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The new version of iWorks seems nice so far. Been using it a day. As far as replacing MS Office, the tide will turn. It always does. No company can sustain dominance forever.

Yes, the grip of the "Microsoft mindshare" is beginning to slip, and Apple's retail chain will be a huge factor in helping it. People will be able to get hands-on experience with the software and begin to wake up to the reality in front of them. The world is a new place, and Microsoft's suite is no longer essential.

If you "need" Office, you'd be insane NOT to buy the Educational version for what, $129 or something else that's way too much for that bloated turd.

OK, I will.

One only need Office to be compatible with the rest of the World. Sad but true.

Why or why can't they include an equation editor!? I guess my pleas (via Feedback) have fallen on deaf ears. I would have thought with the expanded academic/science use of the Mac, this would have been a useful addition? The problem, I suppose, is making something as fantastic as Latex Apple-simple. Microsoft's equation editor, simply, sucks. But I don't think Apple would want people to remember all the specific commands that latex requires. Ah well, here's hoping for iWork '09

Is there a way to upload a Keynote into your .Mac account, so people can view your presentation, like you can upload your iphoto into gallery.

I have made some very nice presentations, but they can't be viewed in PP

I think that would be a killer, send your people a link to your web based KeyNote presentation

Our company participates in the "Microsoft Home Use Program" in place and we can get Office (for Macs or PC's) for a fulfillment fee of only 20 bucks. Its nice that I have this option at work but since iWork 08 is out now with Numbers, I can finally remove Office from my Mac.

There is an equation editor that ships with Appleworks. It can be run standalone and its output can be pasted right into Pages.

Get a 2nd hand copy of AW.

On second thought, I'll get iWork instead.

Microsoft would just spend the money I send them on funding Astroturfers.

@hotinplaya...

can't you just export them out of keynote to PPT format and let your friends view them that way?

As much as I would like to get rid of Office, students often are required to turn in assignments as Wurd docs. Sure, Pages can export as Wurd, but you never really know for sure if the export will be "perfect." Alas, for college students, having Wurd is a near requirement.

With the well-received introduction of iWork 08 at Apple's Town Hall, is there anyone STILL wondering why MSFT recently (read: suspiciouly) announced the delay of the new version of Office for the Mac until January, 2008?

eggZACKly

With Apple's capital in the bank these days, I'm not sure why they don't eat the cost of iWork '08's development and include the suite of three productivity apps with Leopard (when it arrives) and with all new Macs sold as of August 7. It would be savvy to include it with the machine just as they include the iLife suite, iTunes, iCal and all the other great apps which currently reside on new Macs.

Most average users like me would certainly be more inclined to "give it a shot" and see if it would handle our productivity needs before shelling out a couple hundred to purchase Office for Mac (which is currently outdated, delayed and much less user-friendly). I'm sure many Mac users would immediately be impressed with the usability of the iWork suite and say, "To heck with Microsoft Office, if these three apps will save to XLS, DOC and PPT formats then I'm set!"

@hotinplaya...

Save the Keynote presentation as a Quicktime movie.

Microsoft should be worried because there is zero chance that people like me will actually upgrade to the new ribbon-based version of MS Office.

Shy is dead right. As a teacher I quite often have to download class notes from our intranet in Word and Powerpoint and you just have to use Office for that guarantee of interoperability. At this stage there just isn't a complete alternative. Sad but unfortunately true.

Thanks Hywel, Actually, I just found Grapher.app (Applications/Utilities) - that looks like it could work as well. Now, if only there was a way to quickly reference equations and figures from the text (again, a la latex's /ref{}).

Cheers,

Numbers is a shot across the bow. Shipping iWork on Windows would be a tac nuke on a major city.

There's no reason for Apple to leave the empire with either of their monopolies untouched. The world needs an alternative to MS Office, and OpenOffice isn't it.

-jcr

@shy

i always "strongly suggest" my students to turn in their documents to me in PDF, or RTF if it is simple text. or 'strongly suggest' open office or neo office. anything to wean them from MS.

Pages & Keynote keep getting better in an evolutionary sort of way. And I can't fault them.

Numbers is an altogether stranger experience.

Unbelievably sophisticated in some areas, such as the ability to have multiple tables held in multiple worksheets (or what Excel users would recognise as being tabs), yet unfathomably incomplete in others such as no ability to use external data sources (even Filemaker) or even XML-based data.

