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76 Comments
- dirtyhand, on 10/10/2007, -20/+53Honestly though, who the hell uses the more "advanced" features of Excel / Word. I bet 90% of Word users are students writing papers. If you are a big company thats using Excel to store your business data then I lol in your face.
- toasterweasel, on 10/10/2007, -1/+31I've been using Keynote for a couple years now and it keeps getting better. You can make presentation that will blow Powerpoint out of the water. Pages is nice as a word processor(Word is better in my opinion) but it really shines as a cheap alternative to Indesign for making small publications. I'm a big Excel fan so it will take me some time to migrate to Numbers. (if ever) I'm impressed with Apple's progress though with the iWork suite.
- sinnix, on 10/10/2007, -2/+24iWork '08 runs smoothly as a universal app on my mac mini. Microsoft Office runs under Rosetta and is very "laggy" for lack of a better work. Typing is even somewhat delayed. iWork, like the rest of my Mac, works. Best of all, its here today. I dont have to wait two years to see how cool MS's new ribbon interface is.
- harlowsmonkeys, on 10/10/2007, -3/+23Please explain how Apple could have done Numbers using ODF. Hint: Numbers is a spreadsheet. Apple, unlike you, actually is interested in what users want, and knows that users want their spreadsheets to support formulas. Since that was left out of the version of ODF that was submitted to ISO, it's kind of useless for spreadsheets, isn't it? Of course, they could have used the latest version of ODF, but that isn't standard, so you wouldn't approve of that, would you?
Is your position that spreadsheets should not be used until someone gets around to submitting the current version of ODF to ISO and it goes through the approval process? - Quix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13Hmmm, $ for a suite of apps that are simple to use and put out great-looking documents and presentations (iWork) or $$$$$ for a suite of apps that include a bloatload of features that I and 95% of other users don't ever use and don't really need (Office).
Tough call...
Goodbye, Office. - the6thReplicant, on 10/10/2007, -3/+14I bought iWorks '08 because I wanted the latest Keynote. I tried out Numbers by doing my usual litmus test: "I like to see how well my savings and home budget is going"
In Excel it will take you an hour or two. In Numbers it took me 5 minutes since they already had a template of what I wanted.
Also the "canvas" is the killer idea behind Numbers. - whisperedlie, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9it has nothing to do with storing business data. it's about creating usable representations of data, showing trends, performing calculations, massaging data for other tasks, etc. sure, a lot of people have word processors for trivial tasks, but your bet is wildly speculative and exaggerated. Having worked more time than I cared for in IT, I was surprised by how much people use complicated spreadsheets, desktop databases, mail merge and lots of other functionality that goes beyond crapping out a few pages in Word. In the few cases that office was purposely or inadvertently taken away, they flippin' freaked.
- Altotus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8The answer is: a whole lot of people. With the caveat, of course, that they use them in approriately and that in doing so torpedo productivity. Ever work somewhere where people layout 3'x4' posters in PowerPoint, only to fin out that a.) have trouble printing them, b.) when they print them they don't look like on the screen / look awful, c.) take an hour to print on the large format printers (as opposed to that one guy that lays it out in CorelDraw or Illustrator and has a beatiful poster that they print once and takes 5 minutes to print).
Lots of people use Excel to do database work, Powerpoint for page layout, Word for printing pictures, etc. Madness, I tell you, madness! - fquednau, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7There are enough of 'little companies' that do use Excel to store business data. Especially when the IT department is too slow to react to changed requirements. Then Mgmt. needs to set up a bit of their own IT - Excel will be used almost inevitably.
- bedouin, on 10/10/2007, -2/+9The MacBU has zero commitment to the Mac. Sometimes I wonder why it exists at all. I definitely wonder why they need so many employees to ship one product: Office. All other MacBU offerings were scrapped the minute a superior competitor arrived. For example, Parallels killed VirtualPC, Flip4Mac called Windows Media Player for Mac, Safari killed MacIE, and so on.
The minute a clearly superior alternative to MS Office for Mac arrives is the minute the MacBU closes its doors. Someone truly dedicated to their craft will see a superior product and work diligently to outshine it. The MacBU just throws in the towel, showing you time and time again where their true heart is.
If Roz Ho, who recently left the MacBU, was a symbol of their Mac enthusiasm then they have a /long/ /long/ way to go. - FreakyT, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Brilliant! Let's rely on the web browser manufacturers to do all the handling of rich text editing! That can't fail!
