Under the old model, we weren't sure Apple even cared about iWorks. Now we realise what they were doing all along. Devising a master plan to take out M$ big time. iWorks is now an essential trojan horse into business along with iPhone and iPad. PC users can even use it, LOL.
I agree with you, however Apple has to add back in its previous features and then improve the feature list by about only 20% to reach the level of utility 80% to 90% of what Office users need/use most of the time.
iWorks is cream compared to the kludge that is M$'s ribbon nightmare that I can't even figure out how to use the basic features let along the 'power' (HA!) features. Want office? Get Scrivener if you're serious about your writing. Office is pure bloat. It's nice to see Apple take a simplified approach to what people need and how they use it...and add features in a way that makes sense.
It's not just the ribbon that makes Office a mess, while it is now a touch sensitive suite, the implementation is really bolted on terribly. At it's heart it is really a mouse-friendly application.
I would really like to see the MS office monopoly fall. Hopefully iWork will continue to erode away horrible MS software.
If iWork is so inferior to office where are the office ios apps? MS obviously doesn't want to port office to iOS as it would kill surface business. If office is so great why can't it sustain surface sales along with iOS versions? Could it also be that MS knows it couldn't compete on iOS with free iOS iWork apps? More evidence that MS doesn't know how to compete in free markets, it can only manage monopolies.
Office, as it now exists, is such a kludge running on a touch-centric Surface tablet that MS is wanting to users to add a mouse along with the floppy keyboard. Sure, MS would like to see Office propel the Surface to higher sales, but MS also realizes that the Surface may not ever catch on fire and so have announced that Office will be available on the iPad someday soon. We will likely see it in the next year for the iPad as a $100 per year web-based app.
MS is also obsessed with concurrent collaboration, as you could see demonstrated in the above video. However, the slow rate at which the various editors typing was showing up in the example, makes me think it may be quicker to do so when not stuffed in a cloud.
As it stands right now there are so many very basic features missing from Pages it doesn't have any chance of replacing Word anytime soon. We'll see what happens over time, but in it's current state there is just no comparison at all and no way it could be substituted for how most people use Word for work.
At home, on the other hand, my daughter loves Pages for how easy it is to use to create documents - but she only needs the very basics for what she is using it for.
Your daughter's needs are not far from what most people need for 80% to 90% of the time. There is a smaller, but important group of higher education and business users that need far more. Were pages to have the features it once had, plus about 20% more, it could be adequate enough to threaten Office handily.
Excel may not be leaps and bounds above Numbers but Numbers is not entirely compatible with Excel files. I am running into issues often where the Excel formulas use notation that is not supported in Numbers.
Semi-related: I can tell you one thing I wish Apple would copy from Microsoft's IE is the ability to right click on a table in the browser and export to Excel, or in Apple's case, Numbers. I absolutely love that feature as we use a lot of tabular data on the web and it is a super fast way to get it into a spreadsheet.
Any time there is an explicit response, something is up. Someone is worried or has an agenda or a personal problem. That is true with all such announcements at tech sites when a product or service is announced, paricularlywith the nay sayers.
Your serious right, I'm sure Numbers is okay for the average consumer to do their home budget on but the second you require a scripting language to calculate the PnL from thousands of trades from different exchanges in which the source information comes from 15 different sources ranging from XML, comma separated files<span style="line-height:1.4em;"> to password protected Oracle DB that are located on remote servers across the Atlantic, Number starts to look like a toy real fast, So please clarify what you mean.</span>
No I am in agreement with you. Excel would perfect for a junior high school business class or Mom and Pop shop books. Other than that- it pales.
And yet the hyper-defensive post made by the Microsoft exec a bit back would seem to show the opposite. If they don't compete why even mention it at all? It's like the statement made from Linus Torvalds after the free Mavericks upgrade was announced about how free OS X upgrades doesn't affect Linux. Again, if this was true there would be zero need to make a comment.
Uh, someone asked Torvalds about the impact of "free" OS X Mavericks on Linux. Was he supposed to not answer the question?
Ah, for a similar solution on the Mac + iOS platform, you don't really need to follow the MS model exactly.
You can either write an app, or do a web solution to achieve similar results, and still use Numbers for local reports/presentation or data entry and such.
Once they have a working base, Apple can always evolve the platform further (e.g., Hypothetically, run iWorks inside Safari locally, and then connect to local databases using HTML5 database integration).
