Er... iWork + OmniGraffle = $130 last I bought them. Not sure where you're pulling the $300 from, but whatever.
I've used AppleWorks. To me, it just feels like a toy compared to iWork's offerings. (Not to mention that it doesn't utilize any of the modern frameworks in OS X, it's a dead code base written to APIs that have been deprecated for a couple of years now, and that while it was nicely done for the era it was written in, the world has moved on...) In other words, it's worth every penny of $30. OTOH, IMO iWork is worth every penny of 3x that.
You've got your opinion, I've got mine, and we've got software to match. C'est la vie.
Doesn't Apple usually tie in new features of iLife to the newest operating system, so if they will be offering new iLife packages then, then hopefully Leopard will be out too.
You get the features that *one* app developer thought were necessary, regardless of what you actually need. And no, that's not an appeal for *more* features, it's an appeal for the *right* features.
The problem is that what is necessary for one person isn't for another person. Everyone might use a different set of features, many of them would look useless to other people that don't need to do the same things.
Exactly, JeffDM, and that's the problem with kitchen sink apps like Word, or suites, IMO. They try to be everything to everyone, and do no particular task all that well. I'd much rather have a variety of small, focussed tools dedicated to the things *I* need them to do, and use the ubiquitous data sharing at the OS level to combine the results.
But, that's just my philosophy. Others like the everything-in-one-app approach, and there are apps that cater to that just fine.
Exactly, JeffDM, and that's the problem with kitchen sink apps like Word, or suites, IMO. They try to be everything to everyone, and do no particular task all that well. I'd much rather have a variety of small, focussed tools dedicated to the things *I* need them to do, and use the ubiquitous data sharing at the OS level to combine the results.
But, that's just my philosophy. Others like the everything-in-one-app approach, and there are apps that cater to that just fine.
My thoughts are if you don't need a feature, you don't have to use it. Maybe your method would work if there was a reliable way of moving files between different programs, where you can send a file to someone and they can open it with their program, save it, send it back to you and expect it to work reasonably well, no matter what their profession or software preference is. But I haven't seen that. Your method works great if you never have to have other people work with your document, but I think that's about it.
I haven't used Word in a while, but I thought it has the capability to hide or rearrange user interface items so that you have something that works for you and what you do.
I'd like to know why listing a next-year product is so problematic. iLife has been an annually numbered and updated program, and iWork is numbered annually as well, both are updated every January. Anyone with basic pattern recognition skills would realize that most likely both products will be updated this January. Anyone that assumes otherwise is kidding themselves.
Yeah, I don't think the Amazon listing was a big deal, but who knows. *shrug*
As for the features, showing or hiding specific UI elements is trivial compared to the larger issues of the data model used in the app. Maybe you have to be a seasoned programmer to really grok how much it affects every aspect, but having a do-everything model under the scenes means that, even if the upper level UI is minimized, it's still not going to be optimized. I don't know if this makes sense or not, but it's just the way it is. To have a solid app that is useful for the user in the UI, effective at its task, and reasonably maintainable by the developers, you have to have a single conceptual model from top to bottom. Suite apps... don't, almost by definition. Instead of focus, you get featureitis, and that's just a bad sign.
You are right though, that I have the luxury of doing most of my work solo, so my produced documents are, for the most part, final PDFs for others' consumption. I have found, however, that when I do need to collaborate, I can almost always find a common data format that does the trick. For documents made in OmniGraffle, I can export/import with Visio files pretty well. .doc is easy to generate now, as is the venerable RTF. Tab or comma delimited tables are easy to move in or out of Excel, etc. Usually, it's not a problem, but you are right that it isn't that way for many folks.
Unfortunately, until data formats are understood to be more important for collaboration than applications, this won't change.
I've used AppleWorks. To me, it just feels like a toy compared to iWork's offerings. (Not to mention that it doesn't utilize any of the modern frameworks in OS X, it's a dead code base written to APIs that have been deprecated for a couple of years now, and that while it was nicely done for the era it was written in, the world has moved on...) In other words, it's worth every penny of $30. OTOH, IMO iWork is worth every penny of 3x that.
You've got your opinion, I've got mine, and we've got software to match. C'est la vie.
I agree but until iWork has a spreadsheet I'll be using AppleWorks.
I have found, however, that when I do need to collaborate, I can almost always find a common data format that does the trick. For documents made in OmniGraffle, I can export/import with Visio files pretty well. .doc is easy to generate now, as is the venerable RTF. Tab or comma delimited tables are easy to move in or out of Excel, etc. Usually, it's not a problem, but you are right that it isn't that way for many folks.
