# iWork, worth it ?



## chevy (Jan 15, 2005)

Do you think iWork is a good and complete product ? Or does it still miss too many features ?

What is its first application ? Home ? Small business ? How does it integrate with Quicken ?


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## andychrist (Jan 15, 2005)

I'm disappointed because I thought that it would completely replace AppleWorks, whose drafting program I have always found convenient but buggy.  Still the demo looked awesome, wish it were included with all new Macs, like iLife.  Unfortunately even iWork's meagre system requirements are too much for my old bondiMac.  Another excuse to upgrade to the new iMac!  

Maybe I'll take a walk over to the Apple Store and check it out...


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## Randman (Jan 15, 2005)

I think it'll be a great compliment to Office.


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## karavite (Jan 15, 2005)

Years ago I used ClarisWorks for everything. I went kicking and screaming to Office. I don't know much about iWork, but the thing that ClarisWorks did really well was integrating differerent doc types into one doc. Text, drawing and spreadsheet - were each treated as a sort of component of a document and depending on which you were working with it would give you the cooresponding UI (menus, tools...). Not the absurd mess in Office where you have completely different UI rules for tables in Word vs spreadsheets in excel... and don't even get me started about importing between Word, PowerPoint and Excel! If iWork follows this same philosophy, I might like to use it for personal use.

P.S. Didn't Apple explore something long ago that went against this whole monolithic app concept. Instead of giant apps that try to do everything you would have an almost generic doc type that you could then apply different tools to - text, image, tables... Was it OpenDoc - or is that something else? Whatever it was, it was a really neat idea. Alas, imagine our world had MS not been able to take it over...


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## audi_luv (Jan 15, 2005)

I would be more willing to pay for a supported commercial version of OpenOffice/StarOffice for Mac.


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## symphonix (Jan 15, 2005)

I think its pretty clear that this is a very, very different office suite to MS-Office, OpenOffice, NeoOffice, AppleWorks and StarOffice. Its design is something completely different, and as such I can quite easily see that people will happily use this alongside more traditional office packages and word processors.

As for value for money, I think iWorks price point is fantastic and I will definitely be buying it. As a regular Keynote user, I know just how powerful that application can be. I like the fact that iWork supports Flash, PDF, MS-Office, and Adobe formats such as PhotoShop and Illustrator. It does these extremely well, for instance you can drag in a multi-layer PhotoShop file and it brings in all the layers as separate objects, and then groups them, allowing you to do some pretty phenomenal graphical trickery in your documents.

And all this at the price of a consumer-end product. I should hopefully have a copy of this arriving not long after Jan 22nd, so I can give it a more thorough investigation.


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## Pengu (Jan 15, 2005)

Im going to buy it.. I have Mellel (i still say it's the best Cocoa word processor around) but it doesn't do everything i want, and it doesn't have great Word compatibility.. I only need simple formatting.. and the added bonus of some layouting tools built in, is just brilliant!


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## ApeintheShell (Jan 15, 2005)

I think almost all the announcements took me by suprise when I watched the keynote the day before yesterday. iWork looks like a briliant piece of software that is worth owning for the presentations and reports I have to turn in for school. Plus the formating in Pages surpasses formating found in Microsoft Word and others. I like the integration of iLife as well.


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## chevy (Jan 16, 2005)

I am still with NeoOfficeJ as my main Office application.


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## Viro (Jan 16, 2005)

I don't think it's worth the money since as a student I get Office at a discount. Besides, Office for the Mac isn't a bad product and it works much better than Office on Windows. I just love the floating palettes as opposed to the multitude of toolbars you find in the Windows version of Office.

iWork looks nice for those who don't have Office. But for those who do, I don't see much incentive to buy this package.


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## Viro (Jan 16, 2005)

audi_luv said:
			
		

> I would be more willing to pay for a supported commercial version of OpenOffice/StarOffice for Mac.



This will probably never happen. The Aqua version of OpenOffice has been cancelled (source).

Stick with NeoOffice/J or some other office suite.


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## mdnky (Jan 16, 2005)

I don't think it's worth it, at least not the WP part of it.  Keynote2...yes, but Pages no.  This is of course based on what I've seen so far...maybe sometime soon I'll be able to take a trip up to the Apple Store and play with it, but until then I'll stick with the other options out there.  If I do decide to upgrade, it'll probably be just for Keynote2.


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## serpicolugnut (Jan 16, 2005)

At the Education price point ($49), it's a great deal. If you consider that Keynote was $99 when it came out, now you can get two apps for $20 less ($50 less in the Education pricing), it's an even better deal.

