In my experience, Keynote is 5/5, Pages 3.5/5, and Numbers a 1/5.
At the moment, although Numbers has better charting capabilities, Excel is far superior in its overall functionality and add-ins.
Well, Numbers is a few versions behind the other two also though.
I think it makes more sense to compare the apps between Office and iWork rather than to give an arbitrary number to iWork "completeness."
I would put it as:
Keynote vs. PowerPoint
= clear win for Keynote. Better in almost every way w/no missing functions.
Pages vs. Word
= a push. Pages is clearly the better designed app, Word has a few more tricks though
Numbers vs. Excel
= Excel wins for much more functionality than Numbers, but Numbers is a better design.
In all likelihood, Numbers will gain more functions with each release so look for the next version of the iWork suite to be the one the pundits refer to as "real competition for Office" (even though people have already been switching for years).
Well, Numbers is a few versions behind the other two also though.
I think it makes more
Numbers vs. Excel
= Excel wins for much more functionality than Numbers, but Numbers is a better design.
In all likelihood, Numbers will gain more functions with each release so look for the next version of the iWork suite to be the one the pundits refer to as "real competition for Office" (even though people have already been switching for years).
I do large amounts of number crunching in Excel...Numbers is wholly unsuited to doing this currently but I like the charting options in Numbers more. With some tweaking, and growth in expert-level tools I see Numbers coming up even. One of the small details I find maddening is when doing a web page table copy/paste into a spreadsheet. In Excel I get a properly formatted field separation and thus sortable data. Ditto with import from a data source where the data source in an URL. With Numbers I get all teh data from one row stuff into a single field. I've never truly figured out how to get the data separated without adding in another series of steps.
Spreadsheets are used for data manipulation where a database is not suitable. Numbers has some distance to go, but it's a great, great start.
You say: "When it debuted in August, Snow Leopard retailed for just $29. The lower pricing strategy has proved well for Apple"
If you really want to understand Apple, then you need to ask a simple question:
- Given that Apple likes money, WHY did they sell SL for only $29?
My personal (and very fallible) take on this is that Apple WANTS SL on as many computers as possible.
Why do I think that? Let's face it, everyone was stunned by the price. They would have been hailed for offering it for $89. At $59 they would have made twice as much per sale, and probably sold almost as many. To me the only reason for setting so low a price is that they want it in as many hands as possible. At $29, they are almost giving it away.
So why would they do this?
I believe they are doing this becasue Apple always thinks STRATEGICALLY. Their objective? They want the developer industry to use the new technologies they have implemented - Grand Central and OpenCL - and they want this because these 2 technologies are game changing in terms of performance.
Developers, however, do not want program features that are used only by a portion of the user base. So the answer is to have all Intel Macs move to Snow Leopard. This leaves developers with no excuse for not taking advantage of these tools. The kinds of programs that need these kinds of accelerations are the those whose users will have no problem paying a mere $29 to upgrade.
I sent my 12 year old daughter to a couple of Apple Store classes last summer... iMovie and Keynote.
When school started, she jumped into Pages with no other experience and has been flooring her teachers with her projects and reports. The interface to Pages is so consistent with the other products that she had zero learning curve.
I've associated all of our .xls and .doc extensions with Pages and Numbers and haven't looked back.
I use Excel at work and have found nothing I can't do in Numbers, and Word has gotten so bloated that its unusable, so Pages works perfectly for us.
I totally understand the deep divers who need the sophisticated features of Excel, but this is a classic case of the 80/20 rule... more like 95/5 in this case. Most people use only a sliver of Excel's features and would benefit far more from Numbers' usability.
Bit of a thread jack, but what's the rumor on new versions of iWork & iLife? 10.6 has been out long enough that I'm finally ready to make the jump. The iWork & iLife bundle interests me, but I don't want to buy it and then in January have Apple release `10 versions.
- Jasen.
We are so close to the January "special event" I will wait until then before buying anything Apple ... but after that.. Look out!
I've grown up using Office, of course, so I've just never seen the need to switch to iWork, even as I've become a Mac user exclusively. Why switch when I already know Word/Excel inside-out, forwards and backwards?.
The point is not to switch simply for the sake of switching, but because iWork may offer you features that allow you to work more efficiently or produce better documents than Office. Keynote, for instance, is far better than Keynote. Easier to use and produces more professional looking results.
On the other hand, my main problem is with compatibility. If I were working in a vacuum I'd have no problem ditching Office - especially since I hate the UI on the Mac version. But I work at a large corporation and that means collaborating with others on Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, etc.
