Has iWork Been an iDud for Apple?
At Macworld San Francisco in 2005, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s iWork package, including Pages and Keynote, offering consumer-level alternatives to the Microsoft Office staples Word and PowerPoint (though Pages is admittedly more for page layout than word processing). While the initial coverage spawned questions as to whether the iWork package would force Redmond to discontinue MS Office for the Macintosh, the products haven’t exactly set the marketplace abuzz, as iWork has played the ugly stepsister to the much ballyhooed iLife suite.
Apple’s “Get A Mac” ads have heavily promoted the features of iLife, including iPhoto, iWeb and iTunes, but iWork isn’t even mentioned. And though Jobs loves the additional features and themes of Keynote, I can’t remember the last time I needed to use the program, and the only time we ever unveil Pages is when we’re doing our annual Christmas letter.
While some Mac rumor sites have speculated that Apple would add “Document” and “Charts” to the arsenal as part of iWork ‘07, to more directly take on Word and Excel, I don’t know that the Mac community has adopted iWork in the way we have Safari, Mail and other Apple programs. Market share statistics at the very beginning of 2006 showed iWork had 2% of the market, making it a distant second to MS Office in productivity packages, but the release of iWork ‘06 was not worth a single slide in Jobs’ MWSF presentation earlier that month.
It seems that iWork is a forgotten tool in Apple’s weaponry, and it’s not making much of a dent in an Office-centric world. While Mac users have proven happy to purchase $129 system upgrades on an annual basis, and Macs or iPods every other year, we just aren’t ponying up for additional Apple software. My Mail.app and QuickTime and Safari are great, but they were free. Unless iWork too becomes free and gets loaded via Software Update, I don’t know that I will ever buy it again, and the Mac community hasn’t charged forward with credit cards in hand for the suite. As product introductions go, this one could very well have been an iDud, a rare one for Apple in this time of resurgence.
Scott Stevenson on December 18th, 2006 at 6:15 am
Pages certainly has the shadow of Word to contend with, but Keynote is quite the hit. There was just a round of Keynote lovefest blogging not to long ago.
Personally, I use Pages for everything I can. I don’t understand why people use Word when there’s generally no need for it, and Pages is much more Mac-like. Maybe it’s an inertia thing.
Tele-Pet on December 18th, 2006 at 6:33 am
I teach and I constantly have to make worksheets and such. If I use Word I often get hung up on small stuff– awkward interface, for one. Pages, in contrast, is user friendly and even inviting, in that Mac way. Granted, my purposes are simple. Still, I’ve a feeling there are bound to be a few other people out there just like me. There’s little reason to knock Pages or iWork.
Brad on December 18th, 2006 at 6:33 am
I’ve also been using Pages for a great deal of my work. I’ve got a Windows PC from my company sitting beside my personal Mac. I was using for Word for Windows for my technical documents and fighting the formatting, especially with embedded graphics. Once our organization decided to move to PDFs for sharing I quickly switched to Pages and found that I was fighting my documents a lot less and providing a lot more for the customer.
Pages just fits my workflow better.
Brian Warren on December 18th, 2006 at 6:45 am
There’s no doubt that pages and keynote are very good apps. The moment you stop comparing them to the competition they shine. But the truth is most poeple won’t buy multiple office suites, and most people will end up buying MS Office. They just dont see the value. But if you show them a demo of pages and keynote they’ll be blown away. If you have even a single presentation to make, the Keynote is worth the price of entry.
Nonetheless, I truly hope iWork succeeds and gets a big update in January. It’s only going to get better and more impressive.
Zach on December 18th, 2006 at 7:24 am
I absolutely love Pages. It’s easy to use and very powerful. However, it’s cumbersome to have to save duplicate copies of everything so I have a Pages document and a Word document. I’m a college student and frequently have to submit assignments online as Word documents or share files with Windows using classmates. If Pages was my default program for .docs AND would automatically save things as .docs, I’d use it. But if I’m simply editing some homework document I downloaded, it ends up being simpler to just open it in Word and hit cmnd-s when I’m done. It sounds silly, but that’s how I feel. Although I’m trying to break the habit now that I have an Intel Mac.
