Given all the open source office projects out there, including OpenOffice and KOffice, as well as Gnumeric, I don't understand why Apple users should be deprived of a quality standalone Free spreadsheet app.
That was my point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
Never said that.
Of those, only QuickTime Pro is commercial, so you don't have much of a point. And yes, I use iChat as well as Yahoo! Messenger, despite having previously used Adium for years. And yes, I use Terminal over iTerm. And yes, I use QuickTime Pro over MPlayer. Heck, while in Windows, I often even use Internet Explorer 7, which is perfectly fine and unlike Firefox actually has proper interface elements, thankyouverymuch. I'm sorry if I suck in your view.
Never said so.
If you don't want to pay for something, no matter what, that's your choice to make, but it's nothing short of ignorant. Sometimes commercial software is superior. Sometimes open source software is superior. It has nothing at all to do with the license or the price tag.
And you missed my point as well. Given that Microsoft is an evil company, why should I use their software?
Because to brush tens of thousands of people as single-handedly "evil" is insulting and unfitting. Some, perhaps even most, of Microsoft's projects are "evil", and perhaps have all sorts of other problems. Some, on the other hand, are perfectly fine. Microsoft is organized in hundreds of little teams (with far too many layers of management), so the monolithicism you accuse Microsoft of simply does not apply.
Quote:
Proprietary file formats restrict your freedom.
That's cute, but if they help get my work done quicker right here, right now, I couldn't care less.
Not to mention, of course, that MS Office is moving away from proprietary formats, so your criticism only applies to the aging Office 2004.
Quote:
More often than not, commercial software sucks. More often than not, open source software sucks.
More often than not, any software sucks, regardless of price tag or licensing.
Quote:
Still, commercial software vendors don't give you the ability to fix the software yourself, effectively holding you hostage.
And open source projects tend to have awful code documentation, effectively making it prohibitively impossible for you to fix the software yourself without doing a crash course of several weeks to try and figure out the absurd source code structure.
Or you could end up in a situation like the Gimp, where the oh-so-non-proprietary file format isn't actually documented much at all, and where forked projects fail to be completely compatible for lack of documentation and standardization.
Don't assume that open source necessarily makes things easier for you. Yes, it theoretically enables you to fix things. But the reality is extremely far away from that, because at the end of the day, very few developers actually enjoy focusing on maintaining, documenting and restructuring code when they feel they don't have to because it's just about good enough for them ?*after all, they're already familiar with it.
That's true of Mozilla.org code, OpenOffice.org code, Gimp code, GNOME code, whathaveyou. It's a universal problem. Your idealism of "I can fix it myself" is just a few inches short of a pipe dream.
Quote:
A commercial software vendor will be strongly motivated to provide as many features as possible to win as many customers as possible.
Not necessarily. Typically, yes, but not always. Some vendors instead focus on having few features, but trying to implement them rather well. Funny that we're on the topic of Office software, in fact, since iWork is a great example of that. It doesn't do a lot, but what it can do is generally implemented in a much better way than offered by any competitor, regardless of licensing or price tag.
Quote:
Open source software has an important advantage in that it's made by people who use it
Nonsense. Eating your own dogfood applies to commercial software just as much.
Quote:
I'm looking forward to KOffice getting ported to OS X, starting with version 4.0. When that arrives, that's what I'll use.
Yes, KOffice is an interesting contender, because unlike OpenOffice.org, it doesn't blindly emulate virtually everything Microsoft does.
Quote:
I'm not sure why Apple doesn't offer a stripped-down spreadsheet as an equivalent to TextPad, which has everything I could possibly want in a work processor.
Perhaps because they simply aren't done developing it?
Given all the open source office projects out there, including OpenOffice and KOffice, as well as Gnumeric, I don't understand why Apple users should be deprived of a quality standalone Free spreadsheet app.
That was my point.
AbiWord does run natively on OS X, so the sister project Gnumeric (as part of GNOME Office) might move into that direction as well, hopefully.
There is a time and a place for all Applications, but you nearly killed me when you said IE7 was better then Firefox.
I laugh, because you see, that is a REALLY good joke. No I'm serious, that has to be the funniest thing I ever read. With it's UI being as inconsistent as it is, and the simple little matter that Microsoft pretty much owns the internet now, if you were serious you would have to be locked in a rubber room.
Wait?? Microsoft owns the Internet?
1 Word: ActiveX.
The internet is still not Purged of this disease and a lot of Web Developers are still using it. I have no idea why... but the good news is Microsoft appears to be phasing it out.
