fifth-generation and newer iPods.

Based loosely on Nintendo's Brain Age series of games for the console maker's DS handheld, the Gameloft-developed title is based around a series of short exercised that purportedly exercise the mind.

Like all iPod games, Brain Challenge is priced at $5 and doesn't play on computers or touchscreen devices such as the iPhone and iPod touch.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[MiMiC]

I like iWork '08. It does everything i need, not that i balance a company on a spreadsheet.

[lkrupp]

When iWork first came out I vividly remember all the negative comments, the nose-thumbing, the middle finger salutes. What users who frequent forums like this continue to forget is that they are in the extreme minority when it comes to their needs and wants. Yet they claim to speak for the majority of Mac users. The vast majority of Mac home users have no use what-so-ever for Office. In fact. most home PC users don't use Office either. I know because that's how it is where I work. Nobody has Office on their home machine. They don't need it. They need SIMPLE word processing, SIMPLE spreadsheet utility. That's the niche iWork fills. I only really need to have a Word compatible application that can read and save .doc format just for the sake of living in a Windows dominated world. Pages accomplishes that. So does NeoOffice. For home use Numbers is just fine for me.

I don't know why anyone is surprised to see iWork doing well. It's all the typical home user needs at a fraction of the price of Office.

[teckstud]

Some elementary school district must have got a break on iWork. Now, really!

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Apple hands out iPods to young, homeless wildfire victims

At least 100 teenagers in the Poway school district are receiving free iPod nanos as partial consolation for losing their homes to the southern California wildfires in October, the region's local media reports.

The gift is the result of an e-mail sent to Apple chief Steve Jobs by Steve Boyack, husband of local councilwoman Merilee Boyack, when he felt that high school students had been excluded from the relief efforts in the area.

Though Jobs didn't contact the Boyacks personally, the iPod maker's state and government affairs senior manager Michael Foulkes coordinated the donation and also downplayed the act, saying that Apple was not looking for publicity.

Were they donated pre-loaded with media? If they lost their homes, it stands to reason they lost their computers too. It just seems like an empty gesture.

[MsNly]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Were they donated pre-loaded with media? If they lost their homes, it stands to reason they lost their computers too. It just seems like an empty gesture.

Kid gets iPod...

Kid- "How the F$%K am I supposed to charge this if my F%#(*^G power outlets have been all been burnt to a F%#(*^G crisp?"

Apple- "Just be glad you have SOMETHING!"

Kid- "..."

[mdriftmeyer]

The more I use iWorks the more I see it has plenty of room for advancement. The PDF author functionality when you export to PDF has much to be desired.

The fact I can't create lists inside of Table Cells drives me nuts. You have to create them outside of the cell and then you can import that pre-formatted look into a table cell.

The fact I can't work on one AVERY Template Business Card interface and then command select the rest of the sheet to auto-update to that one card drives me nuts.

SOHO Business Cards.app is definitely useful for that.

The lack of Engineering Numerical Analysis, Data Acquisition functionality stuff that I had in Quattro Pro back in 1992 drives me nuts. I'd like to do a least squares approximation without having to use Matlab, Maple or Mathematica.

Logical Formulas are weak.

Discrete Mathematics is sorely lacking but then again one has to spend a small fortune for the Commercial behemoth apps to get such solutions.

Having Matlab is great but often overkill and running through X11.app is definitely weak as much of Cocoa's extended functionality, CoreGraphics, CoreData, CoreImaging, etc aren't even in existence on such large applications.

Maple uses X11.app and Java for OS X: very lame. I can understand their view seeing as Apple hasn't created a situation too good to pass up.

What I want from Apple regarding Numbers:

More than one update within the Version 3.x release cycle for Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

Add-on Libraries to be purchased for specific industries. Make a Numerical Recipes solution Package for those that need such functionality but love the Presentation capabilities of Numbers and the rest of iWorks.

More Services functionality between the Applications.

Why the hell can't I run a service that allows me to embed a Spreadsheet Table, Graph, etc., inside of Pages.app that dynamically updates when I change the parent Table or Graph?

We had this in NeXTSTEP from it's inception!!!

Extended PDF functionality for signed PDF documents which have varied encryption capabilities.

Now that PDF 1.7 is an ISO Standard, come on Apple! Get it done.

I should be able to Export to OOD with the next point release of all three applications.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

The suite has tons of room for Growth and should use the Cocoa/AppKit paradigm of Services/Delegates to extend functionality inside one app from another application without having to open the second app and hog system resources.

Pages.app still doesn't touch LaTeX publishing.

