Apple’s iWork 09 vs Microsoft Office and the Mac problem

That’s nuts. Apple uses iWork and iLife and lures for switchers. There’s no logic is producing versions that run on Windows. Apple is, fundamentally, a hardware company, and it uses its great software to sell hardware.

Matt is completely right.
The point is to create preference for their hardware. And it is working.
I run an *all Mac company (web consultancy) and we use keynote exclusively vs powerpoint. I am encouraging the managers and the staff to start using Pages instead of Word and Numbers instead of Excel.
I don’t care if they don’t have all the features that Word and Excel have they are 100 times easier to use.
Keynote is the best presentation software ever. I would marry keynote if I wasn’t already married.

Wow- I’m going to start using keynote seriously right now, just because you say you would marry it.
That’s quite an endorsement.
Now if only I could be sure it would run on those windows-environments I have to give presentations in….

Actually, Keynote presentations can be saved as Powerpoints, there is a lot of cross-compatibility there. I haven’t had a chance to test it out myself yet however.

I’m getting a macbook for university and don’t know whether I should get iwork or msoffice. Iwork is $110 cheaper than msoffice for macs and after spending so much on a laptop I feel more inclined to go with the cheaper software. On the other hand I will be more familiar with the programs in ms office as I currently use microsoft office on my home computer. Msoffice has onenote which is a program that I feel would be usefull for organising notes etc. I also beleive that msoffice comes with windows messenger, which i’m not sure how hard that is to download on a mac without a disk. Any insight/advice would be helpful and greatly appreciated

Hi

I too am a student I submit assignments online. I have got iwork 09 (which is really cheap for students) and I also got office for mac 08, which I got from a company called software for students, which was itself really cheap. iwork is head and shoulders above office but if you send pictures and text boxes from it as a word document, sometimes things do move or there are export differences. So all i do workwise with office for mac is make sure it exports right before i send it. So my advice is get both but do search for the office to get the best student prices. If i had to go for just 1, i work every time.

By the way, just google messenger for mac and its free to download.

I have just updated and saved all of my Word files with a downloaded trial Office ’08 for Macs; I have a Mac iBook G4. I would like the most reasonably priced software that will be compatible so I can open all the files I have saved, some of which are Powerpoint presentations. Would I be able to use iWork to open what I have saved? Or would I be better off sticking with Microsoft Office for Macs ’08?

Do you all think that OpenOffice 3.0 is good enough for simple word processing? It has the advantage of being free, And my PC friends have no problem opening the OpenOffice documents on their PCs as if I were using MS Office.

Just a heads-up: MS Office for Mac does not include OneNote. It only includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage. Check out Notebook 3.0 by Circus Ponies. It has a more intuitive layout, but the problem is that it does not feature whiteboarding. Hope that helps.

There is no need for one note because ilife already comes with textedit and stickey

OpenOffice 3.1 FTW!!!

i made a huge mistake earlier this year, i got the chance to buy my first laptop and i was choosing between the £700 (ish) dell 1735 and the macbook (£750) boy what a mistake did i make. i look at the Apple keynotes and can only dream…i wish i could turn back time and make that decision again. the problem was i thought that mac wasn’t compatable AT ALL with windows. now i know that you can actually run windows on a mac let alone interchange software. dont buy dell laptops by the way. they heat up to quickly and vista really does suck EVERY LAST DROP FROM IT. i think i may start saving up for a mac; but by god was that an expensive mistake. i just wish apple did iwork ’09 for microsoft. and yes i am a self confessed apple freak wannabe.

iWork has a save to pdf feature which i think solves all the problems related to others needing to read my files. I dont really care is they are unable to edit them as I prefer to not allow them to do so. This solves all the problems for cross compatibility and I think would be excellent for students who need to submit stuff online.

To Matt Hedstrom:

It’s like Steve Jobs said: what makes the ipod great is SOFTWARE.

Same thing with the Mac (though it isn’t the only thing).

Apple is fundamentally a SOFTWARE company that manufactures hardware designed with their OS mind.

If you disagree, call Steve Jobs. He’s said that repeatedly. Look it up.

hi, ok im living in ireland, just got a macbook, all my lecturers use microsoft. would microsoft be bette for me to use, would iworks open on their laptop if i had to email work to them?? any info would be great! tanks

i hadn’t decide on whether to give iwork a try or not, i recently bought a macbookpro and have been shopping around for a wordprocessing software and i think i just made up my mind, i am downloading the trail version now.

Well if you haven’t had a chance to test it out don’t recommend it. I on the other hand have tested it out. I love Apple as a company as well as Microsoft but I have to say Keynote was a big waste of my time. When it converts files to powerpoint you will get lots of lag on the PC end. Why? I don’t really know guess just faulty software.

Get a mac and get Office for Mac if you plan on sharing anything at work or school. If you can afford it and want some better features and easier to use get iLife too. The problem is you will still need Office to have easy collaboration with your buddies and colleagues if that what you do. It will be annoying, cheap and nasty (just think Steve Ballmer) but for the moment what can you do.

I agree with ShadySide. To avoid conflict with conversions I too use the PDF feature. It ensures the recipient will receive the document with no problems. As far as saving Keynotes as PPT, I have noticed that the graphics and vibrancy of Keynotes is not carried over into the PPT. Still good, but not great (versus using Keynotes). Iworks is simple to use, however I feel as if I am not as quick with it because I am still learning the ropes. I personally prefer Office, however that's because it is second nature to me. Ask me again in a couple months and I may like iworks better. It's definitely growing on me.

I agree, the article writer clearly doesn't understand Apple's strategy… Hence the argument "that there is no iWork version for windows and that's the main flaw" makes no sense!

I have to jump back and forth between iWork and Office frequently. iWorks imports Office documents efficiently. I have on many occassions imported used iWorks to reformat newer Officeformats to the older Office formats my employer uses. The only compatability problems I have are:
1) Word has a tracking feature that many people find useful. Pages will import these, but any tracking in Pages doesn't export back to Windows. Outside o fthis, I have jumped back and forth with few problems.
2) The menu structure in Powerpoint is much easier to use for doing complex graphics than Keynote is. I have used Powerpoint for years, but I am unable to duplicate these efforts on Keynote. I montage screen captures, text, objects into slide containing dozens of elements.

I am still trying to decide if I should use Office vs I-works on my new Mac. I didn't realize that the track changes will import from Word, but not export from pages back to Windows. That is fatal to my use of I-works. is this true?

you can get trial versions of both suites.. i suggest you download them both and then make a choice in which to purchase…

Sorry about that, but i use iPC, Apple OS( Mac OS X ) on my Dell Latitude D600 i work ftw

I work on both mac and pc/microsoft (but am a hard-core mac fan nonetheless) and I'd like to bring up a completely new thread to this conversation…I just realized this week that I actually am spending most of my time in the "cloud" in Google Docs.
Due to a bunch of random and various situations, between work servers being glitchy and laptop problems, I started to default to saving everything to google docs on the cloud "to be safe" and started working there all the time (and sharing docs).
without realizing it, i found myself living in the cloud for work and personal stuff….how bizarre ! If you had told me i would do htat last year, i would have laughed at you.
it sure frees up the memory too!

just a thought….(obviously for word and spreadsheet, don'[t know about presentation software and surely the formatting is limited….at least for now..)