iWork 08

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  • Reply 41 of 143
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MajorMatt View Post


    Numbers is really sluggish on large spreadsheets but otherwise superb!





    I think the target market is designers who need good looking sales presentations and only lightweight number crunching. Our CFO said it's good for 'creative accounting' (as a joke). Everything I've tried so far worked perfectly - importing and exporting Excel, and it is pretty fast on the quad 3.0s.
  • Reply 42 of 143
    gamringamrin Posts: 114member
    Something minor I hadn't noticed until just now:



    Plant your mouse cursor in (or at the end of) any word in Pages and hit "escape." Pages will offer dozens of words in a floating menu for completing the word you've selected. It's a lot like how Japanese word processors allow you to select from multiple kanji selections when you type out a word in hiragana. Did Pages always do this?
  • Reply 43 of 143
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    I think the target market is designers who need good looking sales presentations and only lightweight number crunching. Our CFO said it's good for 'creative accounting' (as a joke). Everything I've tried so far worked perfectly - importing and exporting Excel, and it is pretty fast on the quad 3.0s.



    I wonder what designers are going to use the statistical functions?
  • Reply 44 of 143
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Daffy_Duck View Post


    I wonder what designers are going to use the statistical functions?





    Me, 2 semesters of Statistics, but very Excel-centric. Haven't checked it out in Numbers. Does it work the same?
  • Reply 45 of 143
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gamrin View Post


    Something minor I hadn't noticed until just now:



    Plant your mouse cursor in (or at the end of) any word in Pages and hit "escape." Pages will offer dozens of words in a floating menu for completing the word you've selected. It's a lot like how Japanese word processors allow you to select from multiple kanji selections when you type out a word in hiragana. Did Pages always do this?



    That's an OS/X feature, it's not Pages specific. Try it in Text Edit, Mail, anything basically, it'll do the same thing.
  • Reply 46 of 143
    donebyleedonebylee Posts: 521member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gamrin View Post


    I think you misunderstood, donebylee. Pages will *export* flawlessly to Word .doc format via Pages' export function (all formatting will be translated, as will changes and comments information). However, using the "copy and paste" function from Pages to Word or vice versa will give you only the formatted text (which, of course, includes only the text's font, size, style, and that sort of thing). As far as I know, however, using the copy/paste function will *never* bring along additional "document-specific" information like changes and comments, regardless of what word-processing software you're using.



    Gamrin, thanks for the clarification. Sounds like this is the iWork package for me.



    MS may never see my hard drive again.
  • Reply 47 of 143
    debenmdebenm Posts: 99member
    IMPRESSIVE...



    iWork 06 took up 1.2gb of hard drive space... iWork '08 takes 687mb...



    How did they add a 3rd application (numbers) and cut the HD space required nearly in half? MS could NEVER do that!



    ~ Keynote '06 = 1.15gb

    ~ keynote '08 = 282.7mb



    I am impressed ~ although I do think that Keynote '06 moved a little quicker on some things.
  • Reply 48 of 143
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    It doesn't open every Word document correctly. It also doesn't open every RTF document without format loss either. Now, I can say that this is because I have a custom header in each file, which I had to make in both MS Word 2003 and Nisus Writer Pro which I have come to love. However, Pages is quickly taking me by the hand. Pages is nice and I may have been the biggest critic when it came out but this time, they have a better grasp of what is going on in Word Processing. My brother and I may be switching but I don't think Corporate America people will be ditching MS Office just yet.







    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gamrin View Post


    I've been using Pages for the last six hours, bringing over Word documents and seeing what Pages could handle. So far, every Word document opened without flaw and with the correct formatting.



    In about 30 minutes, I learned Pages' styles system and was on my way to clearing the MS confusing style crumbs out of my documents. I bought iWork when it first came out a few years ago with the desire of replacing the very creaky MS Word, but I came away unimpressed. The original Pages needed a great deal of polish, so I figured I'd come back in a few revisions. I'm happy to say that Pages '08, at this point, looks like it's going to be capable of replacing Word entirely... at least for me... and I write for a living.



    The overall UI of Pages has gotten better and easier to use, with my particularly favorite element being the ability to get rid of buttons and palettes that I don't want to see. A few more tweaks and Pages will be, dare I say it, perfect for 95% of the average person's needs.



    Now to see if InDesign can import Pages documents without losing formatting...