Excel has Visual Basic for Applications built right in. You can do many many many different things with Excel using the VBA programming backend. You cannot compare Numbers to Excel because they are not in the same league. For a Mac + iOS platform solution, I think using FileMaker Pro or mySQL database on the Mac with an iOS custom app would be the way to go. Having an HTML5 front end would be good as well. I wouldn't even use Numbers.
And yet the hyper-defensive post made by the Microsoft exec a bit back would seem to show the opposite. If they don't compete why even mention it at all? It's like the statement made from Linus Torvalds after the free Mavericks upgrade was announced about how free OS X upgrades doesn't affect Linux. Again, if this was true there would be zero need to make a comment.
Linux is utterly fucking irrelevant in the consumer space, so yes, of course nothing "affects" linux. Something that has no market presence is not going to be affected by anything. But people like Linus Torvalds live within their own little bubble of insanity, disconnected from reality, where ideology and extreme fanaticism trump all real world facts
Free iWorks still beats $100 a year any day. I have the money but I just don't think I need a subscription to use what should be a core feature on any of their products running Windows.
Free doesn't always mean better but in this case it's a "no-brainer" to go with the "FREE" iWorks Suite.
I may try it at some point. Right now I use google docs, because it includes Latex. That way I can type math symbols and fractions.
Then come back and repeat what you said above without blushing
Geeze, where do they get Greens like you from?
Anything that you could do in the old version of Pages you STILL can because it's STILL there on your computer.
They haven't removed anything from the new version. (Vs it not being feature complete. 'Yet.') They haven't been taken away. They didn't make it for the launch of the new version of Pages (5). The features are there in in the previous version if you still need them now. The features will be added over time in the new version that didn't make it at launch. It's not difficult to understand. Nothing stops you using the 'old' version.
I've got both versions on my Mac now. I can use the old version. I can learn the new version. Meanwhile, Apple will add the features that didn't make it to launch and probably more new ones over the next half a year or so.
Lay off the pop. Your glasses are on top of your head where you left them.
M$'s office hedge money is under threat, at last. The tanks are on their lawn. This has been coming for a long time.
In the next year, iWorks is going to grow with the new 64 bit iOS platform (which really is just a Mac at its heart...) and M$ will have it all on to counter a threat that amounts to hundreds of millions of iOS devices, iPads, iPhones (and who knows what else...) and 20 million more Macs. (What we at in the next year? Nearly a 100 million user base?)
Given the total re-write of iWorks, I'd expect the 'not available at launch' features to be swiftly added in the scheme of things.
Yes, I am using it since years. I know this argument and I now start using iWork 09 again. The problem is: there was no warning. When you open a pages document, its converted into a Pages 5 Document. No (simple) way to get it back into 09. In particular, when things are lost (e.g. formatting). So you are left alone with converted pages documents that are not as they were before. That's no disaster? Believe me, it is. Also, as files are converted, it's not such a good idea to simply delete pages 5. That means, you have to right click a file and choose open with pages 4.3. My wife doesn't want to do this. If you accidentally open it by double clicking – it gets converted. Nothing to rectify here?
This is way beyond 'it just works'. This just a big mess. Imagine any other company would have delivered such an 'update'.
Ease up dude!
1- [CONTROL] + i on any Pages document
2- Under "Open with :" tab, select "Pages" from the drop down menu (the "Pages" with the old icon)
3- Click "Modify all" underneath the drop down menu
Anything that you could do in the old version of Pages you STILL can because it's STILL there on your computer.
They haven't removed anything from the new version. (Vs it not being feature complete. 'Yet.') They haven't been taken away. They didn't make it for the launch of the new version of Pages (5). The features are there in in the previous version if you still need them now. The features will be added over time in the new version that didn't make it at launch. It's not difficult to understand. Nothing stops you using the 'old' version.
I've got both versions on my Mac now. I can use the old version. I can learn the new version. Meanwhile, Apple will add the features that didn't make it to launch and probably more new ones over the next half a year or so.
Lay off the pop. Your glasses are on top of your head where you left them.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Right I see the way you're thinking. To be clear, are you saying that these features in Pages V5 that I can't find now haven't been removed because V5 is a totally new application that uses the name Pages and so logically it can't have any features removed as it's all new? Or have the features not been removed because although it really is an upgrade from V4 (given that V4 to V5 implies an update or enhancement in the usual way of these things) Apple will someday restore all the features that they haven't removed via a software update. OK, so I can't use those features now in V5 (that have not been removed) but if I launch V4 instead (that also doesn't have them removed) then I can use them. Right. Brilliant.