Yes, iWork can import/export to other formats, but it's not 100% reliable. I've had a couple of occasions where I spent days working on, say, a slick Keynote presentation only to discover that many effects (transitions, transparency, rotated images, etc.) were lost when exported to PowerPoint (which was a requirement because my presentation needed to be merged with those of several co-workers.) The same has happened in reverse when trying to import PowerPoint slides into Keynote and finding that so many things were screwed up in the translation, it would have taken more effort to fix them than to simply re-create in Keynote or just continue working in PowerPoint.
I suspect that most of us need to collaborate with people using Office, so until and unless these issues can be resolved, iWork will find a very limited audience.
And believe me, you'd have a hard time finding a bigger Apple supporter and Microsoft hater than myself.
In Mac OS, you can make your own keyboard shortcuts for any menu item in any app. Make it really easy to create similar shortcuts in various apps or to create keystrokes for the right or left hand.
Open the System Preferences, Click on Keyboard & Mouse and then Keyboard Shortcuts and then click on the question mark at the bottom to find out how.
Thanks for the tip. I had forgotten all about that. I'm going to start using that info today!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bergermeister
I just wish they would add a drawing app so iWork would have the functionality of AppleWorks (RIP).
Also the database component. Appleworks was really ahead of it's time, IMHO.
I also have used Office extensively over the years. There's not that much to Word, but I have been able to get deep into Access and Excel.
I got iWork '09 in the Mac Box Set and so far I've enjoyed using it. Pages is very nice and allows one to easily make nice looking documents.
I still look forward to getting deeper into Numbers. Can't wait to see whether it's as deep as Excel is.
I've had several occasions to use Power Point in the recent past, but I haven't had the opportunity to use Keynote yet. I look forward to that as well.
Overall, iWork is a good value, especially if acquired in a Box Set.
Once you take the time to explore all of the capabilities of Keynote you will never, repeat, never be satisfied with Powerpoint again. Trust me. Keynote will open up a creative side you never realized you had, it's that good.
I'll save you the disappointment... it isn't. It isn't meant to be.
Its for people, not accountants/engineers. (no offense to accountants or engineers meant.)
In the plus column, Numbers is very approachable for someone who has never used a spreadsheet before. In the minus column, Numbers is woefully inadequate for anything beyond the simplest of spreadsheets. It's easily the weak link in the iWork suite.
I take a certain amount of flak from friends for running MS Office 2008 on my Macs, but at least it saves me from running Windows and Office 2007 (I detest the new ribbon bar) on my home computer, just to be able to bring home documents and spreadsheets from work.
In my experience, Keynote is 5/5, Pages 3.5/5, and Numbers a 1/5.
At the moment, although Numbers has better charting capabilities, Excel is far superior in its overall functionality and add-ins.
I agree on Keynote. Pages I would rate probably a 4.5/5 based on it's page layout capabilities alone, but then that's what's most useful to me. Numbers doesn't have the depth of Exel for sure, but what it does, it does better than Exel, at least for me.
One thing it integrate it with the OS but to make parto fthe OS?
See MS and Internet Explorer.
I totally agree. What they could do tho' is include it with the computer purchase, like iLife. They did that with Appleworks for years. That gave all iMacs complete functionality ... right out of the box and helped justify the higher purchase price.
Nice false argument, bro. The point is; iWork isn't as good as Office for what I do/need. I'm crunched for time/energy between work and school; thus, why learn lesser productivity software?
I totally agree. What they could do tho' is include it with the computer purchase, like iLife. They did that with Appleworks for years. That gave all iMacs complete functionality ... right out of the box and helped justify the higher purchase price.
foul would still be called i think still. there would need to be an option to not purchase it, however it could be checked by default.
Well, Numbers is a few versions behind the other two also though.
I think it makes more sense to compare the apps between Office and iWork rather than to give an arbitrary number to iWork "completeness."
I would put it as:
Keynote vs. PowerPoint
= clear win for Keynote. Better in almost every way w/no missing functions.
Pages vs. Word
= a push. Pages is clearly the better designed app, Word has a few more tricks though
Numbers vs. Excel
= Excel wins for much more functionality than Numbers, but Numbers is a better design.
In all likelihood, Numbers will gain more functions with each release so look for the next version of the iWork suite to be the one the pundits refer to as "real competition for Office" (even though people have already been switching for years).
Reading your post reminds me to finish reading the whole thread before posting: You've said what I was thinking and you said it better ... good job!
Comments
In my experience, Keynote is 5/5, Pages 3.5/5, and Numbers a 1/5.
At the moment, although Numbers has better charting capabilities, Excel is far superior in its overall functionality and add-ins.
Just as a matter of interest, how would you rate Microsoft Office's apps?
In my experience, Keynote is 5/5, Pages 3.5/5, and Numbers a 1/5.