  • Reply 49 of 143
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    One last thing. I have had some unexpected program crashes with Pages too. Usually when working with iPhoto.
  • Reply 50 of 143
    This may sound really out there, but I wish Apple would make a PC version of iWork also, and then give both the Mac version and PC version away for free. Why free? Because it would make a serious dent in how many people buy MS Office. In fact, why would most people buy MS Office ever again? Apple would gain big time market share in office suite software and also in mind share. If people run mainly Apple iWork, why should they buy a PC in the first place?



    If I were Apple, I would gladly trade the money from iWork sales for market share in Office suite software. Apple has like 15 billion cash on hand. They can easily trade a few million for market share.



    This would seriously hurt Microsoft and in fact, give Microsoft back exactly what they did in the browser wars. Give software away for free. However, Microsoft can't haul Apple into court as a monopoly.



    However, I think Microsoft may try to retaliate but I think Apple could get an ace up it's sleeve itf it bought Adobe. Why, because Apple could threaten pulling Adobe off the PC if Microsoft did anything in retaliation. Talk about the big guns firing broadsides!



    The other thing Apple really should do is sell OS X for PCs. I know everybody says no way but here is why. Apple would still get a nice profit off every copy sold and MS would sell far less copies of Vista. What would MS do to earn money - sell more Xboxes? They are losing billions on it currently. Microsoft's stock would plunge and the press would start writing articles about Microsft being doomed. People would flee MS and flock to Apple.



    Again this is giving MS back its own medicine. MS can cry all it wants but they couldn't haul Apple into court for being a monopoly. Apple needs to leverage their advantage and attack MS hard right now. Being in business is not just about creating the best hardware and software possible; it is knocking off competitors who steal away sales and profits away that allow one to create in the first place.



    I truely think Apple wouldn't get too lazy at the wheel. While I think MS just sees software and computers as a vehicle to make money, Apple creates products because they want better tools to do their work - the money is secondary. That is why market share has never been the goal for Apple.



    Buty this needs to change. Apple should go on the attack now. Buy Adobe, give away iWork, sell OS X for PC, and buy up any other software product that has a lion share in its domain. Apple can do this and stun everybody. The press would be all over this and that is worth millions in free advertising.



    And don't tell me how hard it would be to support OS X on Windows. After all, the OS is already written; it just needs new drivers and such. However, many of the devices that need drivers already work with OS X. I'm not saying it is totally easy but it is not that hard.



    I really doubt Apple would lose sales of hardware either. Theoretical lost sales would be gained back eventually when the user ends up buying Macs in the future. After all, once a user switches, they hardly ever go back. Also, I wonder how much profit Apple makes off each Mac anyway. It can't be that much more compared to the profit margins it would make selling OS X for PCs.



    So iWork '08 finally allows Apple to go on the offensive. I say "Seize the day."
  • Reply 51 of 143
    outsideroutsider Posts: 6,008member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DaveGee View Post


    One thing that to this day I would LOVE for Apple to roll out is a 'keynote player engine' for Windows... Yea I know it would be more than just a little work but it would be SO cool to be able to send a truly DROOL-WORTHY Keynote presentation to a Windows user and let them turn green with envy and have them demand to know why they can't do stuff...



    Yes! In our 50/50 Mac/PC environment people are always asking me how to do something or other in Powerpoint. They usually can't do what they want in PPT but if they had a Keynote viewer, they could create it on their Mac and send to the client with a link to a viewer download.
  • Reply 52 of 143
    gongon Posts: 2,437member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by debenm View Post


    iWork 06 took up 1.2gb of hard drive space... iWork '08 takes 687mb...



    Is this including everything iWork installs in Library?
  • Reply 53 of 143
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gamrin View Post


    I think you misunderstood, donebylee. Pages will *export* flawlessly to Word .doc format via Pages' export function (all formatting will be translated, as will changes and comments information). However, using the "copy and paste" function from Pages to Word or vice versa will give you only the formatted text (which, of course, includes only the text's font, size, style, and that sort of thing). As far as I know, however, using the copy/paste function will *never* bring along additional "document-specific" information like changes and comments, regardless of what word-processing software you're using.



    This sounds almost too good to be true.



    I'm a research student, doing lots of work in APA format, etc. with lots of tables. Everybody uses Word (of course). Is iWork something that would help me, or will the passing-around of documents to Windows-centered colleagues, etc. slow me down too much because of exporting issues?



    If this issue can be confirmed, then can you save some room on the bandwagon for me?
  • Reply 54 of 143
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by debenm View Post


    IMPRESSIVE...



    iWork 06 took up 1.2gb of hard drive space... iWork '08 takes 687mb...



    How did they add a 3rd application (numbers) and cut the HD space required nearly in half? MS could NEVER do that!