This is what bugs me though. Apple bills this as a suite of apps. It's not a suite - it's a duo. The other thing is the tag line Steve used at the keynote..."Building a successor to Appleworks". Well, Appleworks has word processing, calculations, presentations, drawing and database components. iWork has word processing and presentations. More than half the suite is missing.

What Apple isn't saying is that iWork '06 will obviously add another cog to that wheel, probably the Excel like component. Of course, the price will increase at that point. 

What bugs me is that Apple doesn't seem to see the immediate need to replace Appleworks outright, right now. Pages was designed by the Keynote team. So the team that was responsible for Keynote handled the entire iWork product. It seems if Apple wanted to get this out the door, they would assign more resources to it. Instead, it looks like they will piece this "suite" together over time with the team they currently have in place. 

I love Keynote, so I anted up for the upgrade. Pages looks pretty amazing. Since school and my job are both standardized on Word (blech), I don't know how much I will get to use it. But if it handles Word docs as seemlessly as Keynote handles PowerPoint files, it may replace Word for me.


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## andychrist (Jan 16, 2005)

Didn't Keynote used to list for $99?  Now you get both Keynote and Pages for $79.  So at least it is a better deal.

Oops, serpicolugnut just beat me to the punch.  Anyway as I previously posted, I too wish Apple had revamped all of AW rather than replacing it piece-meal--   AW for OS X was such a let-down, worked better in OS 9.  Wonder when it might be confirmed that Apple is planning a more complete suite for iWorks '06.


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## Oscar Castillo (Jan 16, 2005)

iWork is just the beginning of what may be a full suite in the near future.  After all Keynote was a standalone product until now.  I think we may see much more improvements as iWork evolves and more features added.  I think once Tiger is released Apple will be more focused on applications and iWork may be the one that may get the most attention.


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## Arden (Jan 17, 2005)

I must say, it is hard to dive into iWork and just play like you can with iLife (especially GarageBand).  Sure, the demos look cool (and there are some amazing things you can do with these programs based on the demos), but when you finally get to use one of the computer at the expo and you fire Pages up, it's like... okay, so now what?  I think, if you're going to check it out at an Apple store or a retailer, go there with a specific project in mind and see how easy (or hard, perhaps) it is to make.


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## Randman (Jan 17, 2005)

iWork isn't meant for play. It's meant for work.


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## Arden (Jan 17, 2005)

Exactly.  My post was geared toward a situation like mdnky's, where he was going to go "play" with iWork (note how it's iWork and not iPlay ).  I'm saying, if you want to play, play by bringing your work along.


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## fryke (Jan 17, 2005)

I've gathered some early reports on Pages. Read more here: http://macintosh.fryke.com/cgi-bin/macnews.cgi/2005/01/18#20050118_pages ... Overall, it seems to be 'good'. And I'd say iWork '05 is definitely worth its money. Considering that Keynote 1 was 99 USD, I'd say it's a steal, really.


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## Salvo (Jan 18, 2005)

serpicolugnut said:
			
		

> Since school and my job are both standardized on Word (blech), I don't know how much I will get to use it. But if it handles Word docs as seemlessly as Keynote handles PowerPoint files, it may replace Word for me.



I hate how Institutions are "Standardising" on MS Word.
I don't know how many Job Applications ask for the Resumé to be presented in a "MS Word Compatible Format". It's the same with Major Business and, I presume, with education.
I recommend everyone change the default "Save As" format to RTF or XML in every instance of Word they have access to.
I also recommend presenting non-draft documents as PDFs or (Microsofts Proprietary) MDI format.
If you have to submit MS Word Documents, intersperse it with as many little non-typographical enhancements as you can, such as Revision Notes and Comments. This might just point out to the submittee that MS Word is an Editing Format and not a Publishing Format.

If worse comes to worse and they complain about submitting PDFs or MDIs, comment that someone you know submitted their Resumé in an Editable File Format and the Employment Agency modified their details without consent.


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## chevy (Jan 18, 2005)

I have never seen pdf to be rejected.

I agree that Word format is an edition format and not a publishing format. Same applies to RTF and XML, at least for Word processing.


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## adambyte (Jan 18, 2005)

What would really put a punch in the gut of the .doc format would be if more applications could edit PDF files. Could you imagine shooting a document back and forth that would also integrate fonts and vector graphics easily?