Another reason why IE sucks as much as it does: If you try to uninstall it you pretty much screw up your entire OS (if you use Windows) because a lot of Apps rely on it. Taking all of that into account IE7 is the WORST Microsoft product one can possibly imagine.
That's enough ranting on about all the ways IE is the WORST product Microsoft ever came out with. I think It's time for me to get Firefox back because I'm going insane using only Camino, and Safari has that horrendous UI...
Your ActiveX argument is about third parties being too incompetent to implement it and alternative technologies properly. ActiveX is essentially just as proprietary as its alternative, namely the Netscape/Mozilla plug-in format. It just happens that the latter is more commonly supported, but that doesn't really make it non-proprietary. Neither is standardized by an independent body.
And your uninstallation argument applies just as much to WebKit, so by your own account, all WebKit browsers, such as Safari, Shiira, OmniWeb, whathaveyou, must be awful. They're not.
It's fairly obvious to anyone who's been with the Mac a long time that iWork was deliberately hobbled to keep Office on the platform.
There's really no other explanation why Apple provides free software with consumer Macs that allow me to shoot and edit a movie and then burn it to DVD, but won't provide a spreadsheet to count how much the darn project will cost me.
Jobs is no fool. He is fully aware of the need for a consumer spreadsheet, and he's also aware that such software is trivial for Apple to build. Sabotage from Redmond is the ONLY reason not to bundle a spreadsheet with the Mac.
This will be the seventh consecutive MacWorld that I have asked for a modern spreadsheet for the Mac. I still use AppleWorks for many quick projects, but every time it's launched one wonders why such basic functionality hasn't been updated for so long. (For an interesting history on Appleworks, read this.)
I am hopeful that whatever deal Jobs struck to protect Office development has expired, and that iWork will be significantly updated with a fix for line spacing in Pages and the addition of a spreadsheet finally. Given that Office won't be coming for a year (and iWork doesn't really directly compete with Office anyway), I hope this is the case.
Forget the iPhone or even new hardware, the best thing that could happen for the platform this MacWorld would be a Mac spreadsheet.
Chucker, website developers don't write code specifically for Netscape/Mozilla plugins. There are no websites out there that work only on Firefox because they require these plugins.
That's the problem with ActiveX.
They are not comparable.
Yes, they are very much comparable. ActiveX is the plug-in standard used by Internet Explorer; the Netscape/Mozilla plug-in format is the one used by Safari, Firefox, Opera and dozens of others.
Now,
1) the latter is clearly more common if you count the amount of browser implementing it
Well, unless you want to transfer to Excel on Windows.
Or previous versions of Excel for Mac.
Or later versions of Excel for either.
Or...
MS can't ever seem to get file compatibility straight, so I'm not sure why it's so important for other apps to be 100% accurate all the time...
(They've gotten *better*, but they're not 100%, and traditionally, it's been a big lie.)
w00t!
I happen to use Excel on 2 PC's (desktop (Intel P4) and lappy (AMD
Turion) running XP SP2 Professional, Office 2003) and a Mac (OS X 10.4.8 (Quad G5), Office 2004) on pretty much a daily basis, and have moved 100's of Excel spreadsheets between these 3 platforms, and have never had a compatibility problem. And this includes extensive use of the Solver and Analysis toolkits.
AFAIK, Excel as a spreadsheet is the best there is at it's price point, on any platform. Most widely used, most feature rich.
If you (or anyone else) has suggestions for alternative spreadsheet software (<= Excel's price point), on any platform, please let me know, as I'm always interested in getting the most from this type of application (since I'm a heavy user of spreadsheets).
You are clearly not making any sense. The only Plug-In format I can think of is XPInstall which is for Extensions. There are other Plug-Ins for the Search Bar based on Sherlock but I doubt you are talking about those.
ActiveX is not so much a Plug-In as it is a script. Not a single website (save AOL Radio but that's another horrendous story altogether) requires an Extension to be installed except for those that set up an extension on their site to be used by Firefox (example: McAfee Site Advisor or Google Notebook) and even those don't really require the extension because you can still use the sites. However, if this Plug-In format is so openly documented, how about a name besides "Netscape/Mozilla plug-in format" which clearly tells me you are referring to XPI extensions.
It's fairly obvious to anyone who's been with the Mac a long time that iWork was deliberately hobbled to keep Office on the platform.