    ~ Keynote '06 = 1.15gb

    ~ keynote '08 = 282.7mb



    I am impressed ~ although I do think that Keynote '06 moved a little quicker on some things.



    Keynote '06 is actually 115MB once you remove the extra languages and Pages is 163MB. Also, Pages '06 had two sets of templates that were basically the same in English.lproj/templates. I just left the ISO one and it still works fine.



    I just hope they do this with all their apps in Leopard so that I don't have to clean up after them.
  • Reply 55 of 143
    gamringamrin Posts: 114member
    Pete, honestly, I made an MLA formatted template in about five minutes. It was foolishly simple (though I disagree with how Apple makes you jump through a few too many hoops to modify pagination as necessary for MLA format). Chances are you can make an APA formatted template in a similar span of time. I haven't toyed around with tables in Pages and Word documents. I literally do *all* my layouts in InDesign. I refuse to try to use shorhorned page layout functions into a word processing program... unless they're freakin' awesome. Though I'm sure Pages can make those tables easily, I don't know how well they'll export (if at all) to Word. Has anyone else out there tried exporting tables?



    As far as getting others with Word to be able to read your documents, I honestly think you'll be fine (though I can't remember if APA uses footnotes and I haven't tested exporting footnotes from Pages to Word and vice versa yet). Just think of exporting to .doc format like a different version of "Save As." It's not at all complicated or time-consuming. As far as opening .doc documents, Pages does that just fine, at least in my experience. Complex documents, as others have mentioned, may lose a bit of formatting, however. In my case, though, 100% of my documents have been opened and modified back and forth between Pages and Word with no loss of information or formatting. Just remember that if you make any changes to a Pages document (or, say, a collegue's Word document) that you want others using Word to be able to read later on, export it, don't save it. It's too bad there's no key command in Pags for exporting. InDesign has one. o.O



    And lastly: Pages is just a joy to use. It doesn't lock up for five seconds when I delete a paragraph, it's much more space friendly (once you hide the relatively useless toolbar), and it costs much less. I simply haven't been as impressed with a piece of Apple software since Apple bought SoundJam and turned it into iTunes.
  • Reply 56 of 143
    meelashmeelash Posts: 1,045member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Outsider View Post


    Yes! In our 50/50 Mac/PC environment people are always asking me how to do something or other in Powerpoint. They usually can't do what they want in PPT but if they had a Keynote viewer, they could create it on their Mac and send to the client with a link to a viewer download.



    I've used the export to Quicktime presentation for displaying Keynote's on Windows PC's a number of times. In the Windows version of Quicktime, you can run it just as a presentation, with clicking through the slides and all. In fact going back a slide actually reverses the animation, something that Keynote doesn't do itself.



    CONS: With a lot of animations and such, it takes a LONG time to export and creates a LARGE file. Also, there is a loss of quality on the PC side, but in most situations, your average, low-quality conference room projector won't even show a difference. Finally, it can be a bit of resource hog on the PC you're running it on.
  • Reply 57 of 143
    tokentoken Posts: 142member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gamrin View Post


    It's too bad there's no key command in Pags for exporting. InDesign has one.



    You can assign key commands for any cocoa application, including Pages, in System Preferences >Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard shortcuts. Scroll to the bottom of the list and choose Application Keyboard shortcuts for All applications or select Pages.
  • Reply 58 of 143
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by meelash View Post


    I've used the export to Quicktime presentation for displaying Keynote's on Windows PC's a number of times. In the Windows version of Quicktime, you can run it just as a presentation, with clicking through the slides and all. In fact going back a slide actually reverses the animation, something that Keynote doesn't do itself.



    CONS: With a lot of animations and such, it takes a LONG time to export and creates a LARGE file. Also, there is a loss of quality on the PC side, but in most situations, your average, low-quality conference room projector won't even show a difference. Finally, it can be a bit of resource hog on the PC you're running it on.



    There's also no presenter notes or viewing next slide. It's just not good enough, a windows player would be great.
  • Reply 59 of 143
    lfe2211lfe2211 Posts: 507member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Daffy_Duck View Post


    I wonder what designers are going to use the statistical functions?



    I write reports all the time which contain lots of statistical analyses. For the most part I use JMP and Office 2007 Excel with Q1 Macro add ins on my Wintel. I will check out Numbers in the next few weeks but I think it will be too low power for what I do. Hope I'm wrong. I'd love to have something usable on my Macs (I don't use the Mac versions of MS Excel or Word anymore---there just O-ful).
  • Reply 60 of 143
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Bergermeister View Post


    How well does the Instant Alpha work?



    I spent about 5 minutes on this. Just for demo purposes of course



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