I think an easily editable PDF would catch MS with their pants down.


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## fryke (Jan 18, 2005)

That sounds nice.  "Adobe Word 1.0" or something like that, you mean? A bit like InDesign and Acrobat Pro mixed together to an easy to use document creation/editing application? Sounds like it could catch MS at the right edge... Then again, Apple could do it, too...


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## Randman (Jan 19, 2005)

fryke said:
			
		

> "Adobe Word 1.0" or something like that, you mean? A bit like InDesign and Acrobat Pro mixed together to an easy to use document creation/editing application?


 Ugh, not powerful for professional publishing but too much for the casual user.


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## Arden (Jan 19, 2005)

In other *ahem* words... something exactly like Pages?


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## fryke (Jan 20, 2005)

No, Arden. The important part would be that you can edit PDFs, so PDF would be the 'native' format of it.


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## lurk (Jan 20, 2005)

The problem with editing PDF is that things like individual glyphs are not part of larger structures.  For instance in order to recognize a word you have to basically guess that a set of glyphs are clumped together close enough to be part of some larger thing.  Given that you can plop them down anywhere in any order makes that even harder. 

I remember in the old days (2000ish) when I had a paper criticized for using "broken unsearchable PDF".  The problem is that my typesetting program (LaTeX) was properly kerning the letters in words and the hack in acrobat could only recognize words generated by broken non-kerning sources like MS Word.


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## iMan (Jan 24, 2005)

I just received iworks today and I'm really liking what I see. One great feature is that it's using all your dictionaries. I write in  English, Swedish and Italian and it's a great to have all the languages built in. Very useful for me. And it imports .doc well that's a plus.
I haven't had time to explore much but it looks great.

Just my two cents

Viktor


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## fryke (Jan 24, 2005)

lurk: That would _not_ be a problem would Adobe create such a document processing application, since they're the developer of that format and can basically extend the format in whichever way they like.


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## lurk (Jan 25, 2005)

Fryke:  I disagree ( seams we are on different sides today  ) the fundamental structure behind PDF is not conducive to that.  PDF is a page description format and it is very good at that but it does not efficiently capture the necessary meta information about the higher level structures in the document.  If it did then it would detract from some of the improvements they made in PDF over PS.

Sure you can hack it and force it to go but what then?  At some point then collapse under the accumulated cruft.  I guess my point is that such a thing cannot happen while maintaining a semblance of what PDF is, it is not just a simple extension that the vendor can make.


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## chevy (Jan 25, 2005)

Yes, PDF _could_ be extended with a few extra meta to include all the necessary information.... but is that what we need ? Would be a complex document with an editable part based on <xml> and a viewable/printable part based on PDF, with just the necessary meta links between both.


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## lurk (Jan 25, 2005)

Ah but there is the rub, the editable links need to capture all of the knowledge of the typesetting rules to make it sensibly editable. What you end up with is basically a PDF stuck onto a Pages .pages in the same file.  Typesetting is not as easy as people seem to think it is even a simple search and replace changing "dog" into "hound" can reflow text, change references, alter the position of floating figures...


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## JPigford (Jan 25, 2005)

Until there is a spreadsheet program as part of the package that integrates perfectly with them, i'm sticking to office.


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## bookem (Jan 28, 2005)

It's definately worth it.  Office is too much for my Mum who just needs to type the odd letter or shopping list.  Word has gone far beyond a word processor into more of a document processor, and is far too complicated for 60 year old parents


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## fryke (Jan 28, 2005)

If she needs to write the odd letter or shopping list, TextEdit is your FREE (free, free, free!) friend. Unless she wants to use colourful templates for her shopping list in order to help the printing industry by using a few ink-bottles a month.


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## net500cg (Mar 7, 2005)

I just reviewed iWork yesterday .. took the iLife and Pages for a run around the block.  

iLife .. as the previous versions, is a great piece of Presenter software - learning curve for those who are tied-to-the-titty-of-PowerPoint - but well worth the weaning process. And since you can easily bring the PPT's across and IMPROVE them ... all's well in Prenter Land.

Pages .. Well, a return to the 80s and the introduction of PageMaker - with serious design improvements. And a whole-lot faster.  Pages is NOT a toy .. and it's NOT InDesign.  However, it is everything MS Publisher wants to be - without all the MS crap sticking to it. 

Pages will allow you to do what I know a number of publishers did with early versions of PageMaker .. publish everything from flyers and letters to full-bleed multi-signature publications: aka, books and the like.  That is .. *IF* you're already knowledgable about the process.  However, you will also need to make some 'concessions', too.  But - it could still be accomplished.