There's really no other explanation why Apple provides free software with consumer Macs that allow me to shoot and edit a movie and then burn it to DVD, but won't provide a spreadsheet to count how much the darn project will cost me.
Jobs is no fool. He is fully aware of the need for a consumer spreadsheet, and he's also aware that such software is trivial for Apple to build. Sabotage from Redmond is the ONLY reason not to bundle a spreadsheet with the Mac.
This will be the seventh consecutive MacWorld that I have asked for a modern spreadsheet for the Mac. I still use AppleWorks for many quick projects, but every time it's launched one wonders why such basic functionality hasn't been updated for so long. (For an interesting history on Appleworks, read this.)
I am hopeful that whatever deal Jobs struck to protect Office development has expired, and that iWork will be significantly updated with a fix for line spacing in Pages and the addition of a spreadsheet finally. Given that Office won't be coming for a year (and iWork doesn't really directly compete with Office anyway), I hope this is the case.
Forget the iPhone or even new hardware, the best thing that could happen for the platform this MacWorld would be a Mac spreadsheet.
It's about time.
At MWSF06, Microsoft announced a 5 year agreement with Apple for continued product development on the Mac platform (Microsoft Commits to New Versions of Office for Mac). I'd sure like to see a copy of that agreement! But whatever is in that agreement probably has wording that prohibits (or limits) Apple from competing directly with the Microsoft MBU, particularly WRT the Office suite. Given this agreement you may have to hold your breath until 2011 for an Apple spreadsheet that has a feature set comparable to Excel's (or the Office suite, in general).
I don't like MS any more than most Mac users, but when it appears that it's the only game in town, for business and technical users who want to use a Mac AND interact with Windows users frequently (like I do), you do what you have to do!
Any chance iWork will support the Office 2007 formats?
I've installed Office 2007 on my lappy, so I can look into compatibility issues with iWork 2006, however all versions of Office can open previous versions of Office files, and save in previous Office file formats. Also, Microsoft has released filters for opening Office 2007 files in the most recent previous versions of Office (including Mac Office 2004). The Office 2007 file format has a 4 letter extension instead of 3 letters, the 4th letter being an "x" added to the previous 3 letter extension, and the format is "Microsoft Office Open XML," whatever that means (but methinks it's more than just a change in the filename format going on here).
I would expect Apple to update iWork at MWSF07, and would expect that version to be able to open the new Office 2007 files, we'll know in a few weeks.
Any chance iAs for your Spreadsheet App, well Office 12 is about a year away, iWork is about a month and a half away, and you need it immediatly I assume. Get a Mac now and do what I'm doing, just download NeoOffice as a filler. It doesn't matter if you don't need the other Apps in it (although if you need options for those then well, they are there) because you can always Purge your system of it later. And if you do like it then Congrats, you found an option for yourself to use, and it didn't cost a penny.
Microsoft has only commited to a 2nd half release for Mac Office 2007, so this means as much as 12 months (as you suggest) or as little as ~7 months. So the basic problem will be opening the new Office 2007 formatted documents in older applications. I'd suggest that if possible, obtain Office documents from anyone using Office 2007 over the next few months, in the older formats compatible with the current applications you are using. I think most people do this anyway with a new release of Office, given that not everyone will have the newest release.
Would you suggest I steer away from iWork all together and just go for Office?
Pages is not a word processor (although it will work as one if you really want to use it for that), it is a Desktop Publisher of sorts. So Word and Pages in my mind, are not mutually exclusive. Keynote really does KO powerpoint, and is most excellent. There is no spreadsheet App for iWork to date, but there *should* be at the MacWord San Fran Expo at the beginning of January. Also, there is suppose to be a new version of office for Mac next year, which should improve the UI of Office greatly.
You might want to consider using Open Office just temporarily until Office for Mac 2007 comes out or iWork 2007 comes out.
I am waiting for MWSF and hoping Apple updates iWorks to include a spread sheet. In that case we can dump AW completely. AW has been a band-aid solution until iWorks is complete. I will keep it on my Macs just to open old files quickly. If I intend to do work on the file, I'll convert it to Pages.
Pages is not a word processor (although it will work as one if you really want to use it for that), it is a Desktop Publisher of sorts. So Word and Pages in my mind, are not mutually exclusive. . .
Pages may not completely replace MS Word, but it can completely replace AW word processor, which is what I use it for. For what most people use Word for, however, Pages will work just fine. It's great for that. My wife uses Pages to replace MS Publisher.
