Only if you equate mainstream, corporate as 'serious' business work. I consider my work serious and it is definitely business (well, its my business and it makes my money). But iWork will (in all likelihood) a 'power suite' with all the bells and whistles. When iWork came out I couldn't get my head around it. Now I love it and never use Office. It took a few years.
IWork is horribly incompetent. For example, it is impossible to do paragraph numbering in Pages. You can't even do a hack job of paragraph numbering because it won't let you set the second line indent to a negative number. It may seem like a stupid thing, and it is stupidly simple to fix, but Apple just sticks it's f'ing head in the sand when it comes to critical features for business people. I mean seriously, is paragraph numbering really a "power feature"? There are many legal documents where the law requires paragraph numbering. I can't just leave it off. I'm also not going to use pages for some document and Word for documents that require paragraph numbering.
There is a fairly short list of features like this that Apple has known about (or should have know about) for a decade, but they still cater their software to junior high science reports.
It is likely to cripple your collaboration with your customers/cooperatives, presuming that most of them are using Office. Even within your company's IT walls, you will be handicapped if your company is using Exchange, SharePoint, Lync... and many are.
Edit: this was suppose to be in response to post that iWork is diminishing MS. I'm typing on an iPhone.
No it won't. Apple Pages is almost worthless for business. Believe me, I try every new update to make it work. I'm the guy that convinced a law firm to allow Macs to access the firm database and now 10% of our law firm is running Macs as our only machines. But Pages and Apple mail are shit.
I'm happy to hear this, though I am hoping they add OneNote for Mac... I still use Excel for things I can't use Numbers for, and I still prefer Word as a word processor. I like the iWork suite, but Office still does it for me.
By Millions. There are too many useful features missing and unnecessary complexities in Pages and Numbers. Also when you are sending documents or spreadsheets to someone else, you want to be sure that it will retain formatting and fuctionality. Only MS Office can guarantee that.
By Millions. There are too many useful features missing and unnecessary complexities in Pages and Numbers. Also when you are sending documents or spreadsheets to someone else, you want to be sure that it will retain formatting and fuctionality. Only MS Office can guarantee that.
1) I could see someone saying Apple has over simplified Pages and Numbers but I can't wrap my head around how Pages and Number has unnecessary complexities, especially when compared to their competitors.
2) Has MS guaranteed that Office will retain formatting and functionality? I seem to recall that being one of the issues with the Mac suite compared to the latest Windows versions of MS Office being released which required that the user save in an older format type. If that was indeed the case then how is that any different than Pages and Numbers letting you export to different versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint?
I have an Office 365 subscription and the old Office for Mac without Outlook (Home or something). I wonder if Microsoft will let me download the latest Office for Mac with this.
Probably not.
Anyway, I think the new CEO is trying to make Microsoft a player again and seems to not have the blind pig-headed hate for Apple like his predecessor.
I am still not as satisfied with the new Pages as with the former one. I would however get MS Office just to cut having to boot Windows anytime the boss sends a VB-macro-formula-nuclear-hamster-powered-MS-thing.
I'm sorry but Number doesn't stand up to Excel, especially now that they crippled it for iOS purposes, the same applies to Pages (try copying an entire page and pasting it in Pages?).
That said, if, and only if, Office speeds up dramatically and doesn't shove some sort of subscription I might give it a closer look.
At the very least I expect Office to push iWork to become finally usable again and better (more formulas in Numbers, drop down menu in cells, better, or maybe JUST ANY, chance to decide your layout and not "print preview" and then go figure how to make it fit).
For all the respect I have (and the products I own) for Apple. Excel is still the best software even if it runs as molasses on the newest Macs as well as the old ones.
And, curiously, it was one of the few software that Microsoft designed all in house and on the Mac at first.
There are too many useful features missing and unnecessary complexities in Pages and Numbers. Also when you are sending documents or spreadsheets to someone else, you want to be sure that it will retain formatting and fuctionality. Only MS Office can guarantee that.
Let me start by acknowledging that iWork apps lack many of the more advanced features found in MS Office. Having said that, though, I think it's worth noting that iWork does many basic things much better than Office.
For starters, anyone who's any good with presentations will tell you that Keynote is vastly superior to PowerPoint. It's simply easier to use and makes it easier to create attractive and professional looking presentations.
Numbers lacks many of Excels' advanced features, but in many ways it's far easier to use than Excel for everyday tasks. As an example, Numbers lets you place multiple tables on the same page and independently resize rows and columns on each table. This is simply impossible in Excel. Also, in Numbers you can efficiently click, drag and drop rows, columns or cell selections while in Excel this requires less the efficient use of menus and cut/copy/paste functions.
Many tasks that are clunky, complex and unintuitive in Office, like trying to make an image's background transparent, are effortless and efficient in iWork.
Finally, you state that MS Office can guarantee formatting and functionality are retained when sharing docs. This is not quite true. This is only guaranteed when sharing the document with someone who has the exact same version of MS Office. You will often lose both formatting and functionality when opening a doc with an older version of MS Office (which many people have) or when sharing between Office on the desktop and Office on Windows RT or Windows Phone.
I consider Keynote superior to Powerpoint when presenting but inferior when sharing with businesspeople. I love magic transitions for insightful animations of diagrams.
Excel is superior to Numbers. Having multiple tables in a page may look nice but does not help when you need serious numbercrunching. I rarely abuse Excel as reporting document. Only multiple pivots for extracting aggregated data.
Word is much better when you need structured formatting and styles with paragraphnumbering. Which applies to most corporate documents such as legal, finance, system specs and other lenghty text documents. Surely Pages can deliver nice looking commercial docs and all iWork apps handle multimedia much better.
