Is iWork a little brother app to something bigger? (iMovie, iDVD)

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
I have to wonder if this the iLife equivalent app for a bigger bundle Office app from Apple. Or is it just another iPhoto that will never have a big brother app from Apple other than Photoshop, and Photoshop LE? Will Office remain the Big "Corporate size" Office Application on the Mac? Or has Apple decided to make AppleWorks competitive, and we'll see it's latest incarnation at a later date?
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 35
    The lack of a spreadsheet sure seems to stick out. Right now, excited as I am about iWorks, without a spreadsheet is isn't even really a full replacement for AppleWorks yet. I don't really mind the lack of a database, since I don't use it, and Keynote has at least enough graphics punch--especially when it integrates with iPhoto. But nada for spreadsheets I can see, not even basic formulas in tables.



    That leads me to believe there must be something else coming.
  • Reply 2 of 35
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    I have a sneaking suspicion that Pages' tables accomplish some of what spreadsheets are commonly used for. If so, that would be a welcome instance of thinking different.



    Moving to Digital Hub at onlooker's request.
  • Reply 3 of 35
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    I have a sneaking suspicion that Pages' tables accomplish some of what spreadsheets are commonly used for. If so, that would be a welcome instance of thinking different.



    Moving to Digital Hub at onlooker's request.




    That's really what I was hoping for, just a few basic math functions that would work on Pages tables. Sadly, if it is a feature, I don't see it mentioned anywhere on the site. RIght now, tables are good for layout, but math/sorting are really needed.
  • Reply 4 of 35
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Which is why I was thinking this app may be the beginning of something bigger. It seems incomplete in a few ways, but it seems to be more than enough for a small home office.
  • Reply 5 of 35
    Without a Spreadsheet iWork will be useless to me. If I wanted separate applications I'd have bought them. I want integration. Guess I'll have to look elsewhere and that's sad.
  • Reply 6 of 35
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    I think this is a mistake. Apple is going to end up making every piece of software in my Dock. Is this good?



    I do NOT want Microsoft to cancel Office. Apple is on thin ice here. This would be cool if maybe they had 20% market share like they did back in the day but unless this new Mac mini makes some serious-ass inroads, I think it's kind of sketchy how they make everything in my Dock.



    That said I'm also sure Pages will kick Word's ass and once Apple's Office comes out I won't use Office anymore! But compatibility...is kind of out of their hands and M$ retribution worries me.
  • Reply 7 of 35
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    I think this is a mistake. Apple is going to end up making every piece of software in my Dock. Is this good?



    I do NOT want Microsoft to cancel Office. Apple is on thin ice here. This would be cool if maybe they had 20% market share like they did back in the day but unless this new Mac mini makes some serious-ass inroads, I think it's kind of sketchy how they make everything in my Dock.



    That said I'm also sure Pages will kick Word's ass and once Apple's Office comes out I won't use Office anymore! But compatibility...is kind of out of their hands and M$ retribution worries me.




    Everything from Office is compatible in Keynote, and I saw that all documents were compatible in iWorks as well so compatibility shouldn't be an issue.
  • Reply 8 of 35
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:

    I think this is a mistake. Apple is going to end up making every piece of software in my Dock. Is this good?



    Wrong question. The question is are you happy? Computing is not charity, you do have the right to purchase the best apps for your needs.



    Quote:

    I do NOT want Microsoft to cancel Office. Apple is on thin ice here. This would be cool if maybe they had 20% market share like they did back in the day but unless this new Mac mini makes some serious-ass inroads, I think it's kind of sketchy how they make everything in my Dock.



    I doubt Apple is on thin ice and as long as MS is making an acceptable profit from Mac Office it will continue to be made. It's really that simple. Companies that thrive don't make decisions based on emotion. Also Apple is fighting the stigma. Mac Office really doesn't keep Macs on the Biz Desktop as much as we like to pretend. I call clients everyday and they have no problem dumping Macs. Apple is more afraid of the negative press that could harm the company should MS pull out. Give it a bit more time we're slowly weaning ourselve from the clutches of MS and hopefully Wall Street does the same.



    Quote:

    hat said I'm also sure Pages will kick Word's ass and once Apple's Office comes out I won't use Office anymore! But compatibility...is kind of out of their hands and M$ retribution worries me.



    Pages is rather rudimentary in appearance. I doubt it will unseat many Word users. I applaud Apple making a step in the right direction but they still seem rather lukewarm on the subject.
  • Reply 9 of 35
    dcqdcq Posts: 349member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by onlooker

    I have to wonder if this the iLife equivalent app for a bigger bundle Office app from Apple. Or is it just another iPhoto that will never have a big brother app from Apple other than Photoshop, and Photoshop LE? Will Office remain the Big "Corporate size" Office Application on the Mac? Or has Apple decided to make AppleWorks competitive, and we'll see it's latest incarnation at a later date?



    I think there are two reasons for keeping iWorks a small, non-power-user size.