[zanshin]

The perception that kids without houses need iPods sounds very Californian. No doubt the local Red Cross chapter hands out Sushi and serves tofu burgers with a snappy Napa cab.

Seriously, these folks need a permanent State order banning them from rebuilding in those annually flaming hills, not an MP3 player.

Oh yeah -- I like iWork, too, but it can't replace Office for me.

(sigh) -- I'm still trapped in a world where more Windows just makes it darker.

[tuneman07]

Can't help but think about what the kids of Katrina got when their sub 100 K houses were destroyed and they had no place to go. But I guess its cool to give children who lost multi million dollar homes in the hills a Ipod nano. Their parents are rich, they have insurance, yea it sucks their house got burned down but they will be fine they just have to decide what color BMW or Mercedes to get when the check comes.

[dr_lha]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Pages.app still doesn't touch LaTeX publishing.

Pretty much nothing touches LaTeX for publishing, but there's a reason for that, LaTeX is powerful but un-userfriendly, and most of all its aimed at professionals and not home users. If you think that Pages is ever going to be an adequate replacement for LaTeX, you're sorely mistaken.

Pages is great for the home user, and is starting to get some professional level features (e.g. tracking changes), but its got a long way to go before its even close to Word in terms of being suitable for professionals, and I highly doubt it will ever get to the level of LaTeX.

[kyotodude]

Wow, let's all just hate California!

Seriously, a court order banning building in those hills? And what about everyone who lives in hurricane or tornado area? Or flood areas? Etc etc...

And maybe you should check your sources, but not everyone who lost a home in those fires was rich. Way to stereotype!

[pomo]

Originally Posted by kyotodude

Wow, let's all just hate California!

Seriously, a court order banning building in those hills? And what about everyone who lives in hurricane or tornado area? Or flood areas? Etc etc...

And maybe you should check your sources, but not everyone who lost a home in those fires was rich. Way to stereotype!

Agreed.

All I can say is wow. I'm very dissapointed at some of these idiotic comments. Please be more considerate of others before posting such negative nonsense. People don't realize how devastating losing a home could be, and others can't fully understand the kind gesture that apple did. Apple could have given them mac pros, but it would have not mattered because materialism doesn't matter anymore, hut a kind gesture makes the difference in the world.

[kresh]

Universal in a move to restore balance to the music industry, a balance totally destroyed by Apple, has decided to give away all their songs for free.

Anyone is eligible for the free songs as long as the person, hereafter known as "user", signs a profession that they hate Apple and that they think Apple is the spawn of Satan. The user must also agree to never use any device produced by Apple. If a user is caught with an Apple device, with Universal music loaded on it, they agree to pay Universal $750.00 USD per title.

Universal is in negotiation with Microsoft to create a Zune4iPod swap program. It's modeled after the dirty needle program in several western cities. The user simply turns in their iPod at a swap location and they will be given a Microsoft Zune.

We spoke with hundreds of teenagers this evening about this development and the universal consensus was "Screw dat, I'll just download any song I want for my iPod"!

[elroth]

Apple hands out iPods to young, homeless wildfire victims.

In what can't be just coincidence, Universal Studios pulls their TV shows off iTunes, not allowing those kids to download NBC TV shows to help take their minds off their depressing situation. Heartless Universal.

[Walter Slocombe]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Nonetheless, the growth may largely be the result of the delayed arrival of Office 2008, which is now expected in January. iWork's sales are likely to drop once the Microsoft suite upgrade is release, the research group says.

Not anything to do with Office for this family pack buyer, I was NEVER going to buy office at any time, it has always been my intention to buy iWork, Pages ROCKS for what it is and doesn't suffer the mark of M$.


PS can the mods PLEASE do something about that STUPID F**KING AD banner for JEEP at the top of the screen, that flashing is bound to be a potential epilepsy trigger and at the very least is F**KING annoying! seriously I don't wanna swear, but thats.. too much.

[aegisdesign]

Originally Posted by Walter Slocombe

PS can the mods PLEASE do something about that STUPID F**KING AD banner for JEEP at the top of the screen, that flashing is bound to be a potential epilepsy trigger and at the very least is F**KING annoying! seriously I don't wanna swear, but thats.. too much.

Not sure they can. It appears to be geo-locational advertising.

In the UK, I'm getting an advert for a Nokia N95 - FREE from O2 (the iPhone's carrier here), 800 minutes a month, unlimited text, 8GB card and free GPS for £40

The irony isn't lost on me.

[vinea]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

The more I use iWorks the more I see it has plenty of room for advancement.

There is always room for improvement.

The PDF author functionality when you export to PDF has much to be desired.