Jon on December 18th, 2006 at 8:17 am
iWork certainly doesn’t get the same kind of fanfare that other programs do, but I love the suite. Pages, especially. I run a publishing company, and though there are a few instances that I wish Pages could do something (like run a grammar check), for the most part it is wonderful. I can’t fathom going back to Word. The simplicity, the intuitiveness, and the way layout and word processing are so interconnected — please don’t diss Pages. It’s so much better (especially at the price).
Mike on December 18th, 2006 at 8:24 am
Zach: save items as RTF. It’ll work with both Pages and Word without any conversion, and all but very sophisticated formatting will remain intact. And since on Windows .rtf files and .doc files use the same icon, your Windows using classmates/instructors will never notice the difference.
swissfondue on December 18th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Keynote and Pages are more user friendly and polished than their Windows-based “equivalents”. My main issue using Pages is that it is too slow on my PowerBook 1.5GHZ G4 to use as a word processor. So I write a text using Writeroom and then copy/paste into Pages for layout.
Tom on December 18th, 2006 at 8:58 am
iWorks doesn’t have to compete with Office -now. It has to grow and be in place that it could replace office if the strategic situation will allow/need it. That’s only on marketing level. As tools for average users pages and keynote are already good tools.
Robert on December 18th, 2006 at 8:58 am
I’m a college professor, and so one thing that’s common to all aspects of my job is document creation — mostly presentations and text documents. Since switching to a Mac last year, I’ve found Keynote to be wonderful, and Pages… not so much.
Keynote is wonderful because it is designed with the right role in mind for presentation software: namely, the integration of content rather than the creation of content. It is exceedingly easy to incorporate all kinds of content — images, video, audio, equations typeset with a LaTeX app like LateX-It (I teach math), etc. — with Keynote, and that’s why it’s 100x easier to use than PowerPoint for me. PPT is designed as if it is supposed to *generate* the content rather than pull it together.
However, a similar philosophy with Pages just doesn’t work so well. Pages has worked well for me when I am creating complicated, media-intensive documents like handouts for my classes that involve LaTeX-ed equations and graphs. But when I want to just make a simple text document, maybe with a heirarchical structure like an outline, Pages IMHO is just too much for such a simple task. I usually default back to Word — slow and clumsy, sure, but pretty simple — or even LaTeX or a just a text editor.
And when I work with a publishing company — editing textbooks, etc. — there are always text documents whose changes have to be tracked. Word really shines in this task, whereas I don’t think Pages even has this ability.
If Apple could come up with a nice free Mac-like alternative to Word — something that does only text documents and allows for collaborative work — then it’d be my #1 most frequently used app overnight.
Kurt on December 18th, 2006 at 9:02 am
I love Keynote but I have to publish my presentations as handouts for my students and PowerPoint is much stronger for this. Also, I occasionally have to transfer my presentation to another computer and converting Keynote to PowerPoint can create some format problems. Finally, the file sizes for Keynote are much larger than PP and more difficult to post online. So, despite a creative preference for Keynote, I’ve gone back to PowerPoint. I use InDesign for my layout work but Pages is a nice application. The bottom line is that I enjoy iWork but probably will not upgrade again soon.
Louis Gray on December 18th, 2006 at 9:04 am
There’s no doubt Pages and Keynote have found a niche audience – as can be seen by your comments. I open Keynote when I need to absolutely center an image on a slide and want to use the intuitive guidance. Pages, as mentioned, has worked for our family Christmas letter. But do you believe it has reached enough Mac users to be considered a success? Is Apple promoting iWork the way it has iLife, and do we expect that to change as new apps and new features are added?