Still, for a Version 1 and for a package that will still retail for less than £60.00 here in the UK, it's a neat package.

Apple has always had a verson of Office. We called is Apple Works. Only iWorks is just done better or should I say the way it should of always been done.

Man I HATE Office... I have to use that piece of crap at work and it sucks SO bad... I'd rather use TextEdit all the time than the clunky, nonintuitive Word. Total crap.

I have a question...
Does anyone know how to change the Dictionary or Language in Pages? In Word, you just change the Language, and the Auto Correction changes to the Language assigned...
I cannot seem to see where it is, but this morning, I was typing in French on Word, and Copy/Pasted the Text in French in Pages, and it seemed to have understood that it needed to switch to French...

However, I restarted the application, and typed in French on Pages, and it did not understand that it was French, and kept underlining everything, like there were errors.

Can anyone help, please?

Me wonders if the trial for Microsoft Office is on the new iMac? I bet it isn't.

Why not just go with NeoOffice for free?

Let's see- the last time I used a Microsoft Office app was, hmmm. Can't remember. Haven't needed any of 'em at all for at least ten years. I was kind of a fan of Word 5.1a, though.

Although I'm certain the Pages will be a more than adequate replacement for Microsoft Word, I understand that Pages cannot format a document written in Japanese in vertical format (縦書き) or incorporate furigana.

Having two different spreadsheets on the same page is a feature which I found bloody useful. But I'm still shaky on it because it's too new...

But I feel the zen coming out of numbers, with the lack of restriction unlike excel.

Maybe I'm claustrophobic ... but I feel theres air-circulation in spreadsheets now.

@shy

it is sad to say that this is true, but it should also be pointed out that if your professors can't handle a PDF, or in fact prefer that format, for digital copies, they shouldn't be teaching.

....that would clean up higher education a bit.

luckily as a philosopher, i am in the only department that prefers Macs outside of the art department.

@ ポール

Go to the Text icon in the inspestor "T" and choose the "more" tab. There you will find the language option.

You know, it's pretty true that people think they need office "just in case", but the funny thing for me is that I've had word documents that would crash Word 2004 on my MBP, however Pages would open them with little or no effort.

to hotinplaya
You asked "Is there a way to upload a Keynote into your .Mac account, so people can view your presentation, like you can upload your iphoto into gallery.".

Yes-- just save it as a Quicktime movie.

The author asks:
What effect if any, has there been on sales of Office for the Mac in reaction to Google, Zoho, and ThinkFree? 'None. Zero. Zip,' he said. Microsoft Office for the Mac enjoys a market share in the neighborhood of 97%, while its nearest competitor is Apple's iWork, which comes in at 1.8%," Hesseldahl writes.

Hard to judge iWork '08's effect when it's only been out 24 hours, don't you think? This is how the iPod got started. Just wait. iWork '08 is WAY better than iWork '07!

I know this sounds crazy and I am sure the halo effect strategy advocates would never allow this to happen... but, what if? what if they ported iWork to PC? Probably not too difficult. LOL. But, alas, probably never will happen.

@Walter
You don't get a "guarantee" of document compatibility between Office for Mac and the Windows versions. In fact, it's public information that there are some document incompatibilities between the two. How do you know that compatibility between Apple's Pages and Windows Office isn't just as good? Just because MS uses the same name ("Office") to refer to these two applications doesn't mean a darn thing. Until there is an independent look, this is all about perception and marketing.

I don't see a particular reason quite yet to bump up to iWork 08. I barely use my NeoOffice applications so I don't know that I need to drop another $80 (bought iLife) for this. Maybe in a month or two, but right now I'm ok. I have used the trial though and it is a pretty bad ass program that can seriously handle everything I need it to do.

I am happy that Apple has created the overall suite though. They've made a very effective, lower cost alternative to MS Office that takes up far less space and just looks better anyway. It's neat to be around in the midst of the changes in the marketplace and actually understand what's going on. Glad I bought my first Mac in November!!!!

I would usually use a PDF when I used Pages for classwork. Frankly though, when it comes to writing research papers for school I found MS Word much easier to manipulate. Perhaps it was just my needs or the fact I have been a Word user since 1997.

In three or four years with continued enhancements Apple very well could release the iWork program as a Productivity Suite for Windows. Numbers is the most exciting part of the release I think. The way to create the charts/page layouts etc. is FAR more impressive than anything MicroSoft has offered yet.

Keynote is a MAJOR thorn in MicroSoft's backside.