Tell me then, why would I want to write a document of any (potential) complexity in V5? I could get 2/3 of the way through a 20 page newsletter only to find then that what I need requires linked text boxes then what do you suggest I do? I can't open that document in V4 and I can't continue in V5. Logic surely dictates then that I start every document that's not a plain letter in V4 rather than V5 or I may well find that some feature that I've been used for years is gone (or in your world, "not removed"). What have you used V4 for? Writing a shopping list, a letter to your Mum, placing a few coloured boxes and some photos on a poster design? If you wanted to write a document in Pages right now, which version would you use and why? If the answer is always V4 (as a kind of editing feature safety net) then it means that V5 is not up to the job. If the answer is V5 then it tells me a lot about your limited or non-existent use of the features of the previous version. Remember, if you start in V5, realise that you should have used V4, you would have to recreate your document from V5. Ah well, at least it would still be installed and working on your Mac.
I'm also in awe of your knowledge of Apple's intentions in that you know that these features will return. However, I'm confused where you say that "Meanwhile, Apple will add the features that didn't make it to launch and probably more new ones ..." Come on, don't be coy, what new features will Apple specifically add? Don't hide behind the word "probably" - you know, don't you?
And I admire your certainty that V4 will still work just fine in OS X 10.13 given the (almost impossible of course) possibility that Apple don't restore all those features. But, hold on. Even then, in your Lemon Bon Bon world, they still wouldn't be gone. In your world, Hypercard and ClarisWorks and FileVision haven't gone either. All I need is a Motorola-based Macintosh which runs or emulates the Classic environment and I still have them all. You are a genius sir.
They haven't removed anything from the new version. (Vs it not being feature complete. 'Yet.') They haven't been taken away. They didn't make it for the launch of the new version of Pages (5). The features are there in in the previous version if you still need them now.
You have a strange definition of "removed." To "remove" is, according to the Mac dictionary, "to eliminate or get rid of". Some features that were present in Pages 4.3 (which is no longer available for download) are no longer there in Pages 5. A new Mac user looking to link text boxes in Pages will likely google how to do this, and will find out Pages used to be able to do this but not anymore. To that user, the ability to link text boxes has certainly been removed.
After all, isn't Office supposed to be MS' core business?
I think thet see Google doc as a far bigger threat. They've been talking a out these updates for months in response to Google docs. Plus its Google that are getting the enterprise users. It Applle.
Are you serious? If you are doing that much work, and it is so important, why the hell are you doing it in excel?
Any serious business or businessperson that has those requirements would have a program written for them that would do all of these things, live, with pretty graphs and colours.
To do these things in a spreadsheet is absurd and stupid.
Why? I write quite a lot of programs like this for people and there spendi a few thousand each time. But to be honest they could vietually all of them in excel.
Excels can pull in data from external data source and you can have live data with pretty graphs and colours. A lot of the time its also quicker to use excel and companies have already paid for it.
Even though as a business we make a lot of money making web based reports for people. In the office we use excel for all of ours. Its just quicker and cheaper to produce. If something gets complex you can alays fall back to creating a view ib the database and then use excel to view to.
Comments
I agree with you, however Apple has to add back in its previous features and then improve the feature list by about only 20% to reach the level of utility 80% to 90% of what Office users need/use most of the time.
It's not just the ribbon that makes Office a mess, while it is now a touch sensitive suite, the implementation is really bolted on terribly. At it's heart it is really a mouse-friendly application.
Office, as it now exists, is such a kludge running on a touch-centric Surface tablet that MS is wanting to users to add a mouse along with the floppy keyboard. Sure, MS would like to see Office propel the Surface to higher sales, but MS also realizes that the Surface may not ever catch on fire and so have announced that Office will be available on the iPad someday soon. We will likely see it in the next year for the iPad as a $100 per year web-based app.
MS is also obsessed with concurrent collaboration, as you could see demonstrated in the above video. However, the slow rate at which the various editors typing was showing up in the example, makes me think it may be quicker to do so when not stuffed in a cloud.
What are you drinking?
Try two-up page view in Pages 5
Try mail merge in Pages 5
Try linking two text boxes in Pages 5
Then come back and repeat what you said above without blushing
Your daughter's needs are not far from what most people need for 80% to 90% of the time. There is a smaller, but important group of higher education and business users that need far more. Were pages to have the features it once had, plus about 20% more, it could be adequate enough to threaten Office handily.
Does Numbers handle Macros well?