As a Word Processor that will allow you to write letters, create your own letterheads, email HTML formats, newsletters, and whatever - saved as .DOC, .RTF, .PDF or .HTML formats ... this is a very good easy entry, low price-point - WRITE ONCE and DELIVER WIDE program.

So . yeah, it's worth it.  It's worth about anything to NOT bring MS products onto the Mac OS X platform.  Ever wonder where all thos 'permissions' problems were coming from?  Just take a look at the MS  operation folders in your /Library ... !!

Enjoy ... these are quality programs

net500cg


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## bobx2001 (Mar 12, 2005)

iwork is a good application, but it does have a HUGE number of bugs and it does not work with MS office as well as i would have hoped, apple are heading in the right direction with the application, but until some patches are released to fix the bugs i cant say it if worth the money.


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## Convert (Mar 12, 2005)

I think Keynote is brilliant, but Pages isn't.

It's like the gap between Text Edit and Microsoft Word.


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## karavite (Apr 21, 2005)

I just installed iWork yesterday and I am still not sure. On one hand I was able to instantly use Pages to make the most impressive (visually any way!) resume I have ever had (my own design), and I am NOT artistic in the least. At the same time the usability of both Pages and Keynote bothers me. Partly this is from being brainwashed for so many years with Office and all the pain that caused, but that is not all - they each have some quirks I do not like. Some seemingly freuqently used features seem a little hidden and/or cumbersome to use.


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## adambyte (Apr 21, 2005)

karavite said:
			
		

> P.S. Didn't Apple explore something long ago that went against this whole monolithic app concept. Instead of giant apps that try to do everything you would have an almost generic doc type that you could then apply different tools to - text, image, tables... Was it OpenDoc - or is that something else? ...



Yes, OpenDoc. OpenDoc was a system in which you just started with a general document... and then you could throw ANYTHING into it... drawings, pictures, text, even live web sites. Each would be handled by it's respective OpenDoc application... the only problem was, each application component had to be written specifically for OpenDoc. 

btw, the "web site" thingy was handled by Apple's first web browser... CyberDog, which did a great job of handling web, ftp, and email info.

OpenDoc, in general, was drag-and-drop-a-licious. It was a wonderfuly idea that will never take off unless everybody wants to reprogram their apps.


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## mindbend (Apr 21, 2005)

See my review and discussion of Keynote 2 here:

http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50559

In short, I think K2 is excellent if you need that type of app.

I played with Pages just for a few minutes and was not too impressed. It's a very introductory level type app. Like page design for people that don't have a clue. It initially seems very intuitive, but unfortuantely I was easily able to get it confused with what I was trying to do, so in the end I was more frustrated than anything. But then I'm a designer, so I'm used to a different degree of control and layout mentality. I could see Pages having an audience (newsletter types, letters to grandma, realtor showcases, that sort of thing), it's just not for me.


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## andyhargreaves (Apr 22, 2005)

Viro said:
			
		

> I don't think it's worth the money since as a student I get Office at a discount.



You also get iWork at a discount.  It's currently at £38.78 ($70) for students and teachers, rather than £49 ($94) {I've taken these prices from the UK store and converted them - mybe the US store prices would be different?}



> Besides, Office for the Mac isn't a bad product and it works much better than Office on Windows. I just love the floating palettes as opposed to the multitude of toolbars you find in the Windows version of Office.



I agree entirely.  I was really pleasantly surprise with office:mac, as a MS skeptic.

Andy


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## karavite (Apr 22, 2005)

adambyte said:
			
		

> OpenDoc, in general, was drag-and-drop-a-licious. It was a wonderfuly idea that will never take off unless everybody wants to reprogram their apps.



Thanks Adambyte! Yes, it was a great idea and after spending all day updating images, text and files across files in Visio, Excel, Word and Powerpoint I don't doubt I would shoot the first person who tells me Office is "seamlessly integrated." It is anything but. Open Doc was a concept that would have made so many people so much more productive. I run across so many things with Office apps and wish I could just do this or that - after all, it is a computer! I think some people SHOULD be forced to reprogram their apps!  Ah, they would stil screw it up! 

Mindbend - it isn't just you. I am not a designer and I found the Pages UI just plain odd. Nothing worked as expected and absent was the nice feeling you get with so many other Apple apps. So you hear that Apple - why did you put the junior UI/interaction designers on Pages?


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