That will pass the raw information, but it often doesn't do so well for formatting. I have no experience with Visio compatibility though. I won't buy MS Office but I do understand why people do use it.
I didn't realize it was that cheap, but I thought it was included with all PPC Macs for the last three years of its reign. I can't say I've used it much though, I only keep it as a redundancy in case Pages and NeoOffice fails me in a given task. It has been a long time since I've truly liked any office-type suite. On my Windows system, I'm still using Word Perfect Suite 8. I generally like iWork but it's not an office suite and for anything but simple page layout stuff, I really don't like how Pages does several things. The hyphenation system even breaks the standard hyphenation rules so badly it's puzzling, I have to completely turn it off.
Well, we could look at it in terms of apps, then its fairly easy. iWork has no spreadsheet functionality.
In Pages v2 they added tables that could use spreadsheet functions. For many people it's enough.
Sure, they need a proper spreadsheet program and that appears to being addressed in 07. I'm not denying that.
AppleWorks Spreadsheet program has always been too limited for the one thing I use spreadsheets for - editing CSV exports from databases. Up until the 6.2 releases it didn't support more than 255 columns/rows IIRC.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louzer
It has no database functionality.
Yep although I've only ever found the AppleWorks DB module as useful for very simple card files that many people use spreadsheets for these days. But then I'm used to lashing things up in MySQL and HTML for most things so its not like I'd use it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louzer
Can't say that I've used Keynote, but its geared more towards presentations then drawing (whether line-based or 'artistic').
Appleworks has a presentation module, not to be confused with it's drawing module. It's no where near as powerful or as polished as Keynote. iWork of course doesn't have a dedicated drawing module and the integrated drawing tools aren't as rich but again, enough for most people and they work the same in both apps or you can drop in images/drawings from other apps - eg. Intaglio.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louzer
While Pages may be a good 'start' for a Word processor, the truth is that its more geared as a Page Layout program then a Word replacement. Its not really geared for the student writing the term paper/thesis. And the simple integration of several different types of editing (esp. spreadsheet/drawing/word processing) just doesn't come easy for the non-integrated software.
I hear this criticism a lot, that because it's so good at layout (really, there's nothing to touch it this side of InDesign - it just works), that it's not a good wordprocessor. There's very little it doesn't do as a word processor. I write my contracts and specifications with it. I'll be using it a lot more this year for PDF newsletters with magazine quality layout. I think maybe some people get blinded by the layout functionality to the point that they think something that good at layout can't be good at just typing text. The rumours for Pages v3 strengthen the word processing side of things again. It'll easily beat AppleWorks feature for feature in the word processing stakes.
iWork has a different kind of integration - simple drag and drop from pretty much any other application. That's alien to some people too.
Old habits seem hard to break.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louzer
But let's be serious here. Appleworks (nee Clarisworks) was developed over a period of 10 years or so (I got Clarisworks 2.0 free when I bought my Classic II). iWork is a 'start-from-scratch' new program. Why they felt they needed to start from scratch is beyond the thought processes of most users, because it leads to the "yeah, but where's all the useful features of xxx", but its what they chose to do. (On another note, how is anyone supposed to make a decision on whether the software might be a worthwhile investment if they don't know the direction Apple is going with it - are they trying to make it more of an office app, or just kind of like it is. Are they planning a spreadsheet or not. What else is coming up? Their secrecy doesn't help let users make educated decisions.
Appleworks is decades old. If you hadn't noticed, the underlying technology in OSX is NOTHING like MacOS. iWork and ILife build on the frameworks under OSX and often it's where new frameworks evolve from. iWork is perhaps the most extreme example of using the OS frameworks. The guys writing it must be ex-NextStep because there's zero concessions to the old Mac way.
I don't quite get what you mean about Apple's direction. Surely all a user need do is ask if they are happy with the functionality each release gives. If they need a spreadsheet program then iWork06 wasn't for them. Apple don't do upgrade pricing so it's not like they're buying into a life of upgrades like MS Office.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louzer
However, I hate it when people try to use that as an excuse. Aegisdesign says "but It's early days still and Apple are closing the gap rapidly". That's nice. How soon will they close the gap, though? Should we just sit and wait, hoping apple fills all the holes people see in the product? And what's your definition of 'rapidly', as I see updates to this software coming at most once a year (until Apple decides they're tired of it and trash it without so much as a 'sorry, folks', like they have a tendancy to do with stuff).
It takes a long, long time to write a complete office suite. The fact they can come out with fairly well polished and stable v1 applications every year (I'm counting iWeb v1 as an iWork application since it should have been - it's parentage is clear) and then update them each year significantly is my definition of 'rapidly'. What they seem to do is develop the object frameworks first so that ALL the iWork and iLife apps get common features and then they add the applications on top.