As opposed to having to buy Adobe Acrobat to do PDF at all like in Windows?

The fact I can't create lists inside of Table Cells drives me nuts. You have to create them outside of the cell and then you can import that pre-formatted look into a table cell.

There may be a non-intuitive way to generate a list. If not, you appear to have a work around for Numbers v1.

The fact I can't work on one AVERY Template Business Card interface and then command select the rest of the sheet to auto-update to that one card drives me nuts.

SOHO Business Cards.app is definitely useful for that.

Sounds like everything drives you nuts.

The lack of Engineering Numerical Analysis, Data Acquisition functionality stuff that I had in Quattro Pro back in 1992 drives me nuts. I'd like to do a least squares approximation without having to use Matlab, Maple or Mathematica.

Logical Formulas are weak.

Yes, because the fairly basic Numbers should do what Matlab, Maple or Mathematica can do. While you can do least squares in excel I dunno that you could have in v1.0.

Discrete Mathematics is sorely lacking but then again one has to spend a small fortune for the Commercial behemoth apps to get such solutions.

Sage, Maxima, Scilab, R. Some have OSX ports. Some do not.

What I want from Apple regarding Numbers:

More than one update within the Version 3.x release cycle for Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

Add-on Libraries to be purchased for specific industries. Make a Numerical Recipes solution Package for those that need such functionality but love the Presentation capabilities of Numbers and the rest of iWorks.

Sounds like you found yourself a nice little niche. I hear XCode 3.0 is pretty good.

One update in the 3.x release cycle is fine if the release cycle is 1 year vs 2 years.

Why the hell can't I run a service that allows me to embed a Spreadsheet Table, Graph, etc., inside of Pages.app that dynamically updates when I change the parent Table or Graph?

We had this in NeXTSTEP from it's inception!!!

One of the first legitimate complaints in this post if true. Although Numbers doesn't seem any more fully baked than Pages 1.0 or Keynote 1.0. Keynote 1 was cool but not quite there IMHO and had a good deal of room for improvement.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Yes, you want a $80 product to do everything. I use Keynote and feel that iWork is worth the price of admission. Keynote is a best in class application. Pages, not so much but getting better. Numbers, better than nothing.

The suite has tons of room for Growth and should use the Cocoa/AppKit paradigm of Services/Delegates to extend functionality inside one app from another application without having to open the second app and hog system resources.

It certainly has room for growth and the improvements in Keynote and Pages as well as the addition of Numbers indicates that Apple will improve iWork.

Pages.app still doesn't touch LaTeX publishing.

You're kidding right? Pages is a basic desktop publishing/word processor app that is geared toward consumers. It fills the shoes as a basic Word and PageMaker replacement. LaTeX is a typesetting program that is loved only by geeks and uber-pros.

If and when Apple adds a basic database into iWork are you also going to complain that the iWork '10 Data doesn't touch Oracle?

[hdasmith]

Originally Posted by tuneman07

Can't help but think about what the kids of Katrina got when their sub 100 K houses were destroyed and they had no place to go. But I guess its cool to give children who lost multi million dollar homes in the hills a Ipod nano. Their parents are rich, they have insurance, yea it sucks their house got burned down but they will be fine they just have to decide what color BMW or Mercedes to get when the check comes.

Take money out of the equation, it's still a devastating experience loosing all your possessions, photos, etc.. Thankfully, I've never had to go through a fire totally devastating my house, but I have had to go through several brake-ins stealing lots of stuff where they don't care to me in a monetary sense, but I do care because they mean something to me. Most of the stuff I've had taken were gifts.

[machei]

Originally Posted by Walter Slocombe

Not anything to do with Office for this family pack buyer, I was NEVER going to buy office at any time, it has always been my intention to buy iWork, Pages ROCKS for what it is and doesn't suffer the mark of M$.


PS can the mods PLEASE do something about that STUPID F**KING AD banner for JEEP at the top of the screen, that flashing is bound to be a potential epilepsy trigger and at the very least is F**KING annoying! seriously I don't wanna swear, but thats.. too much.

As blasphemous as it might be to not surf AI with Safari, I'm using Firefox with adblock and surfing AI totally ad-free. Although Safari+Pith Helmet is good, it's still Firefox+adblock FTW.

m.

[IQ78]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

...
The lack of Engineering Numerical Analysis, Data Acquisition functionality stuff that I had in Quattro Pro back in 1992 drives me nuts. I'd like to do a least squares approximation without having to use Matlab, Maple or Mathematica.

Logical Formulas are weak.

Discrete Mathematics is sorely lacking but then again one has to spend a small fortune for the Commercial behemoth apps to get such solutions.

