iWork vs Microsoft Office: The Great Debate
Microsoft Office for Mac is getting a bit long in the tooth, and the new version isn’t likely to show up until 2008. So perhaps that is why we all got a little too excited about iWork’08, which made its debut earlier this month. I ended up buying a copy, just to try it out. Judi Sohn, over on Web Worker Daily did the same and decided to use the productivity suite exclusively for a week.
She found that, “Pages blazes on an Intel Mac compared to Word 2004,” and she gives it a thumbs up. She’s not so kind to Numbers spreadsheet application in her mammoth review.
Judi is in good company: the great Walt Mossberg calls iWork, elegant but wimpy when compared to Office. “For real spreadsheet jockeys, however, Numbers is wimpier than Excel,” he says. As for me, lets just say, $79 I spent on iWork hasn’t been put to work. I write using Ecto or Textedit.
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Keynote is much nicer than Powerpoint, in both ease of use and features. You can create better-looking slideshows faster.
Pages is indeed pretty anemic compared to Word.
And Numbers has a nice paradigm for working in, but needs to support more Excel formulae, and improve its performance, to be taken seriously.
When you think about it, how much copy do we write that ends up printed? I think that full featured word processors are going away for the average user because most communication is done through email, and a blog-type format.
If you could define what a home user needs in a word processor, I bet it’s not anything that would extend past one or two pages. Word will be relegated to law and business soon. I doubt that iWork is poised to overtake MS in those strongholds.
Industry and education need word processors, but at this point no home home user needs a word processor.
Yes…and the Honda Accord isn’t as nice as the Lexus 470LS. They have roughly the same price multiple (5X) as iWork and full blown MS Office. Is this a fair comparison? Office is on its (which? at least sixth) major revision.
I’m sure there are power users who would always be disappointed – but it would be fascinating to see what percentage of MS Office features are used on a daily basis.
The real issue here isn’t iWork or Microsoft Office…its that you are using a Mac. Bleck. :-)
om, I see you have not worked around engineers. They live and die by excel, for better or worse. In fact, the very nature of your mac fanboyness is quite disturbing. Yes, and your slamming skype…you sound like the national enquirer of tech, except valleywag does a much better job. So what are you getting “right” in the reporting realm these days?
iWork is great for presentations and documents. Numbers is on the weak side, it’s more useful to plan a trip, budget small expenses, and create simple spreadsheets. Keynote is by far the best application in the iWork suite. It is fast, intuitive, and amazing templates. Pages is nothing spectacular but an improvement from Word.
Spend the extra cash if you need kick ass presentations, other than that Office is great.
Pages is UB and Word isn’t. That would explain the slowness issue right there.
You bought it? You should have just downloaded the free (fully functional) demo on Apple’s site.
Keynote is a fantastic app and reason enough to buy the iWork suite.
I write novels. I switched from Word to Pages with version 2, and version 3 fixes most of the problems I had with the program. Word displays text inaccurately, or at least in a way that, after hours looking at a screen, causes my eyes to hurt. Pages looks typeset, hence is easier on the eyes. I find that at least for fiction writing, Pages is better than Word. I don’t plan to upgrad Word when it comes available.