- KAMiKAZOW, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Maybe Apple adds ODF support later. Leopard's TextEdit does AFAIK ship with .odt support. Apple's intention might have been to say to the Mac users: Look, we give you file format support that MS can't ship for at least another 6 months.
- vandy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5So when Office for Mac drops macro support, what have you got?
- whisperedlie, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5office _is_ their biggest money maker, but mostly because of Outlook.
- Tobark, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5"Sure you can open Office 2007 documents, but want to save the other way? Nah."
Thats so totally wrong. - t1m1, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7I'm all for ODF but let's face it: Realistically, 2 years from now, OOXML is the de-facto industry standard, ODF is dead and OpenOffice.org ships with an implementation of OOXML. And that's what I think Apple's decision was based upon...
- wageslaven, on 10/10/2007, -9/+13I use them every day. People write reports, collect and shuffle data on an ad-hoc basis. Have you ever worked in a Fortune 500 company? People use Office to manage their own data and to track, share and communicate that data.
You "lol in my face"? Well, go tell that to the MILLIONS of white-collar workers who use it expertly and effectively every day. Have you ever had a job in an office? - MacParrot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I think iWork is very useful. Keynote is an amazing app and the ability to imbed audio to a presentation without a third party app will be very useful. Imagine doing a complete presentation, with your voice starting and stopping as someone goes through it for each slide. Training videos alone would be easier to make and the ability to create a presentation, send it to a client for them to use as needed could be very cost-effective in just time and travel savings alone.
As I said earlier, Pages is still in trial mode for me until I can find out how Pages formatting translates to MS Word.
And no, most users won't miss the more advanced features of MS Office as most of them aren't using them, nor are they using the more advanced features in Pages. Most people just use them both for basic word processing. - SIRBERUS, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I agree. I'm using iWork now not because I have "chosen" it over Microsoft... but because it runs smoother and is indeed better than the laggy alternative. When Microsoft updates and becomes universal binary, I'll more than likely switch back.
The only thing I really like about iWork above all else is "keynote". Really snazzy app. - neuropsychguy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I learned to do complex multivariate statistics in Excel. For some things it was much better than using a dedicated program like SAS or SPSS.
- Altotus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Office and iWork aim for slightly different market segments. Office has all the features folks could want, while iWork works the way people would like to see MS Office work.
Macros exist in Keynote and Pages, but not Numbers, and they use AppleScript rather than OfficeBasic. Keynote is a far superior presentation app to PowerPoint by any metric. PowerPoint's biggest selling point is that it's the lowest common denominator. You'd be an idiot to use PowerPoint for giving a presentation, it exists merely as a way to collaborate with others that don't have a choice.
Word for standard word processing is far more complete than Pages, but Pages beats it for ease of use, WYSIWYG, speed, page layout, and -- oddly enough -- compatibility with Word for Windows. MS Office for Mac's biggest liabilities are that they are written for the PowerPC processor, meaning that they take 1G-2G of RAM to run on Intel and are slow and cumbersome, and they have an attrocious UI that's even worse than the Windows version.
Numbers is a different beast entirely. It's really nothing like Excel other than the superficial similarity of their being columns and, possibly, numbers and possibly a chart. I don't think there's any real comparison there.
However, for those requiring the more MS Office like features and behavior, OpenOffice will give you almost all of it (at the price that they function almost identically to the MS apps). iWork won't replace Office, but iWork + NeoOffice or OpenOffice Mac certainly can. - jinushaun, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I've worked at a large corporation for a few years and yes, they store A LOT of data in Excel files. I'm not saying it's right, but the majority of the population are non-tech people, and non-tech people use Excel for database work. It doesn't matter how big your business is.
Like Altotus mentioned above, I can't even count the number of times I've seen people use Word documents just to bundle and print pictures! - cmadach, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Seriously, why is it so hard for submitters to link to the original article, not the blog that comments on the original article?
- msgyrd, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Last I read, Mac Office '08 wasn't getting the ribbon interface, it was staying mostly the same. Honestly, I think it's just taken them 2.5 years to recompile the software as a universal binary, cutting macro support and adding their new xml format in the process. There's no reason to "upgrade" unless you need that format support.
- proseandpromise, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I'm just going to throw out that for usability, ease, and the amount of time it takes to make quality materials, Pages beats the pants off of publisher.
- MacParrot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I agree that Keynote is better than PowerPoint and the latest release widens that gap. Pages however is still not going to replace Word for shared documents until I can verify that formatting isn't going to be screwed up in the translation (like previous versions did. I haven't tried it yet in the new version). I need to play around more with Numbers before I make a decision on whether to use it full time.