So if you need serious work done I consider Office way better than iWorks (don't touch the clipfarts). But to pursuade and deliver best experience to your audience iWorks is my place to go (don't share it though).
I look forward to Office 365 integration in the coming upgrade. And will likely pay a subscription fee if upgrades are inclusive.
Hope Apple refines the latest version of iWork; it's buggy and missing features compared to the previous version. Announcement from MS should give them a push.
I'm thinking a lot of people already switched to iWork. Not only can you use this on your Mac, but also any iOS device AND, you can sync all of your things with iCloud for easy access between Macs and iOS devices. I think the current iWork suite is adequate for most people's needs. Maybe not the hard core Office people, but a general everyday user its more than adequate.
Who in their right mind syncs business sensitive data to cloud services in the States? -or any cloud service for that matter
I want something that fixes the incompatibility of Mac Office with Windoze Office ActiveX functionality. I get spreadsheets all the time with ActiveX content that is completely nonfunctional on the Mac side.
Comments
A$ to Excel being $low on a Mac well con$idering it was invented on a mac it i$ a big $hame Micro$oft .....
There is a fairly short list of features like this that Apple has known about (or should have know about) for a decade, but they still cater their software to junior high science reports.
No it won't. Apple Pages is almost worthless for business. Believe me, I try every new update to make it work. I'm the guy that convinced a law firm to allow Macs to access the firm database and now 10% of our law firm is running Macs as our only machines. But Pages and Apple mail are shit.
Long-awaited...by whom?
By Millions. There are too many useful features missing and unnecessary complexities in Pages and Numbers. Also when you are sending documents or spreadsheets to someone else, you want to be sure that it will retain formatting and fuctionality. Only MS Office can guarantee that.
1) I could see someone saying Apple has over simplified Pages and Numbers but I can't wrap my head around how Pages and Number has unnecessary complexities, especially when compared to their competitors.
2) Has MS guaranteed that Office will retain formatting and functionality? I seem to recall that being one of the issues with the Mac suite compared to the latest Windows versions of MS Office being released which required that the user save in an older format type. If that was indeed the case then how is that any different than Pages and Numbers letting you export to different versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint?
Probably not.
Anyway, I think the new CEO is trying to make Microsoft a player again and seems to not have the blind pig-headed hate for Apple like his predecessor.
I'm sorry but Number doesn't stand up to Excel, especially now that they crippled it for iOS purposes, the same applies to Pages (try copying an entire page and pasting it in Pages?).
That said, if, and only if, Office speeds up dramatically and doesn't shove some sort of subscription I might give it a closer look.
At the very least I expect Office to push iWork to become finally usable again and better (more formulas in Numbers, drop down menu in cells, better, or maybe JUST ANY, chance to decide your layout and not "print preview" and then go figure how to make it fit).
For all the respect I have (and the products I own) for Apple. Excel is still the best software even if it runs as molasses on the newest Macs as well as the old ones.
And, curiously, it was one of the few software that Microsoft designed all in house and on the Mac at first.
But it does not have professional features such as flagging an email for followup. Something a project team can't live without.
No?
Let me start by acknowledging that iWork apps lack many of the more advanced features found in MS Office. Having said that, though, I think it's worth noting that iWork does many basic things much better than Office.
For starters, anyone who's any good with presentations will tell you that Keynote is vastly superior to PowerPoint. It's simply easier to use and makes it easier to create attractive and professional looking presentations.
Numbers lacks many of Excels' advanced features, but in many ways it's far easier to use than Excel for everyday tasks. As an example, Numbers lets you place multiple tables on the same page and independently resize rows and columns on each table. This is simply impossible in Excel. Also, in Numbers you can efficiently click, drag and drop rows, columns or cell selections while in Excel this requires less the efficient use of menus and cut/copy/paste functions.
Many tasks that are clunky, complex and unintuitive in Office, like trying to make an image's background transparent, are effortless and efficient in iWork.
Finally, you state that MS Office can guarantee formatting and functionality are retained when sharing docs. This is not quite true. This is only guaranteed when sharing the document with someone who has the exact same version of MS Office. You will often lose both formatting and functionality when opening a doc with an older version of MS Office (which many people have) or when sharing between Office on the desktop and Office on Windows RT or Windows Phone.
Excel is superior to Numbers. Having multiple tables in a page may look nice but does not help when you need serious numbercrunching. I rarely abuse Excel as reporting document. Only multiple pivots for extracting aggregated data.
Word is much better when you need structured formatting and styles with paragraphnumbering. Which applies to most corporate documents such as legal, finance, system specs and other lenghty text documents. Surely Pages can deliver nice looking commercial docs and all iWork apps handle multimedia much better.
So if you need serious work done I consider Office way better than iWorks (don't touch the clipfarts). But to pursuade and deliver best experience to your audience iWorks is my place to go (don't share it though).
I look forward to Office 365 integration in the coming upgrade. And will likely pay a subscription fee if upgrades are inclusive.
Hope Apple refines the latest version of iWork; it's buggy and missing features compared to the previous version. Announcement from MS should give them a push.
Long-awaited...by whom?
Also... "Thorsten H?bschen"? I'd like to legally change my name to include random punctuation.
…Anyone who uses macs in Enterprise?
I'm thinking a lot of people already switched to iWork. Not only can you use this on your Mac, but also any iOS device AND, you can sync all of your things with iCloud for easy access between Macs and iOS devices. I think the current iWork suite is adequate for most people's needs. Maybe not the hard core Office people, but a general everyday user its more than adequate.
Who in their right mind syncs business sensitive data to cloud services in the States? -or any cloud service for that matter
Most businesses do. Amazon's AWS and EC2 and Microsoft's Azure weren't designed to support the average individual.
I get spreadsheets all the time with ActiveX content that is completely nonfunctional on the Mac side.