Aaron on December 18th, 2006 at 9:05 am
I think to call iWork a “dud” is at least an overstatement, and my own feeling is that iWork is about to get a new look, as Office 2007 rolls out. Yes, viewers/converters are on the way, but one of the reasons our company invested in a few hundred seats of iWork was this year’s Word/Core Duo-save bug ( http://www.word.mvps.org/mac/crash-macintel-word.html ) that nearly brought our company to a halt.
Has it replaced Word? Not yet, but, in a telling move, we’ve changed our deliverable format for subcontractors from .doc to .rtf – that overturns more than a decade of Word as the only thing to use.
If Apple were resurrect K.I.S.S. (aka Spreadsheet 2000), another Casady and Greene product like SoundJam/iTunes, MS might have a serious competitor for the first time.
Cliff L on December 18th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Keynote is definitely a beautiful app. The only gripe I have is that it won’t autosize the text that you put into the body or header text areas. It is simply amazing how quickly you can produce a good-looking presentation with such little effort.
Pages for me is slow. I have an iMac 2Ghz G5 with 2GB ram. If it were faster, I might use it more. It doesn’t have track-changes abilities, though it is sure to come with the recent addition of ‘comments’ earlier this year. I also like the INTEGRATED dictionary and word completion. It does not fit our traditional style of word processing, but with some getting used to, you can produce beautiful documents. However, in my law school, you don’t really need beautiful documents.
In short, Keynote is the good app in iWork. I can do without Pages (so far).
Rick on December 18th, 2006 at 9:22 am
If there is going to be an iWork 07 – I hope that Apple will have ready made, built-in Office 2007 translators – read & write.
Those plus a spreadsheet module might tip the balance in a big way, since they’d even be ahead of the MacBU on that compatibility…
Jamie on December 18th, 2006 at 9:26 am
I dont think you can call it when you admit you have little need for a word processor/presentation software.
I really enjoy using both apps. I think in order to gain traction though, Apple should really be bundling this into all new Macs for free. In fact, its somewhat ludicrous that it isnt already done so. Without AppleWorks, people buying a Mac no longer have any sort of productivity suite.
As TextEdit supports OpenDocument in Leopard, I think iWork 07 will be the same. The ability to export to Open Doc format will be a big selling point.
Nate Green on December 18th, 2006 at 9:36 am
I think the consensus here seems to be that Keynote matters for those people who would otherwise relying on Powerpoint on a daily basis. It is, according to many people, one of the best software applications Apple has ever created. If we are evaluating iWork as an office suite, then it clearly does not rate, as Pages is a very sad little app, but Keynote should be recognized as the landmark achievement that it is. As with Safari, these stellar Apple applications result from exceptional (by which I mean atypical) development practices. If only they were to treat the iLife apps in the same way, we’d have much more solid applications.
denny on December 18th, 2006 at 9:53 am
I agree with all the positive sentiments above. I really enjoy using both Pages and Keynote. I’ve even found that Pages is a decent substitute for photoshop/illustrator for creating graphics that can be used for web or print. I recently revised a client’s logo using Pages and exported as a pdf that could then be opened in illustrator with each vector object intact. Of course Pages lacks all of the filters that are available in Photoshop but it is amazing just how much can be accomplished with it.
For home and small business users especially, iWork is a fantastic bargain and powerful tool.
Patricia on December 18th, 2006 at 9:54 am
I was surprised to read this post, and I am glad so many people have spoken up in favor of Pages and Keynote. I have started using both as much as I can because they are user-friendly and effective. MS Office makes me grumble now whenever I have to use them to collaborate with Windows users.
HG on December 18th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Everyone I’ve introduced iWorks to, has loved it, be they Windows or Office users.
They rarely ever need to go back. Only when collaborating with others who are using Word then they may have to go back. I found this to be mostly the case with the Equation Editor features of Word. I would like to see Pages have compatible and open math symbol capability.
