I have always been impressed with Keynote. Simple, functional, and creates amazing presentations. I wish there were more competitors to Keynote in terms of graphical prowess. But just because a program comes loaded with effects or clip art, doesn't mean you have to use it all, all the time. I love the simple presentations that come out of keynote. Now if they only had a version for Linux distros!
The reason iWork did so well is that its focus was on the Home, not the office. iWork (except for keynote) cannot compete in the business world. Lack of a database, linked info, SQL, VB scripting, etc... (you can only go so far with Automator and Applescript) that makes the MS suite the standard in the professional world. But at home, many people don't deal with that, the biggest database being a mail merge for sending out holiday cards. I think Pages is able to do that (though I haven't tried) just fine. Numbers is limited, great for finances, making good looking charts for science projects, and other basic numerical statistical things. Again, people won't be dealing with a huge array of data coming their way from some outboard gear, they just need the app to do what they need it to, and nothing more. That's where iWork shines.
The programs take out all the unnecessary stuff and make it easy for people at home to create decent things in a few clicks. Instead of the high price MS is asking for, the lower price of the iWork apps is very attractive to the home users (and education)... Apple's primary targets.
To be honest, comparing iWork to MS isn't a great comparison. They both perform similar functions, but are both geared for two totally different work styles. iWork at home, and Office in the Office.
However, I do wish it was easier to take files between the two software titles. Maybe someday they'll play nice. Any wonder it went up 50%? Not really.
When I finally returned to Mac this year, I went wholesale. I bought the family pack of iLife for both the iMac and MBP. I use Pages fairly extensively, Numbers a bit less and haven't had occasion to use Keynote yet. Quite honestly, as long as there is compatibility with opening Word and Excel docs, I'll stick with iLife and beyond. I'm happy with both and don't miss MS products. I use the Wintel setup at work anyway.
We, at work, also began using FileMaker, mostly because of it's web sharing capability. I've become pretty proficient with it and so when it came time to build my own database for my home business, I went with FileMaker. After 20 years or so, I've made the decision to cast off MS and return Apple, after having cut my teeth on a Macintosh Plus in college (with its whopping 1 meg or RAM!)
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.
Given that they already give iLife away and that they used to give Appleworks away and I assume they still include a 30 day trial of Office for Mac, I just don't see a problem, but then I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet so there's a lot of stuff I'm not "seeing".
Given that they already give iLife away and that they used to give Appleworks away and I assume they still include a 30 day trial of Office for Mac, I just don't see a problem, but then I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet so there's a lot of stuff I'm not "seeing".
with all the EU garbage about MS and IE, it wouldnt surprise me if the EU whined about that. thats why i think foul would be cried.
Given that they already give iLife away and that they used to give Appleworks away and I assume they still include a 30 day trial of Office for Mac, I just don't see a problem, but then I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet so there's a lot of stuff I'm not "seeing".
They used to offer the Office for Mac ?Test Drive?. When they came out with iWork, which only contained Pages and Keynote, I think, it was a 30-day trial. Once iWork added Numbers for iWork ?08. Sometime in 2008 that they stopped including either on the machines or on the restore discs. There was no trialware to be found on Macs with the removal of those two apps gone
I wouldn?t say that iLife is given away. It?s part of the Mac sale and any major iLife upgrade require a new purchase for $79. There is no way MS could get away with including a comparable suite on apps with their OS.
PS: Only QT 7 had the simple and professional versions for an extra charge with Leopard. With SL even that was removed. Macs are now free and clear of trial or partial apps. I had to set up a few non-Mac PCs this past week for people and it was a pain to clean out all that crapware.
My sentiments exactly. I get Office with a significant University discount. I find the current version of Word very nicely designed, and easy to use. Further, there are very few compatibility issues when sharing docs with Windows users. Pages converts Word documents OK when there isn't any advanced formatting in a Word document, but as soon as you add a text box or graphic things fall part quickly.
I own the current version of Pages and I like it. It, however, is lacking in a lot of features I use in Word. If, however, I had to pay full price for Office, and/or I didn't have to share documents, I probably could get by just fine with Pages.
