PC Mag Review of Apple iWork '05

sammykrupa writes "PC Mag has a review of Apple's new office suite, iWork '05. iWork '05 includes a word processor, called Pages (though the article refers to it as a cross between a page-layout program and a word processor) and presentation software, called Keynote. They say that iWork '05 is a 'small but significant assault on Fort Microsoft.' The article also explains that the suite is strong in typographic and visual features - the areas where Office is weakest."

Comments

Most important part of TFA

[Staplerh]

Damn. This was a dissapointing read. The most important paragraph IMHO concerned 'Pages' - I'm a Mac user who relies on MS Office and was mildly excited about being able to switch to iWork in lieu of Office (and the inevitable $$$ upgades). Unfortunately:

In our tests, Pages imported our Word test files with only minimal changes in page layout. And there are still plenty of features where Pages needs to play catch-up with Word. For example, Pages lacks a grammar checker and revision mark-up abilities. Also, there are none of the collaboration, tracking, and security features that make Word so excellent in business settings. Pages lacks Word's long-document features and Word's (sometimes shaky) ability to combine multiple subdocuments into one master document, as well as the ability to split a window so that you can work on two different parts of a document at the same time. We were also surprised to find that Pages loads and saves files slowly compared to other modern applations.

Damn. The revision abilities in Word are excellent - even better in Office X than in the MS Office XP version. "Minimal Changes" in page layout? Damn.

Now, I'll admit that much of this is Microsoft's fault - they have their proprietary .doc format, and it's probably a bitch to crack. But other things.. revision could have been aped by Apple. Heck, the feature to split the window so you can work on two different parts of a document at the same time. These are all things that perhaps the standard enduser doesn't work, but I'd say the cost/benefit analysis would have argued for the inclusion of these features!

Now I know that Pages is just going to be a 'page layout' feature, and it does look beautiful - but damn it, for a minute there I was hoping that I could finally have a Microsoft free Mac.

Re:Most important part of TFA

[guet]

The revision abilities in Word are excellent - even better in Office X than in the MS Office XP version.

I think this is something that should be built into the OS, not added to a word processor. It'd be great if they bundled subversion, and gave users easy to use version control right there in the finder, and of course in an API accessible to the applications too. They could have a central repository (hidden) for each user, and just check stuff in and out as it was changed, collecting comments from the user on what changes were made (or automatically generating comments from diffs).

Then you could rewind, diff, look at version etc all to your heart's content. Only thing they'd have to deal with would be giving documents out to other people, but again if they were clever about it the svn info could be in the document bundle too, so that your commit comments, changes etc on that file were picked up automagically when sent to someone else. Anyway, enough rambling.

Re the Minimal Changes in document layout - it doesn't surprise me they had a hard time with that as lots of versions of word have the same sort of problems with earlier versions of their own software, which should tell you something : ) Re Pages being just page layout, that's its primary function just now, however it may evolve into a more general purpose tool.

There are a whole load of different word processors on OS X, and depending on their needs, I think most people could quite happily live in TextEdit, TextMate, Mellel or Pages, it's just they feel they *need* Office because that's what everyone else uses. .doc is probably one of the worst document formats to use as a way to store your stuff as it's constantly changing, binary, and very difficult to reverse engineer. So if you ever do want to move from Word, you'll be stuck.

I'm not there yet.

[Lonesome Squash]

It's not really a replacement for Appleworks, since it doesn't have spreadsheet, drawing, or painting components, although the FA hints that there might be a spreadsheet in a future release. Those get used a lot in our house, where three school-age children use Appleworks (and occasionally Office) to prepare their lab reports, papers, and projects.

On the plus side, it:

does'nt have a grammar checker, Who need's 1, anyway's?

imports/exports Word docs

integrate with iLife. It's a matter of hours until my daughter has a garageband track backing her history report. Wait, maybe that's a minus...

Apple's site (cited in the OP) is short on details. But from what we see, I'm going to wait until the product fills out a little more. Appleworks with the occasional resorting to Office is working well enough that I don't need to spend $80US.

But I would tell anyone who wanted cheap, high-quality presentation and layout software to grab it. The samples on the Apple site look just lovely.

Early adopter

[Laplace]

My wife and I have been using Pages to write letters and resumes. So far the only complaint that I've had is that it can be a bit tricky to change the style and formatting of some of the sample documents.

One thing that confuses me is why Apple doesn't buy The Omni Group's productivity software (Omni Graffle and Outliner). Adding those to iLife would bring it much closer to being an Office competitor (no such thing as an Office killer).

iWork was well worth the $79 for Pages alone.

Re:Early adopter

[ColdGrits]

"They are slowly killing their business by duplicating it themselves. The Konfabulator story comes to mind"

WTF?

You mean Dashboard in OSX 10.4, which is an OS X implementation of features from OS7 and earlier, are somehow ripping off Konfabulator (which itself was nothing more than a ripoff of MacOS 7 and earlier's features anyway)?

Interesting revision of huistory there!

It's the interface, stupid

[legLess]

The article also explains that the suite is strong in typographic and visual features - the areas where Office is weakest.

Speaking as an ex IT manager and someone with many Office-using friends, the weakest part of Office isn't it's formatting. What most people I know hate about Office is Word's attitude. "Did you really mean to do that? How 'bout if I correct it for you?" "Are you sure you wanted to paste that? Don't you want me to change the styles a little?"

Word encapsulates Microsoft's condescending attitude towards its users; it tells users that they're idiots and need hand-holding. Apple's software tells its users that their time is valuable, that they're probably right most of the time, and that they're smarter than their computers.

Being a geek forum, I can see the responses now: "Ha! Those lusers just don't know how to use it. That's their own fault." Wrong. Microsoft's UI and workflow are driven by program managers with a list of market-driven features. Apple does the same thing, but adds list item zero, non-negotiable, absolutely primary, that Microsoft doesn't understand: the user experience.

Re:It's the interface, stupid

[elecngnr]

So true. Although I do a majority of my writing in LaTeX, I do occassionally have to use Word. My biggest problem with this program is convincing the program that I know what the heck I am doing and to stop changing things for me. I actually have a MS Office Specialist Certificate for Office 2000. It just seems to me that the way things ought to work are often backwards of the way they do work.

Dear Apple,

[cryptochrome]

iWork needs a spreadsheet and database. In fact I often find Office for OS X's poor database functionality (and in particular relational database functionality) to be a constant source of frustration. Unfortunately there are no integrated alternatives.

If this/these programs are in the works and simply waiting for Tiger's Core Data framework, that's fine. I'm planning on upgrading to Tiger ASAP anyway. But if iWorks with the spreadsheet/database is included on new systems, I will buy a new machine.