Instead of creating YAWP (Yet Another Word Processor), Apple should work with the OO community and bring its ability to create nice interfaces and optimize the port of OO on the Mac.
I was always surprised that Apple didn't put their weight behind OOo back in the day. The revenue generated by iWork doesn't seem like it could be enough to justify the project.
I guess it is time for me to try OOo again. It always disappoints me; my main need is spreadsheets, and I could never get quite the performance as with Excel. (Which has finally caught up to where Lotus 123 was in 1997...)
The most common reasons for not being able to install the update are:
1. You've moved your Office 2008 folder out of Applications. If you've done this, all you need to do is move it back.
2. You've manually removed a file in the Office 2008 folder. If you've done this, you will need to uninstall Office and reinstall it. If there's something in standard installation of Office that you don't want to install, make sure that you do a custom install so that you can select what you want.
3. You've run an application like Monolingual or Xslimmer. If you've done this, you'll also need to uninstall and reinstall it. Do a custom install so that you save the MB that the language files take up, and make sure to exclude the Office folder if you run one of those apps again.
Quoted for truth. Their updater is *very* particular on deciding when it can install. The thing I hate most about it is that AFAIK you have to install all of the updates in order to get to the tip, new updates appear to be Delta updates and not Combo style updates. This is only particularly painful when installing for the first time, but even missing one may mean having to go back and download whatever was missing.
Technically that is "distributing" rather than "sharing" which has more to do with collaboration. Semantics, but that is a weakness with iWork...
Touché. But even when I have had to collaborate on documents recently (correcting text, tracking changes, etc.), iWork has served our needs with no problems. The "weakness" you speak of was not an issue in our case.
People still use M$ Office? I use Google Docs for everything and if I can't do it in Google Docs for some reason I use Open Office.
C'mon. Be real. I wish that Office would bite the dust just because of the stranglehold it has but no one uses Google Docs because it is basic and isn't secure enough for businesses. Less than 1% actually use it and even they support Office formats which doesn't help the issue.
I have to say that the speed improvements in SP2 are very noticeable. It is as fast as iWork.
Yes, I gave up on these guys a while ago. They don't get it. Just to do an update takes for ever. Even common WORD application is very slow.
I stopped using Office 2004, but then switched back when 2008 came out, only to discover that the same snail pace is still there. I am a full time iWork user, and for my old files, I still use Appleworks.
Microsoft products suck! That is my personal opinion, and I stand by it for life!
I want to think ill of MS as much as the next guy, but Word is firing up faster than it ever did. I'm resigned to the fact that it won't ever work with Leopard Spaces, at least to spread docs across multiple windows. Regardless, my main writing tool is a fabulous application from the UK called Scrivener. Then comes Pages 09. Alas, I still have to export from either of these applications to Word for Mac before sending stuff to client. If you really need to know what footnotes and the like look like in Word, you have to see them in Word.
I am not waiting for that to happen : I am progressively migrating from Office 2004 to OpenOffice. Granted, the appearance is less nice, but the files it creates are 50-75 % smaller, the app virtually never crashes, it allows me to do everything I did in Word and Excel (I never used macros) and the final printed result is identical.
I hate anything MS, so I was really interested in Open Office. Unfortunately, it crashed more than any OS X application I've ever seen. Nine times out of ten, it locked up right on launch.
I didn't see it in the notes. Is there still no .ODF format support? They have it in the Windows 2k3 and 2k7 versions and still nothing in the Mac version?
Amazing people actually bought Office 2008 when there was really nothing wrong with Office 2004, even on an Intel Mac. Office 2004 in Rosetta opens faster than Pages '09, which is native on Intel. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that way.
I haven't touch iWork or Office for a long time, but last time i checked, iWork is faster, easier to use and just better i every way except iWork only has less then half features then Office.
Hopefully Next Gen iWork could truly replaces Office.
I haven't touch iWork or Office for a long time, but last time i checked, iWork is faster, easier to use and just better i every way except iWork only has less then half features then Office.
Hopefully Next Gen iWork could truly replaces Office.
Pages is trash compared to Word. Since you haven't used either in a long time, you don't know what you are talking about. Pages is slower than Word, and yes, it has half the features, so it is worthless in every way possible.
Amazing people actually bought Office 2008 when there was really nothing wrong with Office 2004, even on an Intel Mac. Office 2004 in Rosetta opens faster than Pages '09, which is native on Intel. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that way.
I got 2008 because it has better Exchange support (although it's still not very good). I very rarely use any of the other products. When iWork doesn't suffice (which is very rare), I use NeoOffice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hillstones
Pages is trash compared to Word. Since you haven't used either in a long time, you don't know what you are talking about. Pages is slower than Word, and yes, it has half the features, so it is worthless in every way possible.
Perhaps not, but I do. I've used both (all three if you count the Windows versions), a lot. You can love Word all you want, but I instantly took to Pages and find it far more capable for page layouts. As for half the features, who cares when 90% of the features in Word aren't used by 90% of people. There are only two things missing from Pages that Word has that I miss: mail-merge to email and document forms (which is handled very poorly on the Mac version anyway). For those I use Word. For everything else I use Pages.
Keynote blows PowerPoint away in nearly every way imaginable. The only thing I can think of that's missing from Keynote is the ability for embedded charts to update themselves. Otherwise, creating presentations takes far longer in PowerPoint due to the need to open up multiple dialogs for transitions, where everything can be handled more easily on Keynote with its inspector.