In my mind, Microsoft did make a mistake by not including full macros compatibility with this version of Office for the Mac. The main reason people use Office on a Mac is for compatibility with Windows versions. Still Office for Word has a nice Mac feel, and I think Microsoft did a nice job on it [I only use Word]..
Quote:
Originally Posted by cliphord
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 current version of Word is really great, in fact. The addition of source management over the last couple versions has been a godsend.
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?
It really doesn't take long to learn iWork and it will save time (usage time). The interactivity and shared functions (for example, almost the exact same photo editing pop-up menu in Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iPhoto) of the apps really makes it a breeze. I'm certain that for some of your work you will save time and energy, plus let you have more fun and be more creative, using iWork. And yes, I have used Office.
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I'll second the comment about Keynote and Powerpoint; there really is no comparison.
The age difference between the suites is incomparable and so also it is in terms of features, I love MS Office 2007/8 - and it will be many moons before iWork comes close... here's to hoping.
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.)
There is nothing to prevent Apple from adding more depth to Numbers. Doing so would have zero impact on more casual users. In fact such capability is one of Excels greatest strengths, the entry level for trivial usage is extremely low.
The very use of the word depth should highlight for you that we aren't expecting huge changes to the top level user interface, it is capability below that that people want beefed up. Also note many people beyound accountants and engineers use math in their daily lives, a person is not inhuman just because they can add and subtract. You seem to be displaying a rather radical disregard for mathematics.
... The reason iWork did so well is that its focus was on the Home, not the office. iWork (except for keynote) cannot compete in the business world. Lack of a database, linked info, SQL, VB scripting, etc... (you can only go so far with Automator and Applescript) that makes the MS suite the standard in the professional world. But at home, many people don't deal with that, the biggest database being a mail merge for sending out holiday cards .... comparing iWork to MS isn't a great comparison. They both perform similar functions, but are both geared for two totally different work styles. iWork at home, and Office in the Office. ....
You make a good point, but I think you over-make it a bit.
iWork will likely never be up to the task for some of the intense business related things that a Fortune 500 company needs, at least for it's executives and salespeople, but that's not the whole of business by any means. iWork is not going to replace Office for hard-core intense business users, but it can replace Office for *most* business users in that most businesses don't need the complication and excess of MS Office.
Most businesses have no need for a complete programming language like VB script and at best merely want to automate a few interface tasks in a document or two. The combination of Automator and AppleScript far more than suffices for that and together they can do almost anything that can be accomplished with VB script. Certainly anything intended by those that originally added VB script to Office.
If you used iWork in a business setting, you would also be using FileMaker which throws Access to the floor in terms of usability and again, is far far more database than the average business user needs or wants.
Business is about more than just doing complicated things with VB basic and Excel. Most businesses, don't need or use anything much beyond the basic functionality of the Office suite, and most small businesses, do all their accounting with a separate accounting software package, not Excel.
Microsoft's plan is to make a product for Fortune 500 companies, and sell it to the masses of regular users and regular business users. Apple's plan is to make something for the masses of regular users and hope that it becomes enough of a standard that Fortune 500 companies might want to use it.
Like a lot of software lately, the movement is away from "do it all" suites of software and towards more task focussed software. I think that Microsoft will (eventually) figure this out and would expect them to produce a dumbed down "consumer" Office split off from their regular business Office when the competition heats up a bit more.
That said, I still like iWork much better than Microsoft's Office.
iWork's features far outweigh Office in quality & simplicity, but diversity is still lacking in Apple's spreadsheet features.
Still, Pages is more comparable to Publisher in the type of documents you can turn out & Keynote blows PowerPoint out of the water in ease of use & bling. Keynote also has a lot of neat features (like save as quicktime movie) that make it far preferred over PowerPoint.
The Office compatibility has actually gotten pretty good as of late but I still find it so frustrating that it makes you save as a new doc anytime you want to just make changes to a word document.
One other thing they need to do to increase adoption is to really advertise the ability to export to PDF. A lot of people think Office is better because Microsoft provides plugins that lets users read documents even if they don't have Office. What they don't realize is that iWork has the same capability except you likely don't even need to install anything at all since most people already have Adobe Reader for viewing PDFs. It also gives you some of the deeper publishing features you get with Adobe Acrobat so that you can tag information into the file laying claim to copyright on the content.