At the moment, although Numbers has better charting capabilities, Excel is far superior in its overall functionality and add-ins.
Well, Numbers is a few versions behind the other two also though.
I think it makes more sense to compare the apps between Office and iWork rather than to give an arbitrary number to iWork "completeness."
I would put it as:
Keynote vs. PowerPoint
= clear win for Keynote. Better in almost every way w/no missing functions.
Pages vs. Word
= a push. Pages is clearly the better designed app, Word has a few more tricks though
Numbers vs. Excel
= Excel wins for much more functionality than Numbers, but Numbers is a better design.
In all likelihood, Numbers will gain more functions with each release so look for the next version of the iWork suite to be the one the pundits refer to as "real competition for Office" (even though people have already been switching for years).
Well, Numbers is a few versions behind the other two also though.
I think it makes more
Numbers vs. Excel
= Excel wins for much more functionality than Numbers, but Numbers is a better design.
In all likelihood, Numbers will gain more functions with each release so look for the next version of the iWork suite to be the one the pundits refer to as "real competition for Office" (even though people have already been switching for years).
I do large amounts of number crunching in Excel...Numbers is wholly unsuited to doing this currently but I like the charting options in Numbers more. With some tweaking, and growth in expert-level tools I see Numbers coming up even. One of the small details I find maddening is when doing a web page table copy/paste into a spreadsheet. In Excel I get a properly formatted field separation and thus sortable data. Ditto with import from a data source where the data source in an URL. With Numbers I get all teh data from one row stuff into a single field. I've never truly figured out how to get the data separated without adding in another series of steps.
Spreadsheets are used for data manipulation where a database is not suitable. Numbers has some distance to go, but it's a great, great start.
I never would have bought iWork were it not for the fact that by buying Leopard and iLife '09 together, I basically got iWork for free.
If you really want to understand Apple, then you need to ask a simple question:
- Given that Apple likes money, WHY did they sell SL for only $29?
My personal (and very fallible) take on this is that Apple WANTS SL on as many computers as possible.
Why do I think that? Let's face it, everyone was stunned by the price. They would have been hailed for offering it for $89. At $59 they would have made twice as much per sale, and probably sold almost as many. To me the only reason for setting so low a price is that they want it in as many hands as possible. At $29, they are almost giving it away.
So why would they do this?
I believe they are doing this becasue Apple always thinks STRATEGICALLY. Their objective? They want the developer industry to use the new technologies they have implemented - Grand Central and OpenCL - and they want this because these 2 technologies are game changing in terms of performance.
Developers, however, do not want program features that are used only by a portion of the user base. So the answer is to have all Intel Macs move to Snow Leopard. This leaves developers with no excuse for not taking advantage of these tools. The kinds of programs that need these kinds of accelerations are the those whose users will have no problem paying a mere $29 to upgrade.
IMHO
When school started, she jumped into Pages with no other experience and has been flooring her teachers with her projects and reports. The interface to Pages is so consistent with the other products that she had zero learning curve.
I've associated all of our .xls and .doc extensions with Pages and Numbers and haven't looked back.
I use Excel at work and have found nothing I can't do in Numbers, and Word has gotten so bloated that its unusable, so Pages works perfectly for us.
I totally understand the deep divers who need the sophisticated features of Excel, but this is a classic case of the 80/20 rule... more like 95/5 in this case. Most people use only a sliver of Excel's features and would benefit far more from Numbers' usability.
why learn anything new, then?
Learning something new is one thing, learning the same thing in a different program without much advantage over what you already know is different.
I still look forward to getting deeper into Numbers. Can't wait to see whether it's as deep as Excel is.
I'll save you the disappointment... it isn't. It isn't meant to be.
Its for people, not accountants/engineers. (no offense to accountants or engineers meant.)
Bit of a thread jack, but what's the rumor on new versions of iWork & iLife? 10.6 has been out long enough that I'm finally ready to make the jump. The iWork & iLife bundle interests me, but I don't want to buy it and then in January have Apple release `10 versions.
- Jasen.
We are so close to the January "special event" I will wait until then before buying anything Apple ... but after that.. Look out!
I've grown up using Office, of course, so I've just never seen the need to switch to iWork, even as I've become a Mac user exclusively. Why switch when I already know Word/Excel inside-out, forwards and backwards?.
The point is not to switch simply for the sake of switching, but because iWork may offer you features that allow you to work more efficiently or produce better documents than Office. Keynote, for instance, is far better than Keynote. Easier to use and produces more professional looking results.
On the other hand, my main problem is with compatibility. If I were working in a vacuum I'd have no problem ditching Office - especially since I hate the UI on the Mac version. But I work at a large corporation and that means collaborating with others on Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, etc.