Numbers creates much more attractive looking charts, but I do admit to it being very slow, particularly in how it handles large spreadsheets (and by large, I mean anything over about 100 rows). Apple *really* needs to tackle performance before it can be a serious competitor. It also lacks database connectivity to have its charts update automatically.
Comments
Read about it here.
Edit: Everything seems to work well. I haven't started word up from a restart so I'm not sure how fast word can load...
I'm still sticking with iWork. When I share documents with others, I send PDFs.
Technically that is "distributing" rather than "sharing" which has more to do with collaboration. Semantics, but that is a weakness with iWork...
Instead of creating YAWP (Yet Another Word Processor), Apple should work with the OO community and bring its ability to create nice interfaces and optimize the port of OO on the Mac.
I was always surprised that Apple didn't put their weight behind OOo back in the day. The revenue generated by iWork doesn't seem like it could be enough to justify the project.
I guess it is time for me to try OOo again. It always disappoints me; my main need is spreadsheets, and I could never get quite the performance as with Excel. (Which has finally caught up to where Lotus 123 was in 1997...)
The most common reasons for not being able to install the update are:
1. You've moved your Office 2008 folder out of Applications. If you've done this, all you need to do is move it back.
2. You've manually removed a file in the Office 2008 folder. If you've done this, you will need to uninstall Office and reinstall it. If there's something in standard installation of Office that you don't want to install, make sure that you do a custom install so that you can select what you want.
3. You've run an application like Monolingual or Xslimmer. If you've done this, you'll also need to uninstall and reinstall it. Do a custom install so that you save the MB that the language files take up, and make sure to exclude the Office folder if you run one of those apps again.
Quoted for truth. Their updater is *very* particular on deciding when it can install. The thing I hate most about it is that AFAIK you have to install all of the updates in order to get to the tip, new updates appear to be Delta updates and not Combo style updates. This is only particularly painful when installing for the first time, but even missing one may mean having to go back and download whatever was missing.
Technically that is "distributing" rather than "sharing" which has more to do with collaboration. Semantics, but that is a weakness with iWork...
Touché. But even when I have had to collaborate on documents recently (correcting text, tracking changes, etc.), iWork has served our needs with no problems. The "weakness" you speak of was not an issue in our case.
People still use M$ Office? I use Google Docs for everything and if I can't do it in Google Docs for some reason I use Open Office.
C'mon. Be real. I wish that Office would bite the dust just because of the stranglehold it has but no one uses Google Docs because it is basic and isn't secure enough for businesses. Less than 1% actually use it and even they support Office formats which doesn't help the issue.
I have to say that the speed improvements in SP2 are very noticeable. It is as fast as iWork.
I stopped using Office 2004, but then switched back when 2008 came out, only to discover that the same snail pace is still there. I am a full time iWork user, and for my old files, I still use Appleworks.
Microsoft products suck! That is my personal opinion, and I stand by it for life!
No more Microsoft Office for me.
I am not waiting for that to happen : I am progressively migrating from Office 2004 to OpenOffice. Granted, the appearance is less nice, but the files it creates are 50-75 % smaller, the app virtually never crashes, it allows me to do everything I did in Word and Excel (I never used macros) and the final printed result is identical.
I hate anything MS, so I was really interested in Open Office. Unfortunately, it crashed more than any OS X application I've ever seen. Nine times out of ten, it locked up right on launch.
Hopefully Next Gen iWork could truly replaces Office.
"SP2 also features increased launch and scroll times in Word 2008"
I hope not.
Took me a while to get that
I haven't touch iWork or Office for a long time, but last time i checked, iWork is faster, easier to use and just better i every way except iWork only has less then half features then Office.
Hopefully Next Gen iWork could truly replaces Office.
Pages is trash compared to Word. Since you haven't used either in a long time, you don't know what you are talking about. Pages is slower than Word, and yes, it has half the features, so it is worthless in every way possible.
Amazing people actually bought Office 2008 when there was really nothing wrong with Office 2004, even on an Intel Mac. Office 2004 in Rosetta opens faster than Pages '09, which is native on Intel. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that way.
I got 2008 because it has better Exchange support (although it's still not very good). I very rarely use any of the other products. When iWork doesn't suffice (which is very rare), I use NeoOffice.
Pages is trash compared to Word. Since you haven't used either in a long time, you don't know what you are talking about. Pages is slower than Word, and yes, it has half the features, so it is worthless in every way possible.
Perhaps not, but I do. I've used both (all three if you count the Windows versions), a lot. You can love Word all you want, but I instantly took to Pages and find it far more capable for page layouts. As for half the features, who cares when 90% of the features in Word aren't used by 90% of people. There are only two things missing from Pages that Word has that I miss: mail-merge to email and document forms (which is handled very poorly on the Mac version anyway). For those I use Word. For everything else I use Pages.
Keynote blows PowerPoint away in nearly every way imaginable. The only thing I can think of that's missing from Keynote is the ability for embedded charts to update themselves. Otherwise, creating presentations takes far longer in PowerPoint due to the need to open up multiple dialogs for transitions, where everything can be handled more easily on Keynote with its inspector.
Numbers creates much more attractive looking charts, but I do admit to it being very slow, particularly in how it handles large spreadsheets (and by large, I mean anything over about 100 rows). Apple *really* needs to tackle performance before it can be a serious competitor. It also lacks database connectivity to have its charts update automatically.