Apple's Advertising is really quite pathetic, they really need to spend a lot more of that moola they have in reserve on some great ads promoting both iLife & iWork. I really don't get why they do so little advertising of anything except the iPhone.
The age difference between the suites is incomparable and so also it is in terms of features, I love MS Office 2007/8 - and it will be many moons before iWork comes close... here's to hoping.
I?d argue that coming close in features is only important to a select group of users that Apple doesn?t even serve with their consumer and small business focused machines. I?d say that having the right features with ease of use and superior design is much more important for the average user than simply trying to include all the same features as MS Office.
I doubt I?ve used 0.1% of the feature set in any MS Office app and have used only a couple of their 11 or 12 apps, which doesn?t include all those server ties that do things that i can?t even conceive of. Hell, I only break out iWork a couple times a year.
PS: I will be trying the next Office for Mac specifically for Outlook for Mac. I like Mail but I really want my contacts, calendar and mail to be accessed from one app.
I want real numbers. How many people are using it? More importantly, how many suckers like me are using MobileMe? I really hope that server farm they are building is for boosting speed and bandwidth for the service.
I hope they'll release iWork 10 or 11 ASAP, because I'm looking forward to dump Word. Keynote and Numbers rock and beat MS Office to the ground for me. However Pages is missing features that are a must for technical documents such as auto-numbering of tables/figures, cross-referencing etc. I hope that these features are coming in the next version and will be done the right way, because Word is not exactly good in these either.
Also not requiring to buy MathType and EndNote separately for formulas resp. bibliography would be nice.
That's good news for Apple, and users as well. If sales are up, that should encourage Apple to keep improving it.
I don't think this tells the whole story though... I'd be willing to wager that 2010 sales will be even better... There are some folks who are hold-outs, including me...
I'm fairly confident that Apple is working on a 2010 version of iWork that will take advantage of many of the new core OS features of Snow Leopard. As soon as they do release a new version, I plan to buy 'family pack' box sets for *both* home and the office. That'll be another $458 in Apple's pocket - which I don't mind at all - it's an incredible deal for 10 copies of an OS & Office Suite.
I do have some hopes for the next version, namely improved spreadsheet features, inclusion of a database app, and support (at least via import/export) for ODF and MS' bastardized XML format.
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.
I'm interested as well. When 10.6 came out I was focused on school work and some business items so I didn't have the time to invest in updating the OS. I'm going to to do it when the new apps are releases since I'm still using iWork '08
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bergermeister
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.
BTW, iWork rocks. I no longer have Office installed on any of my machines; freedom!
I just wish they would add a drawing app so iWork would have the functionality of AppleWorks (RIP).
Agreed on the drawing app. I'm surprised there is nothing comparable in the iWork suite. Thanks for the tip also, like others I completely forgot about creating keyboard shortcuts like that.
To be honest, comparing iWork to MS isn't a great comparison. They both perform similar functions, but are both geared for two totally different work styles. iWork at home, and Office in the Office.
However, I do wish it was easier to take files between the two software titles. Maybe someday they'll play nice. Any wonder it went up 50%? Not really.[/QUOTE]
Agreed on both points!
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
They used to offer the Office for Mac ?Test Drive?. When they came out with iWork, which only contained Pages and Keynote, I think, it was a 30-day trial. Once iWork added Numbers for iWork ?08. Sometime in 2008 that they stopped including either on the machines or on the restore discs. There was no trialware to be found on Macs with the removal of those two apps gone.
You know you can download a free 30-day trial of the entire suite?
I love iWork's usability but it has problems with mailmerge being undeveloped (no SQL linking possible; inability to fully read all csv files eg semi-colon delimited) and also with most things related to databases in both Pages and more importantly Numbers. I work in Finance and I still need OpenOffice to sort out these problems, otherwise I would use iWork exclusively because I can do stuff so fast in it.