Yes, iWork can import/export to other formats, but it's not 100% reliable. I've had a couple of occasions where I spent days working on, say, a slick Keynote presentation only to discover that many effects (transitions, transparency, rotated images, etc.) were lost when exported to PowerPoint (which was a requirement because my presentation needed to be merged with those of several co-workers.) The same has happened in reverse when trying to import PowerPoint slides into Keynote and finding that so many things were screwed up in the translation, it would have taken more effort to fix them than to simply re-create in Keynote or just continue working in PowerPoint.
I suspect that most of us need to collaborate with people using Office, so until and unless these issues can be resolved, iWork will find a very limited audience.
And believe me, you'd have a hard time finding a bigger Apple supporter and Microsoft hater than myself.
In Mac OS, you can make your own keyboard shortcuts for any menu item in any app. Make it really easy to create similar shortcuts in various apps or to create keystrokes for the right or left hand.
Open the System Preferences, Click on Keyboard & Mouse and then Keyboard Shortcuts and then click on the question mark at the bottom to find out how.
Thanks for the tip. I had forgotten all about that. I'm going to start using that info today!
I just wish they would add a drawing app so iWork would have the functionality of AppleWorks (RIP).
Also the database component. Appleworks was really ahead of it's time, IMHO.
Not that it affects me but it'll be interesting how Apple will expand their cloud initiative with iWork.
I also have used Office extensively over the years. There's not that much to Word, but I have been able to get deep into Access and Excel.
I got iWork '09 in the Mac Box Set and so far I've enjoyed using it. Pages is very nice and allows one to easily make nice looking documents.
I still look forward to getting deeper into Numbers. Can't wait to see whether it's as deep as Excel is.
I've had several occasions to use Power Point in the recent past, but I haven't had the opportunity to use Keynote yet. I look forward to that as well.
Overall, iWork is a good value, especially if acquired in a Box Set.
Once you take the time to explore all of the capabilities of Keynote you will never, repeat, never be satisfied with Powerpoint again. Trust me. Keynote will open up a creative side you never realized you had, it's that good.
I'll save you the disappointment... it isn't. It isn't meant to be.
Its for people, not accountants/engineers. (no offense to accountants or engineers meant.)
In the plus column, Numbers is very approachable for someone who has never used a spreadsheet before. In the minus column, Numbers is woefully inadequate for anything beyond the simplest of spreadsheets. It's easily the weak link in the iWork suite.
I take a certain amount of flak from friends for running MS Office 2008 on my Macs, but at least it saves me from running Windows and Office 2007 (I detest the new ribbon bar) on my home computer, just to be able to bring home documents and spreadsheets from work.
In my experience, Keynote is 5/5, Pages 3.5/5, and Numbers a 1/5.
At the moment, although Numbers has better charting capabilities, Excel is far superior in its overall functionality and add-ins.
I agree on Keynote. Pages I would rate probably a 4.5/5 based on it's page layout capabilities alone, but then that's what's most useful to me. Numbers doesn't have the depth of Exel for sure, but what it does, it does better than Exel, at least for me.
Not gonna happen.
One thing it integrate it with the OS but to make parto fthe OS?
See MS and Internet Explorer.
I totally agree. What they could do tho' is include it with the computer purchase, like iLife. They did that with Appleworks for years. That gave all iMacs complete functionality ... right out of the box and helped justify the higher purchase price.
why learn anything new, then?
Nice false argument, bro. The point is; iWork isn't as good as Office for what I do/need. I'm crunched for time/energy between work and school; thus, why learn lesser productivity software?
I totally agree. What they could do tho' is include it with the computer purchase, like iLife. They did that with Appleworks for years. That gave all iMacs complete functionality ... right out of the box and helped justify the higher purchase price.
foul would still be called i think still. there would need to be an option to not purchase it, however it could be checked by default.
Well, Numbers is a few versions behind the other two also though.
I think it makes more sense to compare the apps between Office and iWork rather than to give an arbitrary number to iWork "completeness."
I would put it as:
Keynote vs. PowerPoint
= clear win for Keynote. Better in almost every way w/no missing functions.
Pages vs. Word
= a push. Pages is clearly the better designed app, Word has a few more tricks though
Numbers vs. Excel
= Excel wins for much more functionality than Numbers, but Numbers is a better design.
In all likelihood, Numbers will gain more functions with each release so look for the next version of the iWork suite to be the one the pundits refer to as "real competition for Office" (even though people have already been switching for years).
Reading your post reminds me to finish reading the whole thread before posting: You've said what I was thinking and you said it better ... good job!