Comments
That was my point.
Never said that.
Of those, only QuickTime Pro is commercial, so you don't have much of a point. And yes, I use iChat as well as Yahoo! Messenger, despite having previously used Adium for years. And yes, I use Terminal over iTerm. And yes, I use QuickTime Pro over MPlayer. Heck, while in Windows, I often even use Internet Explorer 7, which is perfectly fine and unlike Firefox actually has proper interface elements, thankyouverymuch. I'm sorry if I suck in your view.
Never said so.
If you don't want to pay for something, no matter what, that's your choice to make, but it's nothing short of ignorant. Sometimes commercial software is superior. Sometimes open source software is superior. It has nothing at all to do with the license or the price tag.
(edited unnecessary statement)
And you missed my point as well. Given that Microsoft is an evil company, why should I use their software?
Because to brush tens of thousands of people as single-handedly "evil" is insulting and unfitting. Some, perhaps even most, of Microsoft's projects are "evil", and perhaps have all sorts of other problems. Some, on the other hand, are perfectly fine. Microsoft is organized in hundreds of little teams (with far too many layers of management), so the monolithicism you accuse Microsoft of simply does not apply.
Proprietary file formats restrict your freedom.
That's cute, but if they help get my work done quicker right here, right now, I couldn't care less.
Not to mention, of course, that MS Office is moving away from proprietary formats, so your criticism only applies to the aging Office 2004.
More often than not, commercial software sucks. More often than not, open source software sucks.
More often than not, any software sucks, regardless of price tag or licensing.
Still, commercial software vendors don't give you the ability to fix the software yourself, effectively holding you hostage.
And open source projects tend to have awful code documentation, effectively making it prohibitively impossible for you to fix the software yourself without doing a crash course of several weeks to try and figure out the absurd source code structure.
Or you could end up in a situation like the Gimp, where the oh-so-non-proprietary file format isn't actually documented much at all, and where forked projects fail to be completely compatible for lack of documentation and standardization.
Don't assume that open source necessarily makes things easier for you. Yes, it theoretically enables you to fix things. But the reality is extremely far away from that, because at the end of the day, very few developers actually enjoy focusing on maintaining, documenting and restructuring code when they feel they don't have to because it's just about good enough for them ?*after all, they're already familiar with it.
That's true of Mozilla.org code, OpenOffice.org code, Gimp code, GNOME code, whathaveyou. It's a universal problem. Your idealism of "I can fix it myself" is just a few inches short of a pipe dream.
A commercial software vendor will be strongly motivated to provide as many features as possible to win as many customers as possible.
Not necessarily. Typically, yes, but not always. Some vendors instead focus on having few features, but trying to implement them rather well. Funny that we're on the topic of Office software, in fact, since iWork is a great example of that. It doesn't do a lot, but what it can do is generally implemented in a much better way than offered by any competitor, regardless of licensing or price tag.
Open source software has an important advantage in that it's made by people who use it
Nonsense. Eating your own dogfood applies to commercial software just as much.
I'm looking forward to KOffice getting ported to OS X, starting with version 4.0. When that arrives, that's what I'll use.
Yes, KOffice is an interesting contender, because unlike OpenOffice.org, it doesn't blindly emulate virtually everything Microsoft does.
I'm not sure why Apple doesn't offer a stripped-down spreadsheet as an equivalent to TextPad, which has everything I could possibly want in a work processor.
Perhaps because they simply aren't done developing it?
Given all the open source office projects out there, including OpenOffice and KOffice, as well as Gnumeric, I don't understand why Apple users should be deprived of a quality standalone Free spreadsheet app.
That was my point.
AbiWord does run natively on OS X, so the sister project Gnumeric (as part of GNOME Office) might move into that direction as well, hopefully.
There is a time and a place for all Applications, but you nearly killed me when you said IE7 was better then Firefox.
I laugh, because you see, that is a REALLY good joke. No I'm serious, that has to be the funniest thing I ever read. With it's UI being as inconsistent as it is, and the simple little matter that Microsoft pretty much owns the internet now, if you were serious you would have to be locked in a rubber room.
Wait?? Microsoft owns the Internet?
1 Word: ActiveX.
The internet is still not Purged of this disease and a lot of Web Developers are still using it. I have no idea why... but the good news is Microsoft appears to be phasing it out.
Another reason why IE sucks as much as it does: If you try to uninstall it you pretty much screw up your entire OS (if you use Windows) because a lot of Apps rely on it. Taking all of that into account IE7 is the WORST Microsoft product one can possibly imagine.