Having Matlab is great but often overkill and running through X11.app is definitely weak as much of Cocoa's extended functionality, CoreGraphics, CoreData, CoreImaging, etc aren't even in existence on such large applications.
...

SOLUTION: Mathematica 6.0 does it all, does it well and I worship it.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

The more I use iWorks the more I see it has plenty of room for advancement. The PDF author functionality when you export to PDF has much to be desired.

The fact I can't create lists inside of Table Cells drives me nuts. You have to create them outside of the cell and then you can import that pre-formatted look into a table cell.

The fact I can't work on one AVERY Template Business Card interface and then command select the rest of the sheet to auto-update to that one card drives me nuts.

SOHO Business Cards.app is definitely useful for that.

The lack of Engineering Numerical Analysis, Data Acquisition functionality stuff that I had in Quattro Pro back in 1992 drives me nuts. I'd like to do a least squares approximation without having to use Matlab, Maple or Mathematica.

Logical Formulas are weak.

(Snip)

What? Some of them seem like reasonable complaints, but no one is saying that iWork is a 100% substitute for everything that everyone needs. I think the most reasonable explanation is that most of the stuff that you want is not necessary for iWork's target market. And LaTeX? Now that's pretty demanding of a simple consumer program. If Office does what you want, then use that. The same goes with OpenOffice or NeoOffce. I won't try to shame you. Just please don't ask programs to be things that they are not.

[Louzer]

Originally Posted by Walter Slocombe

..."Nonetheless, the growth may largely be the result of the delayed arrival of Office 2008, which is now expected in January. iWork's sales are likely to drop once the Microsoft suite upgrade is release, the research group says...."

Not anything to do with Office for this family pack buyer, I was NEVER going to buy office at any time, it has always been my intention to buy iWork, Pages ROCKS for what it is and doesn't suffer the mark of M$.

Bah, Appleworks beats them all! Shows what could've been done, if Apple perhaps decided not to just throw out an entire suite of programs and take the long arduous task of starting over from scratch.

But the quoted text is probably not correct. I doubt iWork's sales are likely to drop because of Office. They may drop percentage-wise due to the demand for office. But iWork's sales, if they drop, will more due to the fact that those who want it bought it.

Originally Posted by Walter Slocombe

PS can the mods PLEASE do something about that STUPID F**KING AD banner for JEEP at the top of the screen, that flashing is bound to be a potential epilepsy trigger and at the very least is F**KING annoying! seriously I don't wanna swear, but thats.. too much.

PithHelmet, dude, PithHelmet.

Or AdBlock and Firefox.

I find AdBlock worlds better then PithHelmet. It's easier to see what objects are on a page, and what will be blocked. It also has the ability to get ad info from various places, and keep it updated, so you can just not worry about it and block everything.

PithHelmet's good if you like the 'just block general stuff', but I've found it blocks non-ads too. It also stops links to the iTMS from launching iTunes (but I haven't delved deeply enough to know why or how to re-enable it).

BTW, I prefer to target my blocking. Some sites get blocked because the ads are just ridiculously annoying (hello, yahoo, msn, macnn, etc). Others I specifically don't block for I may actually want to see the ad or support a page's sponsors (and the ads are nice and non-annoying).

Of course, I missed out on the whole "whack-the-mole, win a free iPod" flash ads. I'm still sickened by it.

[Paladinkn00be]

I can definitely see why iWork is stealing away from MS Office. Wow, I switched to iWork when Office for mac couldnt support the new Docx format and the beta program from MS didnt do jack for me. I failed a test because I couldn't open this document. Oh well, thats fine, I figured out different solutions. I have loved everything about iWork. Yes there are features apple needs to work on, but, Pages has been available for not even a fifth of the time MS Office has been around. Of course there will be some lacking features. All in all, Pages works great for me, and Keynote kicks powerpoints ass from here to the moon and back. I havnt had to work with numbers.

The problem I have with MS Office is that everyone knows it, there isnt strong competition (till now) the programs are crap. I dont find much different from pages to word. But powerpoint is the worst program ever. Keynote took all that was wrong with power point and made it good. I dont know how anyone would want to use powerpoint again. HELL adobe acrobat makes better presentations than powerpoint.

[pbbaker123]

I too love iWork

But I don't use it (daily) for two reasons:

1. I don't want to have to export Word docs for others, then have two versions of a doc...

2. I use complicated spreadsheets that numbers can't even open, much less run..

But that doesn't mean I don't like them, I just can't use them...

[anantksundaram]

"Comes With Music?" Yikes. First "Ovi," now this.

I guess it must sound nicer in Finnish.....