Not sure why Apple has not sorted out Database linkage, either direct or via exported csv files -maybe they had to do a deal either with Filemaker or with MS for them to develop for the next five years last time the MS contract needed fixing (about the same time Windows started to include even more OS X type features/look n feel.
I hate the fact that the best way to merge letters is using Address Book though, that's just so amateurish and not at all businesslike.
I want real numbers. How many people are using it? More importantly, how many suckers like me are using MobileMe? I really hope that server farm they are building is for boosting speed and bandwidth for the service.
Love iWork. It's all I've been using since 2006. It handles MS documents very well, but with such great PDF features built into it I never really have a need to save in an MS format.
MobileMe works beautifully. I've been a .Mac user for years now and the service has come a long way. Syncing is much more reliable than it used to be. I work off the iDisk "cloud" exclusively and the service has held up with 4gb of synced data.
Comments
The reason iWork did so well is that its focus was on the Home, not the office. iWork (except for keynote) cannot compete in the business world. Lack of a database, linked info, SQL, VB scripting, etc... (you can only go so far with Automator and Applescript) that makes the MS suite the standard in the professional world. But at home, many people don't deal with that, the biggest database being a mail merge for sending out holiday cards. I think Pages is able to do that (though I haven't tried) just fine. Numbers is limited, great for finances, making good looking charts for science projects, and other basic numerical statistical things. Again, people won't be dealing with a huge array of data coming their way from some outboard gear, they just need the app to do what they need it to, and nothing more. That's where iWork shines.
The programs take out all the unnecessary stuff and make it easy for people at home to create decent things in a few clicks. Instead of the high price MS is asking for, the lower price of the iWork apps is very attractive to the home users (and education)... Apple's primary targets.
To be honest, comparing iWork to MS isn't a great comparison. They both perform similar functions, but are both geared for two totally different work styles. iWork at home, and Office in the Office.
However, I do wish it was easier to take files between the two software titles. Maybe someday they'll play nice. Any wonder it went up 50%? Not really.
We, at work, also began using FileMaker, mostly because of it's web sharing capability. I've become pretty proficient with it and so when it came time to build my own database for my home business, I went with FileMaker. After 20 years or so, I've made the decision to cast off MS and return Apple, after having cut my teeth on a Macintosh Plus in college (with its whopping 1 meg or RAM!)
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.
Given that they already give iLife away and that they used to give Appleworks away and I assume they still include a 30 day trial of Office for Mac, I just don't see a problem, but then I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet so there's a lot of stuff I'm not "seeing".
Given that they already give iLife away and that they used to give Appleworks away and I assume they still include a 30 day trial of Office for Mac, I just don't see a problem, but then I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet so there's a lot of stuff I'm not "seeing".
with all the EU garbage about MS and IE, it wouldnt surprise me if the EU whined about that. thats why i think foul would be cried.
Given that they already give iLife away and that they used to give Appleworks away and I assume they still include a 30 day trial of Office for Mac, I just don't see a problem, but then I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet so there's a lot of stuff I'm not "seeing".
They used to offer the Office for Mac ?Test Drive?. When they came out with iWork, which only contained Pages and Keynote, I think, it was a 30-day trial. Once iWork added Numbers for iWork ?08. Sometime in 2008 that they stopped including either on the machines or on the restore discs. There was no trialware to be found on Macs with the removal of those two apps gone
I wouldn?t say that iLife is given away. It?s part of the Mac sale and any major iLife upgrade require a new purchase for $79. There is no way MS could get away with including a comparable suite on apps with their OS.
PS: Only QT 7 had the simple and professional versions for an extra charge with Leopard. With SL even that was removed. Macs are now free and clear of trial or partial apps. I had to set up a few non-Mac PCs this past week for people and it was a pain to clean out all that crapware.
I own the current version of Pages and I like it. It, however, is lacking in a lot of features I use in Word. If, however, I had to pay full price for Office, and/or I didn't have to share documents, I probably could get by just fine with Pages.
In my mind, Microsoft did make a mistake by not including full macros compatibility with this version of Office for the Mac. The main reason people use Office on a Mac is for compatibility with Windows versions. Still Office for Word has a nice Mac feel, and I think Microsoft did a nice job on it [I only use Word]..