That's enough ranting on about all the ways IE is the WORST product Microsoft ever came out with. I think It's time for me to get Firefox back because I'm going insane using only Camino, and Safari has that horrendous UI...
Your ActiveX argument is about third parties being too incompetent to implement it and alternative technologies properly. ActiveX is essentially just as proprietary as its alternative, namely the Netscape/Mozilla plug-in format. It just happens that the latter is more commonly supported, but that doesn't really make it non-proprietary. Neither is standardized by an independent body.
And your uninstallation argument applies just as much to WebKit, so by your own account, all WebKit browsers, such as Safari, Shiira, OmniWeb, whathaveyou, must be awful. They're not.
And what does this have to do with the Netscape/Mozilla Plug-In format?
It's the competitor.
You meant the XPI for extensions?
No.
Perhaps you meant to say the W3C Standards?
There is no W3C standard for plug-ins. Please learn to read my posts as I have already stated all this.
There's really no other explanation why Apple provides free software with consumer Macs that allow me to shoot and edit a movie and then burn it to DVD, but won't provide a spreadsheet to count how much the darn project will cost me.
Jobs is no fool. He is fully aware of the need for a consumer spreadsheet, and he's also aware that such software is trivial for Apple to build. Sabotage from Redmond is the ONLY reason not to bundle a spreadsheet with the Mac.
This will be the seventh consecutive MacWorld that I have asked for a modern spreadsheet for the Mac. I still use AppleWorks for many quick projects, but every time it's launched one wonders why such basic functionality hasn't been updated for so long. (For an interesting history on Appleworks, read this.)
I am hopeful that whatever deal Jobs struck to protect Office development has expired, and that iWork will be significantly updated with a fix for line spacing in Pages and the addition of a spreadsheet finally. Given that Office won't be coming for a year (and iWork doesn't really directly compete with Office anyway), I hope this is the case.
Forget the iPhone or even new hardware, the best thing that could happen for the platform this MacWorld would be a Mac spreadsheet.
It's about time.
Chucker, website developers don't write code specifically for Netscape/Mozilla plugins. There are no websites out there that work only on Firefox because they require these plugins.
That's the problem with ActiveX.
They are not comparable.
Yes, they are very much comparable. ActiveX is the plug-in standard used by Internet Explorer; the Netscape/Mozilla plug-in format is the one used by Safari, Firefox, Opera and dozens of others.
Now,
1) the latter is clearly more common if you count the amount of browser implementing it
2) the latter is more openly documented.
But they're both proprietary.
Well, unless you want to transfer to Excel on Windows.
Or previous versions of Excel for Mac.
Or later versions of Excel for either.
Or...
MS can't ever seem to get file compatibility straight, so I'm not sure why it's so important for other apps to be 100% accurate all the time...
(They've gotten *better*, but they're not 100%, and traditionally, it's been a big lie.)
w00t!
I happen to use Excel on 2 PC's (desktop (Intel P4) and lappy (AMD
Turion) running XP SP2 Professional, Office 2003) and a Mac (OS X 10.4.8 (Quad G5), Office 2004) on pretty much a daily basis, and have moved 100's of Excel spreadsheets between these 3 platforms, and have never had a compatibility problem. And this includes extensive use of the Solver and Analysis toolkits.
AFAIK, Excel as a spreadsheet is the best there is at it's price point, on any platform. Most widely used, most feature rich.
If you (or anyone else) has suggestions for alternative spreadsheet software (<= Excel's price point), on any platform, please let me know, as I'm always interested in getting the most from this type of application (since I'm a heavy user of spreadsheets).
You are clearly not making any sense. The only Plug-In format I can think of is XPInstall which is for Extensions. There are other Plug-Ins for the Search Bar based on Sherlock but I doubt you are talking about those.
ActiveX is not so much a Plug-In as it is a script. Not a single website (save AOL Radio but that's another horrendous story altogether) requires an Extension to be installed except for those that set up an extension on their site to be used by Firefox (example: McAfee Site Advisor or Google Notebook) and even those don't really require the extension because you can still use the sites. However, if this Plug-In format is so openly documented, how about a name besides "Netscape/Mozilla plug-in format" which clearly tells me you are referring to XPI extensions.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/plugins/
It's fairly obvious to anyone who's been with the Mac a long time that iWork was deliberately hobbled to keep Office on the platform.