How long does it take MS between Office updates - 3-4 years by comparison and there's often no real new functionality beyond jiggling with the menus or playing catchup with the OS - something they've been terribly bad at. It took them years to add anti-aliased fonts and even then they did it their way and they look terrible when you highlight the text.
Comments
I've used AppleWorks. To me, it just feels like a toy compared to iWork's offerings. (Not to mention that it doesn't utilize any of the modern frameworks in OS X, it's a dead code base written to APIs that have been deprecated for a couple of years now, and that while it was nicely done for the era it was written in, the world has moved on...) In other words, it's worth every penny of $30. OTOH, IMO iWork is worth every penny of 3x that.
You've got your opinion, I've got mine, and we've got software to match. C'est la vie.
Doesn't Apple usually tie in new features of iLife to the newest operating system, so if they will be offering new iLife packages then, then hopefully Leopard will be out too.
You get the features that *one* app developer thought were necessary, regardless of what you actually need. And no, that's not an appeal for *more* features, it's an appeal for the *right* features.
The problem is that what is necessary for one person isn't for another person. Everyone might use a different set of features, many of them would look useless to other people that don't need to do the same things.
But, that's just my philosophy. Others like the everything-in-one-app approach, and there are apps that cater to that just fine.
Exactly, JeffDM, and that's the problem with kitchen sink apps like Word, or suites, IMO. They try to be everything to everyone, and do no particular task all that well. I'd much rather have a variety of small, focussed tools dedicated to the things *I* need them to do, and use the ubiquitous data sharing at the OS level to combine the results.
But, that's just my philosophy. Others like the everything-in-one-app approach, and there are apps that cater to that just fine.
My thoughts are if you don't need a feature, you don't have to use it. Maybe your method would work if there was a reliable way of moving files between different programs, where you can send a file to someone and they can open it with their program, save it, send it back to you and expect it to work reasonably well, no matter what their profession or software preference is. But I haven't seen that. Your method works great if you never have to have other people work with your document, but I think that's about it.
I haven't used Word in a while, but I thought it has the capability to hide or rearrange user interface items so that you have something that works for you and what you do.
As for the features, showing or hiding specific UI elements is trivial compared to the larger issues of the data model used in the app. Maybe you have to be a seasoned programmer to really grok how much it affects every aspect, but having a do-everything model under the scenes means that, even if the upper level UI is minimized, it's still not going to be optimized. I don't know if this makes sense or not, but it's just the way it is. To have a solid app that is useful for the user in the UI, effective at its task, and reasonably maintainable by the developers, you have to have a single conceptual model from top to bottom. Suite apps... don't, almost by definition. Instead of focus, you get featureitis, and that's just a bad sign.
You are right though, that I have the luxury of doing most of my work solo, so my produced documents are, for the most part, final PDFs for others' consumption. I have found, however, that when I do need to collaborate, I can almost always find a common data format that does the trick. For documents made in OmniGraffle, I can export/import with Visio files pretty well. .doc is easy to generate now, as is the venerable RTF. Tab or comma delimited tables are easy to move in or out of Excel, etc. Usually, it's not a problem, but you are right that it isn't that way for many folks.
Unfortunately, until data formats are understood to be more important for collaboration than applications, this won't change.
I've used AppleWorks. To me, it just feels like a toy compared to iWork's offerings. (Not to mention that it doesn't utilize any of the modern frameworks in OS X, it's a dead code base written to APIs that have been deprecated for a couple of years now, and that while it was nicely done for the era it was written in, the world has moved on...) In other words, it's worth every penny of $30. OTOH, IMO iWork is worth every penny of 3x that.
You've got your opinion, I've got mine, and we've got software to match. C'est la vie.
I agree but until iWork has a spreadsheet I'll be using AppleWorks.
I have found, however, that when I do need to collaborate, I can almost always find a common data format that does the trick. For documents made in OmniGraffle, I can export/import with Visio files pretty well. .doc is easy to generate now, as is the venerable RTF. Tab or comma delimited tables are easy to move in or out of Excel, etc. Usually, it's not a problem, but you are right that it isn't that way for many folks.
That will pass the raw information, but it often doesn't do so well for formatting. I have no experience with Visio compatibility though. I won't buy MS Office but I do understand why people do use it.
and Appleworks is $30,
I didn't realize it was that cheap, but I thought it was included with all PPC Macs for the last three years of its reign. I can't say I've used it much though, I only keep it as a redundancy in case Pages and NeoOffice fails me in a given task. It has been a long time since I've truly liked any office-type suite. On my Windows system, I'm still using Word Perfect Suite 8. I generally like iWork but it's not an office suite and for anything but simple page layout stuff, I really don't like how Pages does several things. The hyphenation system even breaks the standard hyphenation rules so badly it's puzzling, I have to completely turn it off.