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 current version of Word is really great, in fact. The addition of source management over the last couple versions has been a godsend.
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?
It really doesn't take long to learn iWork and it will save time (usage time). The interactivity and shared functions (for example, almost the exact same photo editing pop-up menu in Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iPhoto) of the apps really makes it a breeze. I'm certain that for some of your work you will save time and energy, plus let you have more fun and be more creative, using iWork. And yes, I have used Office.
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I'll second the comment about Keynote and Powerpoint; there really is no comparison.
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.)
There is nothing to prevent Apple from adding more depth to Numbers. Doing so would have zero impact on more casual users. In fact such capability is one of Excels greatest strengths, the entry level for trivial usage is extremely low.
The very use of the word depth should highlight for you that we aren't expecting huge changes to the top level user interface, it is capability below that that people want beefed up. Also note many people beyound accountants and engineers use math in their daily lives, a person is not inhuman just because they can add and subtract. You seem to be displaying a rather radical disregard for mathematics.
Dave
... The reason iWork did so well is that its focus was on the Home, not the office. iWork (except for keynote) cannot compete in the business world. Lack of a database, linked info, SQL, VB scripting, etc... (you can only go so far with Automator and Applescript) that makes the MS suite the standard in the professional world. But at home, many people don't deal with that, the biggest database being a mail merge for sending out holiday cards .... comparing iWork to MS isn't a great comparison. They both perform similar functions, but are both geared for two totally different work styles. iWork at home, and Office in the Office. ....
You make a good point, but I think you over-make it a bit.
iWork will likely never be up to the task for some of the intense business related things that a Fortune 500 company needs, at least for it's executives and salespeople, but that's not the whole of business by any means. iWork is not going to replace Office for hard-core intense business users, but it can replace Office for *most* business users in that most businesses don't need the complication and excess of MS Office.
Most businesses have no need for a complete programming language like VB script and at best merely want to automate a few interface tasks in a document or two. The combination of Automator and AppleScript far more than suffices for that and together they can do almost anything that can be accomplished with VB script. Certainly anything intended by those that originally added VB script to Office.
If you used iWork in a business setting, you would also be using FileMaker which throws Access to the floor in terms of usability and again, is far far more database than the average business user needs or wants.
Business is about more than just doing complicated things with VB basic and Excel. Most businesses, don't need or use anything much beyond the basic functionality of the Office suite, and most small businesses, do all their accounting with a separate accounting software package, not Excel.
Microsoft's plan is to make a product for Fortune 500 companies, and sell it to the masses of regular users and regular business users. Apple's plan is to make something for the masses of regular users and hope that it becomes enough of a standard that Fortune 500 companies might want to use it.
Like a lot of software lately, the movement is away from "do it all" suites of software and towards more task focussed software. I think that Microsoft will (eventually) figure this out and would expect them to produce a dumbed down "consumer" Office split off from their regular business Office when the competition heats up a bit more.
Larger user base = larger numbers sold.
Simple statistics.
That said, I still like iWork much better than Microsoft's Office.
iWork's features far outweigh Office in quality & simplicity, but diversity is still lacking in Apple's spreadsheet features.
Still, Pages is more comparable to Publisher in the type of documents you can turn out & Keynote blows PowerPoint out of the water in ease of use & bling. Keynote also has a lot of neat features (like save as quicktime movie) that make it far preferred over PowerPoint.
The Office compatibility has actually gotten pretty good as of late but I still find it so frustrating that it makes you save as a new doc anytime you want to just make changes to a word document.
One other thing they need to do to increase adoption is to really advertise the ability to export to PDF. A lot of people think Office is better because Microsoft provides plugins that lets users read documents even if they don't have Office. What they don't realize is that iWork has the same capability except you likely don't even need to install anything at all since most people already have Adobe Reader for viewing PDFs. It also gives you some of the deeper publishing features you get with Adobe Acrobat so that you can tag information into the file laying claim to copyright on the content.