There's really no other explanation why Apple provides free software with consumer Macs that allow me to shoot and edit a movie and then burn it to DVD, but won't provide a spreadsheet to count how much the darn project will cost me.
Jobs is no fool. He is fully aware of the need for a consumer spreadsheet, and he's also aware that such software is trivial for Apple to build. Sabotage from Redmond is the ONLY reason not to bundle a spreadsheet with the Mac.
This will be the seventh consecutive MacWorld that I have asked for a modern spreadsheet for the Mac. I still use AppleWorks for many quick projects, but every time it's launched one wonders why such basic functionality hasn't been updated for so long. (For an interesting history on Appleworks, read this.)
I am hopeful that whatever deal Jobs struck to protect Office development has expired, and that iWork will be significantly updated with a fix for line spacing in Pages and the addition of a spreadsheet finally. Given that Office won't be coming for a year (and iWork doesn't really directly compete with Office anyway), I hope this is the case.
Forget the iPhone or even new hardware, the best thing that could happen for the platform this MacWorld would be a Mac spreadsheet.
It's about time.
At MWSF06, Microsoft announced a 5 year agreement with Apple for continued product development on the Mac platform (Microsoft Commits to New Versions of Office for Mac). I'd sure like to see a copy of that agreement! But whatever is in that agreement probably has wording that prohibits (or limits) Apple from competing directly with the Microsoft MBU, particularly WRT the Office suite. Given this agreement you may have to hold your breath until 2011 for an Apple spreadsheet that has a feature set comparable to Excel's (or the Office suite, in general).
I don't like MS any more than most Mac users, but when it appears that it's the only game in town, for business and technical users who want to use a Mac AND interact with Windows users frequently (like I do), you do what you have to do!
Any chance iWork will support the Office 2007 formats?
I've installed Office 2007 on my lappy, so I can look into compatibility issues with iWork 2006, however all versions of Office can open previous versions of Office files, and save in previous Office file formats. Also, Microsoft has released filters for opening Office 2007 files in the most recent previous versions of Office (including Mac Office 2004). The Office 2007 file format has a 4 letter extension instead of 3 letters, the 4th letter being an "x" added to the previous 3 letter extension, and the format is "Microsoft Office Open XML," whatever that means (but methinks it's more than just a change in the filename format going on here).
I would expect Apple to update iWork at MWSF07, and would expect that version to be able to open the new Office 2007 files, we'll know in a few weeks.
Any chance iWork will support the Office 2007 formats?
In Leopard, any Cocoa app will support them.
Wouldn't surprise me if iWork will have it even before that.
Any chance iAs for your Spreadsheet App, well Office 12 is about a year away, iWork is about a month and a half away, and you need it immediatly I assume. Get a Mac now and do what I'm doing, just download NeoOffice as a filler. It doesn't matter if you don't need the other Apps in it (although if you need options for those then well, they are there) because you can always Purge your system of it later. And if you do like it then Congrats, you found an option for yourself to use, and it didn't cost a penny.
Microsoft has only commited to a 2nd half release for Mac Office 2007, so this means as much as 12 months (as you suggest) or as little as ~7 months. So the basic problem will be opening the new Office 2007 formatted documents in older applications. I'd suggest that if possible, obtain Office documents from anyone using Office 2007 over the next few months, in the older formats compatible with the current applications you are using. I think most people do this anyway with a new release of Office, given that not everyone will have the newest release.
Would you suggest I steer away from iWork all together and just go for Office?
Pages is not a word processor (although it will work as one if you really want to use it for that), it is a Desktop Publisher of sorts. So Word and Pages in my mind, are not mutually exclusive. Keynote really does KO powerpoint, and is most excellent. There is no spreadsheet App for iWork to date, but there *should* be at the MacWord San Fran Expo at the beginning of January. Also, there is suppose to be a new version of office for Mac next year, which should improve the UI of Office greatly.
You might want to consider using Open Office just temporarily until Office for Mac 2007 comes out or iWork 2007 comes out.
Pages is not a word processor (although it will work as one if you really want to use it for that), it is a Desktop Publisher of sorts. So Word and Pages in my mind, are not mutually exclusive. . .
Pages may not completely replace MS Word, but it can completely replace AW word processor, which is what I use it for. For what most people use Word for, however, Pages will work just fine. It's great for that. My wife uses Pages to replace MS Publisher.
In Leopard, any Cocoa app will support them.
Wouldn't surprise me if iWork will have it even before that.
Anybody