Well, we could look at it in terms of apps, then its fairly easy. iWork has no spreadsheet functionality.
In Pages v2 they added tables that could use spreadsheet functions. For many people it's enough.
Sure, they need a proper spreadsheet program and that appears to being addressed in 07. I'm not denying that.
AppleWorks Spreadsheet program has always been too limited for the one thing I use spreadsheets for - editing CSV exports from databases. Up until the 6.2 releases it didn't support more than 255 columns/rows IIRC.
It has no database functionality.
Yep although I've only ever found the AppleWorks DB module as useful for very simple card files that many people use spreadsheets for these days. But then I'm used to lashing things up in MySQL and HTML for most things so its not like I'd use it.
Can't say that I've used Keynote, but its geared more towards presentations then drawing (whether line-based or 'artistic').
Appleworks has a presentation module, not to be confused with it's drawing module. It's no where near as powerful or as polished as Keynote. iWork of course doesn't have a dedicated drawing module and the integrated drawing tools aren't as rich but again, enough for most people and they work the same in both apps or you can drop in images/drawings from other apps - eg. Intaglio.
While Pages may be a good 'start' for a Word processor, the truth is that its more geared as a Page Layout program then a Word replacement. Its not really geared for the student writing the term paper/thesis. And the simple integration of several different types of editing (esp. spreadsheet/drawing/word processing) just doesn't come easy for the non-integrated software.
I hear this criticism a lot, that because it's so good at layout (really, there's nothing to touch it this side of InDesign - it just works), that it's not a good wordprocessor. There's very little it doesn't do as a word processor. I write my contracts and specifications with it. I'll be using it a lot more this year for PDF newsletters with magazine quality layout. I think maybe some people get blinded by the layout functionality to the point that they think something that good at layout can't be good at just typing text. The rumours for Pages v3 strengthen the word processing side of things again. It'll easily beat AppleWorks feature for feature in the word processing stakes.
iWork has a different kind of integration - simple drag and drop from pretty much any other application. That's alien to some people too.
Old habits seem hard to break.
But let's be serious here. Appleworks (nee Clarisworks) was developed over a period of 10 years or so (I got Clarisworks 2.0 free when I bought my Classic II). iWork is a 'start-from-scratch' new program. Why they felt they needed to start from scratch is beyond the thought processes of most users, because it leads to the "yeah, but where's all the useful features of xxx", but its what they chose to do. (On another note, how is anyone supposed to make a decision on whether the software might be a worthwhile investment if they don't know the direction Apple is going with it - are they trying to make it more of an office app, or just kind of like it is. Are they planning a spreadsheet or not. What else is coming up? Their secrecy doesn't help let users make educated decisions.
Appleworks is decades old. If you hadn't noticed, the underlying technology in OSX is NOTHING like MacOS. iWork and ILife build on the frameworks under OSX and often it's where new frameworks evolve from. iWork is perhaps the most extreme example of using the OS frameworks. The guys writing it must be ex-NextStep because there's zero concessions to the old Mac way.
I don't quite get what you mean about Apple's direction. Surely all a user need do is ask if they are happy with the functionality each release gives. If they need a spreadsheet program then iWork06 wasn't for them. Apple don't do upgrade pricing so it's not like they're buying into a life of upgrades like MS Office.
However, I hate it when people try to use that as an excuse. Aegisdesign says "but It's early days still and Apple are closing the gap rapidly". That's nice. How soon will they close the gap, though? Should we just sit and wait, hoping apple fills all the holes people see in the product? And what's your definition of 'rapidly', as I see updates to this software coming at most once a year (until Apple decides they're tired of it and trash it without so much as a 'sorry, folks', like they have a tendancy to do with stuff).
It takes a long, long time to write a complete office suite. The fact they can come out with fairly well polished and stable v1 applications every year (I'm counting iWeb v1 as an iWork application since it should have been - it's parentage is clear) and then update them each year significantly is my definition of 'rapidly'. What they seem to do is develop the object frameworks first so that ALL the iWork and iLife apps get common features and then they add the applications on top.
How long does it take MS between Office updates - 3-4 years by comparison and there's often no real new functionality beyond jiggling with the menus or playing catchup with the OS - something they've been terribly bad at. It took them years to add anti-aliased fonts and even then they did it their way and they look terrible when you highlight the text.
amazon was WRONG.