No I am in agreement with you. Excel would perfect for a junior high school business class or Mom and Pop shop books. Other than that- it pales.
And yet the hyper-defensive post made by the Microsoft exec a bit back would seem to show the opposite. If they don't compete why even mention it at all? It's like the statement made from Linus Torvalds after the free Mavericks upgrade was announced about how free OS X upgrades doesn't affect Linux. Again, if this was true there would be zero need to make a comment.
Uh, someone asked Torvalds about the impact of "free" OS X Mavericks on Linux. Was he supposed to not answer the question?
No I am in agreement with you. Excel would perfect for a junior high school business class or Mom and Pop shop books. Other than that- it pales.
I think you meant to say Numbers would be perfect for a junior school business class.
Ah, for a similar solution on the Mac + iOS platform, you don't really need to follow the MS model exactly.
You can either write an app, or do a web solution to achieve similar results, and still use Numbers for local reports/presentation or data entry and such.
Once they have a working base, Apple can always evolve the platform further (e.g., Hypothetically, run iWorks inside Safari locally, and then connect to local databases using HTML5 database integration).
Excel has Visual Basic for Applications built right in. You can do many many many different things with Excel using the VBA programming backend. You cannot compare Numbers to Excel because they are not in the same league. For a Mac + iOS platform solution, I think using FileMaker Pro or mySQL database on the Mac with an iOS custom app would be the way to go. Having an HTML5 front end would be good as well. I wouldn't even use Numbers.
And yet the hyper-defensive post made by the Microsoft exec a bit back would seem to show the opposite. If they don't compete why even mention it at all? It's like the statement made from Linus Torvalds after the free Mavericks upgrade was announced about how free OS X upgrades doesn't affect Linux. Again, if this was true there would be zero need to make a comment.
Linux is utterly fucking irrelevant in the consumer space, so yes, of course nothing "affects" linux. Something that has no market presence is not going to be affected by anything. But people like Linus Torvalds live within their own little bubble of insanity, disconnected from reality, where ideology and extreme fanaticism trump all real world facts
Free iWorks still beats $100 a year any day. I have the money but I just don't think I need a subscription to use what should be a core feature on any of their products running Windows.
Free doesn't always mean better but in this case it's a "no-brainer" to go with the "FREE" iWorks Suite.
I may try it at some point. Right now I use google docs, because it includes Latex. That way I can type math symbols and fractions.
What are you drinking?
Try two-up page view in Pages 5
Try mail merge in Pages 5
Try linking two text boxes in Pages 5
Then come back and repeat what you said above without blushing
Geeze, where do they get Greens like you from?
Anything that you could do in the old version of Pages you STILL can because it's STILL there on your computer.
They haven't removed anything from the new version. (Vs it not being feature complete. 'Yet.') They haven't been taken away. They didn't make it for the launch of the new version of Pages (5). The features are there in in the previous version if you still need them now. The features will be added over time in the new version that didn't make it at launch. It's not difficult to understand. Nothing stops you using the 'old' version.
I've got both versions on my Mac now. I can use the old version. I can learn the new version. Meanwhile, Apple will add the features that didn't make it to launch and probably more new ones over the next half a year or so.
Lay off the pop. Your glasses are on top of your head where you left them.
Lemon Bon Bon.
M$'s office hedge money
is under threat, at last. The tanks are on their lawn. This has been coming for a long time.
In the next year, iWorks is going to grow with the new 64 bit iOS platform (which really is just a Mac at its heart...) and M$ will have it all on to counter a threat that amounts to hundreds of millions of iOS devices, iPads, iPhones (and who knows what else...) and 20 million more Macs. (What we at in the next year? Nearly a 100 million user base?)
Given the total re-write of iWorks, I'd expect the 'not available at launch' features to be swiftly added in the scheme of things.
Lemon Bon Bon.
*in response to ipen's ridiculous complaint of oSX server costing money.
You are correct!!! oSX sever is $20.
How much is window server?
don't worry, I won't make you answer and embarrass yourself by complaining about it
Yes, I am using it since years. I know this argument and I now start using iWork 09 again. The problem is: there was no warning. When you open a pages document, its converted into a Pages 5 Document. No (simple) way to get it back into 09. In particular, when things are lost (e.g. formatting). So you are left alone with converted pages documents that are not as they were before. That's no disaster? Believe me, it is. Also, as files are converted, it's not such a good idea to simply delete pages 5. That means, you have to right click a file and choose open with pages 4.3. My wife doesn't want to do this. If you accidentally open it by double clicking – it gets converted. Nothing to rectify here?