    1) They've got to build their brand...and their usability. Granted, Keynote was a grandslam first time out of the dugout. But a presentation app only needs to do so much. A word processing app needs to do a hell of a lot more. Through the first few versions, they will expand usability, features, ease-of-use (important), and work out bugs, stupidities, etc. They will also gain users, people who have previously been trained to think that M$ Word is the only thing that you should ever use to write a document. I am one such person. I really gave it my best effort on AppleWorks (and ClarisWorks before that). But it was just too juvenile and awkward. A few years ago, I reverted to MS Word full-time (I had never really given it up). But I hate the fecking thing. Things MS Word does poorly: columns, tables, and graphics. There are also a dozen or so annoyances that piss me off to no end--the granddaddy of which is how it handles simple horozontal lines--and then doesn't let you get rid of them!!! (at least, not without having an MCSE)! God, I can't wait to stop using that monstrous piece of filth!



    2) I don't think they can piss off M$ too much. Office on OS X still means far too much to Apple. Killing Office on OS X anytime soon would most likely kill Apple (it may also launch another round of anti-trust suits against M$, but they'd just buy their way out of those too, eventually). So Apple has to play nice for a while. I think this is also a reason for not introducing/creating "Cells" or whatever (companion spreadsheet program). I've no doubt they will sometime in the next year or so. But Apple can't even appear to be seriously competing with Office right now.



    But this is also a warning to M$. Think of it as David's stone. Once Pages has some miles behind it and has proven itself, they are only a spreadsheet program away from having a full-blown office suite ready in the amount of time it takes to print boxes.



    Think of it this way:



    MWSF 2008: Introducing AppleOffice! Featuring:

    Pages Pro

    Keynote 4

    Cells Pro 1.0

    FileMaker Pro 7.5

    Mail 3.0

    Schedule Pro (from iCal)

    Conference Pro (from iChat)

    Address Book
  • Reply 10 of 35
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hmurchison

    I doubt Apple is on thin ice and as long as MS is making an acceptable profit from Mac Office it will continue to be made. It's really that simple. Companies that thrive don't make decisions based on emotion. Also Apple is fighting the stigma. Mac Office really doesn't keep Macs on the Biz Desktop as much as we like to pretend. I call clients everyday and they have no problem dumping Macs. Apple is more afraid of the negative press that could harm the company should MS pull out. Give it a bit more time we're slowly weaning ourselve from the clutches of MS and hopefully Wall Street does the same.



    Well said.



    Here's a different way of looking at it. Apple just introduced a new machine for $499. The online store sells MS Office for $399. Gates and Ballmer can't possibly expect to generate sales of Office from that price point, so Apple needs to introduce something inexpensive to for consumers to use.



    I think MS sees the picture. They wouldn't license their entire desktop software lineup (Mac and Windows) to me for $27 per user if they didn't.
  • Reply 11 of 35
    jante99jante99 Posts: 539member
    Bring back the Word 5.1 interface!
  • Reply 12 of 35
    kcmackcmac Posts: 1,051member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jante99

    Bring back the Word 5.1 interface!



    Uhhhhhh.



    No thanks.



    Pages will put a little heat on MS Word just as Keynote to Powerpoint.



    Watch the Keynote. Pages instantly changes from no columns to multiple columns, automatically resizes graphics when you change column widths, automatically rewraps text when you move a graphic of any kind being it a jpeg, table or graph, etc.



    MS Word can't handle these things at all. Move a picture in word and it borks the whole layout. Add some more text and your picture either moves or disappears completely.



    Pages looks wonderful to me.
  • Reply 13 of 35
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    I've used Keynote, not professionally, but I went through the book so to speak. And PowerPoint, - and that I did go through the book. I think Keynote is a step ahead if not more than PowerPoint. Keynote 2 looks like it is strengthening it's lead. I cant imagine pages being too far behind word, It may be even better. We'll have to see.
  • Reply 14 of 35
    dcqdcq Posts: 349member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by kcmac

    Watch the Keynote. Pages instantly changes from no columns to multiple columns, automatically resizes graphics when you change column widths, automatically rewraps text when you move a graphic of any kind being it a jpeg, table or graph, etc.



    MS Word can't handle these things at all. Move a picture in word and it borks the whole layout. Add some more text and your picture either moves or disappears completely.




    Uggghhh! Stop!



    I actually started wincing when I read that. I had the feeling that this must be what it's like to suffer from PTSD.



    Grrr! Why the feck MS Word can't handle a goddamn piece of clip-art without either having or causing an aneurysm will always be beyond me. Bill! It's clip art fer crissakes! This is not embedded HD video of 3D animation rendered on the fly with non-destructive effects applied in real time! It's a 2-dimensional cat with a birthday hat on! I left the mutherfugger on page 2 in a corner; why is it on page 4 now in the center all by itself?!?!?!



    Oh good, here comes that little paperclip to save the day...



    ...what?... No! I am not trying to write a business letter, you piece of duckshite!!! Go away!



    [Clicks.]



    [Waits.]



    [Clicks again.]