Pages though, Frankly isn't there yet. It seems to me Pages needs to become more like Word, and what is called Pages right now needs to be renamed "Poster" or something like that, a Mac alternative to Publisher.

The biggest thing I miss on my Mac is Publisher & Access. I know I could get File Maker, but it's soo expensive.

MW: Believe, as in, I believe MicroSoft is crumbling, quickly or MicroSoft will be depending on a $150 million dollar investment from APPLE to prop them up...

If only steve were that kind to grant that...

in my Astrophysics department... the majority are using Macs.. i feel like home there

Wow this article is an example of too much Kool Aid does to one's brain. MS always said they would drop Mac office at some non-disclosed time. Apple is not going to wait for the situation to become one that will hurt Mac sales. Look how M$ is already giving BS excuses for delaying Mac Office '08. M$ fired the shot over a year ago. Apple is just getting ready to take those sales from M$ too.

Just my $0.02

or, if you're going to type in a different language, enable French (or whatever) as an input language. System Prefs > International > Input Menu > enable yr language. It would behoove you to check off "show input menu in menu bar," for this will give you a national flag on the right end of the menu bar, so that when you need to switch to French input, you can select the French flag.

@sd

I read somewhere that Pages supports LateX code. Make a search, maybe you'll find something helpful for your needs...

IT

I love Pages. I use it every time I can. But I'm the only Mac user in my company (lucky guy). So I need Word, because Pages export into .doc is far too poor. I hope they soon comply with the ODF. That will be the end of Office...

@Jake,

Nothing is perfect but as I posted the other day I tried:

iWork - too many page formatting problems from Word
Mellel - great for converting from Word, not the other way round
NeoOffice - too slow for large documents and presentations
Keynote - page formatting problems from Powerpoint , ditto for some graphs which just came out as unreadable gibberish.

In the end I reluctantly had to get a copy of Office for Mac 2004 (or whatever it's called). And when I got this G5 iMac I methodically trashed every piece of Microsoft software (including my copy of Halo). I just love having Office bloatware. Not!

However when you're dealing with large documents and presentations of up to several hundred pages you really don't have much of a choice. There is no option for downloading the notes in PDF format. I just have to use Office.

When I create the work myself I use Mellel, Pages and Keynote. NeoOffice still irks me a little (like the print function…shudder).

I believe that the nail to the proverbial coffin to the MS Office dominance would be to include some version of FileMaker. With FileMaker, it will complete the iWork package. FileMaker is so easy to use--much easier than Access.

FileMaker is already compatible with the windoze world. Apple just needs to add this similar to what they did for Numbers.

KeyNote help

Thanks for the help folks,
I like most switchers are not computer savy, but I am doing things on my Mac, I would never have tried on a PC

I've been using NeoOffice for it's compatibility with MS Office file formats. I like how it is free. Once Apple merges the FileMakerPro app into iWork with tight integration with iLife multimedia and other iWork apps then there's incentive (for me) to buy it.

"to hotinplaya
You asked "Is there a way to upload a Keynote into your .Mac account, so people can view your presentation, like you can upload your iphoto into gallery.".

Yes-- just save it as a Quicktime movie."

What do you do if you want give a presentation to a group of people and you want to use the cursor???
Let's say that I'm in Seattle and I want to give a Keynote presentation to a person in Miami. The Miami person can log into my .Mac account at the same time as I do and we can talk about the presentation over the phone, but I cannot use the cursor to explain any details on each slide. How do I do that???
Yes, I know I could use iChat, however most of our clients use PC!
I would appreciate any hints - thanks.
Bo

I would finally switch from Office if ONLY Apple would finnally give me a unified address book, email, and calendar....if they could only merge those three dman apps or at least make them interoperate more smoothly. ...

re: One only need Office to be compatible with the rest of the World. Sad but true.

----

TOTAL CRAP.

Now Apple has numbers in iWork you can just bin your copy of office!

iWork saves files in compatible word and excel and powerpoint formats.

So, YOU DONT need to buy MS Office to be compatible.

Im still using Office 2004 on my macs, now that is just gonna be bined when I come back from buying iWork 08 from the Apple Store tomorrow.

Tomorrow my macs will be TOTALLY MICROSOFT FREE!!

)

An entourage type program would seal the deal for me. I like having email, address book, and calendar all in the same program. maybe in leapord...

With Microsoft's new Office formats becoming an open standard, you will no longer need to actually use Office to be compatible.