Apple's Advertising is really quite pathetic, they really need to spend a lot more of that moola they have in reserve on some great ads promoting both iLife & iWork. I really don't get why they do so little advertising of anything except the iPhone.
The age difference between the suites is incomparable and so also it is in terms of features, I love MS Office 2007/8 - and it will be many moons before iWork comes close... here's to hoping.
I?d argue that coming close in features is only important to a select group of users that Apple doesn?t even serve with their consumer and small business focused machines. I?d say that having the right features with ease of use and superior design is much more important for the average user than simply trying to include all the same features as MS Office.
I doubt I?ve used 0.1% of the feature set in any MS Office app and have used only a couple of their 11 or 12 apps, which doesn?t include all those server ties that do things that i can?t even conceive of. Hell, I only break out iWork a couple times a year.
PS: I will be trying the next Office for Mac specifically for Outlook for Mac. I like Mail but I really want my contacts, calendar and mail to be accessed from one app.
Also not requiring to buy MathType and EndNote separately for formulas resp. bibliography would be nice.
I don't think this tells the whole story though... I'd be willing to wager that 2010 sales will be even better... There are some folks who are hold-outs, including me...
I'm fairly confident that Apple is working on a 2010 version of iWork that will take advantage of many of the new core OS features of Snow Leopard. As soon as they do release a new version, I plan to buy 'family pack' box sets for *both* home and the office. That'll be another $458 in Apple's pocket - which I don't mind at all - it's an incredible deal for 10 copies of an OS & Office Suite.
I do have some hopes for the next version, namely improved spreadsheet features, inclusion of a database app, and support (at least via import/export) for ODF and MS' bastardized XML format.
That wont fly in either US or Europe.
I know Apple is no Microsoft, but why should Apple even risk getting sued?
In business everything is a risk, and this is a very minor one considering they have less than 4% marketing share in Europe.
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.
I'm interested as well. When 10.6 came out I was focused on school work and some business items so I didn't have the time to invest in updating the OS. I'm going to to do it when the new apps are releases since I'm still using iWork '08
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.
Or peek here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...6/en/8564.html
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BTW, iWork rocks. I no longer have Office installed on any of my machines; freedom!
I just wish they would add a drawing app so iWork would have the functionality of AppleWorks (RIP).
Agreed on the drawing app. I'm surprised there is nothing comparable in the iWork suite. Thanks for the tip also, like others I completely forgot about creating keyboard shortcuts like that.
To be honest, comparing iWork to MS isn't a great comparison. They both perform similar functions, but are both geared for two totally different work styles. iWork at home, and Office in the Office.
However, I do wish it was easier to take files between the two software titles. Maybe someday they'll play nice. Any wonder it went up 50%? Not really.[/QUOTE]
Agreed on both points!
They used to offer the Office for Mac ?Test Drive?. When they came out with iWork, which only contained Pages and Keynote, I think, it was a 30-day trial. Once iWork added Numbers for iWork ?08. Sometime in 2008 that they stopped including either on the machines or on the restore discs. There was no trialware to be found on Macs with the removal of those two apps gone.
You know you can download a free 30-day trial of the entire suite?
http://www.apple.com/iwork/download-trial/
Not sure why Apple has not sorted out Database linkage, either direct or via exported csv files -maybe they had to do a deal either with Filemaker or with MS for them to develop for the next five years last time the MS contract needed fixing (about the same time Windows started to include even more OS X type features/look n feel.
I hate the fact that the best way to merge letters is using Address Book though, that's just so amateurish and not at all businesslike.
if that was allowed, MS would cry foul and would be founded in doing so. they got crushed for IE, so would be different if apple did it for iWork?
It's completely different. 4% monopoly, watch out!
I want real numbers. How many people are using it? More importantly, how many suckers like me are using MobileMe? I really hope that server farm they are building is for boosting speed and bandwidth for the service.
Love iWork. It's all I've been using since 2006. It handles MS documents very well, but with such great PDF features built into it I never really have a need to save in an MS format.
MobileMe works beautifully. I've been a .Mac user for years now and the service has come a long way. Syncing is much more reliable than it used to be. I work off the iDisk "cloud" exclusively and the service has held up with 4gb of synced data.