No matter what the outcome or how I decide where or when to use iWork, it was worth the $79 I paid for it and more. - inexplicable, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Heard of Exchange?
- bromac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3There's been Word Processing and Spreadsheet programs ever since we've had PCs.
I still don't get how Microsoft gets off selling $300 word processors. And it gets more expensive when there's progressively less to polish on the software and nearly no development costs left to recoup.
It's as if they're still trying to hock Model Ts with fresh paint as new cars. I just don't get it. One of these day's people are going to realize what they're handing three bills over for. - totorototoro, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I like David Weiss's writing-he's always tried to keep the Mac community engaged in what the MS MacBU is doing. But his whole compatibility thing is sad.
The issue isn't about how compatible Apple's iWork is-quite simply, its not compatible enough for IT managers to be interested in supporting in predominantly PC environments.
The real issue is how compatible Mac Office 2007 is-and quite simply, its not compatible enough EITHER for IT managers to be interested in supporting in predominantly PC environments. They left out just enough stuff (VB, macros) to give it the label "Almost completely compatible with the Windows versions." Which is the label of death :p - KAMiKAZOW, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4It's not blogspam, because TUAW gives a commentary on David's post.
- Ma8e, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I appreciated getting a summary. Haven't got time to read the whole original article.
- n8dawg87, on 10/10/2007, -11/+13I agree somewhat that its just for compatibility with the windows world but it's also because a lot of people switching over would much prefer to stick with Microsoft office and sometimes there are simply things that iWork '08 just can't do that Office can.
- Boondoggle, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2remote desktop connection
http://tinyurl.com/ytq96v - frostieDude, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Making Office for Mac universal isn't just recompiling. They had a ton of code that is very very old and relies on layers upon layers of stuff that has built up over the years. I think they were still linked to OS components from Carbon which were not ported to Intel (for example, CFM).
- philz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I wrote a paper once in word. I'll never do that again: I had problems arranging text as soon as I hit 100 pages or something. CPU was using 100% all the time.
- dignick, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4But those are *****.
- coldfusion1970, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Well Apple did make a version of AppleWorks (the precursor to iWork) for Windows. So its not beyond the realms of possibility.
- the6thReplicant, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I don't why you got dug down...but thanks anyway. I've have a look at these.
- frostieDude, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2What happens if Apple makes a Windows version of iWork? I could see it happening because it would add to the value of iWork for Mac and help lure people to using Apple stuff.
- totorototoro, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Jesus, wageslaven, give it a ***** break.
- coldfusion1970, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Because no major company wants to kill revenue streams.
Why have one version that works on three OS's, when you can have three different versions of the same application that you can sell separately.
Its business 101. - sctwp09, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Yep. I can understand how you use these features. As a computer nerd for instance I work on machines at the offices of my family's people who have various office jobs. They ask me about word features I've never heard of. For home, however, all I need is to write papers/do presentations, so instead of $129 for Office Student and Teacher, I've installed Openoffice to do the job. It depends on what you need, and how easily you can part with the money, and if it's justified to do so.
- MacParrot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Unless Apple stops developing their own computer systems I doubt this will happen. Apple made Safari (for better or worse) on Windows to most likely help with web development for Apple's web browser and the iPhone. iWork and iLife is software made to highlight the differences between the Mac and Windows. As such, there's no reason for Apple to make a Windows version.
- frostieDude, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Outlook isn't really part of office in the sense that they are not made by the same group at Microsoft. The group that makes Outlook is part of the division that makes Exchange, not part of the division that makes Office. (I used to work in the Outlook group in the late 90s.)
- oblivinated, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Is it so hard to add apostrophes?
- nkthen, on 02/27/2008, -0/+1http://www.internetlinkdirectory.net
- frostieDude, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The company I work for would not buy Office because of the expense. We all use Open Office.
- zeejay, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Office was "laggy" the day it was released on brand-new-at-the-time PowerPC hardware. Rosetta just makes it worse. The Mac version of Office sucks. Hard. (The one exception being Excel.) And I really hate its POS modal AutoUpdate app.
My next version of Office running on a Mac will be the Windows version of Office, running under Parallels. If I install it at all. I find I "need" MS Office less and less with every passing day. - da5id, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Let's not.
- da5id, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Your Windows Vista cost $500 and Microsoft word, $300. Except they don't. The home edition of Microsoft Office sells for about $120.
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