    [Clicks furiously.]



    [Paperclip finally goes away.]



    [So does project.]



    Aarrrgggghhhhh!!



    [Throws bowl of cereal across room into opposing wall.]
  • Reply 15 of 35
    ionyzionyz Posts: 491member
    Pages Pro? Where is Keynote Pro? By the looks of things Apple isn't targeting Office at all, merely doing what they do. AppleWorks is old and Steve made a good point in saying its older then freaking OS X. They are extending and replacing AppleWorks bit by bit, and not fighting Microsoft.



    Notice how iWork doesn't ship with machines? Or that its missing vital components from being considered an office suite.



    Perhaps concessions to appease Bill? Steve just wants to give that Apple-touch to another area of peoples lives, not burn bridges. See iPhoto and Photoshop. Am I wrong here? \
  • Reply 16 of 35
    bill mbill m Posts: 324member
    For what is worth, here is an interesting story from a few hours ago. A friend of my wife stayed home for dinner. She works in real state and I have known for a while that she uses Microsoft Publisher (PC) as her main productivity application. During dinner, one conversation lead to another until I started talking about the new products introduced today during S. Jobs keynote address. To cut a long story short, I brought my wife's iBook to the dinner table and started showing her the new iWork and Mac mini, as well as parts of the keynote stream. She not only seemed (finally) interested in switching, but even expressed great admiration for Pages. She said that she has always thought MS Word or Pagemaker were too complex for her needs but Pages seemed to blow MS Publisher (and the other two) out of the water. And all of her comments came just by watching the keynote stream and iWork's info on Apple's website. She had never seen Keynote in action and she already thinks about dumping Powerpoint too. Needless to say, the new Mac mini was the icing on the cake during our 2 hours long discussion.



    So, in summary, I think Apple may be aiming Pages not as a Word replacement per se, but as an easy to use, full featured layout app for home use. Of course us Mac heads welcome the new addition to the iApps family, but I think it will be PC users who will finally have no excuses to switch.



    Just my 0.02?
  • Reply 17 of 35
    For anyone who doesn't publish many-page business documents with embedded excel files and mail merged addresses, Word is totally overkill. If all you do is type out occasional letters, write up an idea, or even write a novel, Word has been getting harder and harder to use since about Word 5.1, when the most standard formatting changes left the standard toolbar and jumped into the second tab of a dialog box, accessed via a drop down menu. Wordpad (in windows) isn't quite enough, since it doesn't offer footnotes and a few other important features, but Word is massive overkill, and I hate all the autocorrect, autogrammar, paperclip nonsense. Yes, I can turn it all off, but not without spending an hour figuring out how.



    So long as Pages offers full word compatibility, accurately rendering even complex layouts, then I won't hesitate to drop office like a lead balloon. It will be cheaper and more accurately fit my needs. I do the same things with word today that I did with Word 4.x in System 6 (or was it earlier than that?). All the rest is just bloatware. Hell, my wife just wrote a full length play in wordpad on her laptop at my suggestion, after getting pissed off at word's complexity. It did everything she needed it to do.



    A spreadsheet is really necessary to justify the iWork label, though. Folks that are accustomed to the spreadsheet format use them for all kinds of things, from address lists to stock trackers, and I wouldn't want to live without one. Integration with a word processor is pretty useful, too. But with Keynote, Pages, and a spreadsheet, and maybe a Quicken style financial management app, iWork would be really compelling. I'd LOVE to see an iFinance app with a user interface as easy to use as the other iApps. Quicken just doesn't cut it for me. Too many ugly experiences with that app over the years on windows.



    They may not be all the way there yet, but I'm loving where Apple seems to be headed. I didn't see any missteps at the Keynote, that's for sure.



    --sam
  • Reply 18 of 35
    Pages gets my vote over Word for my personal use. I do need a replacement for Excel before spending money on this.
  • Reply 19 of 35
    Keynote and pages are all great apps. Pages is not really a word-killer...



    1. sure, you can export/import word-files, but it is not something that yhou runa business doing



    2. pages is basically a pagemaker + textedit. that's what I was hoping for, the first replacement for framemaker.



    3. pages seem to lack a few things as for now...

    a) write expressions/math

    b) no index as far as I can see (not TOC, but an index of stuff in your document)

    c) can graphs/charts also be placed anywhere around and have text flow around it (not nly flowing above and beneath)?

    d) side-headlines (automatic) not possible, you have to use boxes

    e) no line numbering (great for reviewing)

    f) tables don't seem to be as good as in word/framemker

    g) does it manage all of open-type features?

    h) i would have loved what indesign has, an optical measure for adjusting space between words/letters



    but it is a good starter... definitly going to test it at least.



    One great thing would be to have themes for your essays that your write... this way, you don't need to worry about meeting formal criteria for your essay, it's all in the theme, all you need to do is to supply the content!
  • Reply 20 of 35
    murkmurk Posts: 935member
    From the brief demo, how can any one tell anything about iWork? Can't wait for a real review or even some show floor info.
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