This is way beyond 'it just works'. This just a big mess. Imagine any other company would have delivered such an 'update'.
Ease up dude!
1- [CONTROL] + i on any Pages document
2- Under "Open with :" tab, select "Pages" from the drop down menu (the "Pages" with the old icon)
3- Click "Modify all" underneath the drop down menu
Problem = solved
Office and iwork dont compete against each other. Its like comparing a toy truck and a big rig.
18 post by you, and all negative towards Apple - what possible reason would you have in spending your time on this site??
You need a Surface to run Office 365?
Nobody should need a Surface for ANYTHING besides a paperweight.
Geeze, where do they get Greens like you from?
Anything that you could do in the old version of Pages you STILL can because it's STILL there on your computer.
They haven't removed anything from the new version. (Vs it not being feature complete. 'Yet.') They haven't been taken away. They didn't make it for the launch of the new version of Pages (5). The features are there in in the previous version if you still need them now. The features will be added over time in the new version that didn't make it at launch. It's not difficult to understand. Nothing stops you using the 'old' version.
I've got both versions on my Mac now. I can use the old version. I can learn the new version. Meanwhile, Apple will add the features that didn't make it to launch and probably more new ones over the next half a year or so.
Lay off the pop. Your glasses are on top of your head where you left them.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Right I see the way you're thinking. To be clear, are you saying that these features in Pages V5 that I can't find now haven't been removed because V5 is a totally new application that uses the name Pages and so logically it can't have any features removed as it's all new? Or have the features not been removed because although it really is an upgrade from V4 (given that V4 to V5 implies an update or enhancement in the usual way of these things) Apple will someday restore all the features that they haven't removed via a software update. OK, so I can't use those features now in V5 (that have not been removed) but if I launch V4 instead (that also doesn't have them removed) then I can use them. Right. Brilliant.
Tell me then, why would I want to write a document of any (potential) complexity in V5? I could get 2/3 of the way through a 20 page newsletter only to find then that what I need requires linked text boxes then what do you suggest I do? I can't open that document in V4 and I can't continue in V5. Logic surely dictates then that I start every document that's not a plain letter in V4 rather than V5 or I may well find that some feature that I've been used for years is gone (or in your world, "not removed"). What have you used V4 for? Writing a shopping list, a letter to your Mum, placing a few coloured boxes and some photos on a poster design? If you wanted to write a document in Pages right now, which version would you use and why? If the answer is always V4 (as a kind of editing feature safety net) then it means that V5 is not up to the job. If the answer is V5 then it tells me a lot about your limited or non-existent use of the features of the previous version. Remember, if you start in V5, realise that you should have used V4, you would have to recreate your document from V5. Ah well, at least it would still be installed and working on your Mac.
I'm also in awe of your knowledge of Apple's intentions in that you know that these features will return. However, I'm confused where you say that "Meanwhile, Apple will add the features that didn't make it to launch and probably more new ones ..." Come on, don't be coy, what new features will Apple specifically add? Don't hide behind the word "probably" - you know, don't you?
And I admire your certainty that V4 will still work just fine in OS X 10.13 given the (almost impossible of course) possibility that Apple don't restore all those features. But, hold on. Even then, in your Lemon Bon Bon world, they still wouldn't be gone. In your world, Hypercard and ClarisWorks and FileVision haven't gone either. All I need is a Motorola-based Macintosh which runs or emulates the Classic environment and I still have them all. You are a genius sir.
They haven't removed anything from the new version. (Vs it not being feature complete. 'Yet.') They haven't been taken away. They didn't make it for the launch of the new version of Pages (5). The features are there in in the previous version if you still need them now.
You have a strange definition of "removed." To "remove" is, according to the Mac dictionary, "to eliminate or get rid of". Some features that were present in Pages 4.3 (which is no longer available for download) are no longer there in Pages 5. A new Mac user looking to link text boxes in Pages will likely google how to do this, and will find out Pages used to be able to do this but not anymore. To that user, the ability to link text boxes has certainly been removed.
Why? I write quite a lot of programs like this for people and there spendi a few thousand each time. But to be honest they could vietually all of them in excel.
Excels can pull in data from external data source and you can have live data with pretty graphs and colours. A lot of the time its also quicker to use excel and companies have already paid for it.
Even though as a business we make a lot of money making web based reports for people. In the office we use excel for all of ours. Its just quicker and cheaper to produce. If something gets complex you can alays fall back to creating a view ib the database and then use excel to view to.