J. lance on December 18th, 2006 at 10:11 am
I bought iWork’06 because I was tired of seeing PowerPoint presentations. I used KeyNote and it was different enough and nice but I don’t think anyone was blown away by the difference. I do like that you can have two different views of your presentation, one on your screen that allows you to see your notes and then the projected image without the notes. However, if someone aside from Apple made this program I am not convinced there is enough there to draw people away from PowerPoint- aside from the price. Additionally, when I travel to a conference there is no way I would feel comfortable bringing my KeyNote presentation because I have never seen anyone else use KeyNote (large scientific conferences).
As for Pages, for us, the absolute deal breaker is the lack of intergration with bibliography programs (EndNote etc.). Because of this missing feature, you will NEVER get people in academics to use pages over Word in regards to writing grants or acadmeic papers with heavy use of figures. However, the the ease of use of putting in figures and pictures is very, very good in Pages so it remians a program with potential only.
Galley on December 18th, 2006 at 10:21 am
I personally have been waiting to purchase iWork ‘07 because of the rumored Document and Spreadsheet modes. I’m trying to say Microsoft-free, and NeoOffice is rather bland.
D. Fritzinger on December 18th, 2006 at 10:28 am
I originally bought iWork to use the page setup abilities of Pages. Now, I hardly use Pages, but have started to use Keynote as my sole presentation program. On all 3 of my Macs (PMG5/dual 2.0/1 Gig, iMacG5/2.0/1Gig, MBP/1.83/1 Gig), PowerPoint is dog slow. I give presentations with embedded graphs (from Excel) and pictures (from Photoshop or Canvas), and slide transitions can sometimes take 10 seconds or more from the time I click the mouse to the time the new slide is on the screen in Powerpoint. In Keynote, no matter how complicated the graphic, the transitions are almost instantaneous. In addition, PowerPoint just can’t handle pdf graphics, and shows them at very low resolution, while Keynote handles them well. I do use Pages sometimes, but since I need to exchange documents with PC users, it is just easier to use Word. Word also includes the ability to track changes in a document and has powerful find and replace capabilities that I haven’t figured out how to use in Pages. Also, Cite while you write in Endnote doesn’t work in Pages. What pages has is the ability to place graphics in the document, exactly where I want them, which is clearly lacking in Word. So, I guess I will write in Word, convert to Pages and insert my graphics. Hopefully, the new versions of Word and/or Pages will gain some of the abilities of the other program.
Brad V on December 18th, 2006 at 11:04 am
I picked up Pages/Keynote because for school all I ever need is a word processor/presentation program.
I really enjoy pages. It’s easy to use, looks great, and has some horsepower under the hood. However, it’s definitely a new product. It gets dog slow if you start having a lot of objects in the document (part of the reason for a majority of my documents I switched to LaTeX). Some of the features feel like the should be far easier to access (I don’t see why you can’t have font/size in a dropdown menu on the bar. Overall though, I’m very happy with it and I’ve created some documents with it that would take me -ages- to do with Word.
Keynote is hands down better than Powerpoint in every single aspect. It’s faster, has better media integration, has better themes, better animations, better transitions, better everything. I cannot understand how anybody could have issues publishing a Keynote presentation…is Quicktime Video, PowerPoint, PDF, Images, Flash, DVD, and HTML not enough export options? And quite often almost all little details of the presentation are exported intact. I recently took a Physical Oceanography class, and I had to give two major presentations: one on freshening of arctic oceans, and one on nutrient redistribution in the Pacific Ocean due to El Niño. I used my own laptop to give the presentations, and my professor actually mentioned to me on both occasions that I had the best looking, most “attention-keeping” presentation out of anybody in the class. Guess what, I was the only one using Keynote. It’s a fantastic, flexible application that Apple hit a home run with. My only complaint would be that it can take a few second to load a presentation.
I think though, that iWork should come bundled with Macs. With the removal of AppleWorks, it really is a bit of a pain, and does really remove some of that “I can do everything out of the box” of the Mac awesomeness.
I don’t think Apple needs to make a separate word processing program, a little work on Pages is all it would take. And for the rare occasion that I need to do some spreadsheet work, a little SS application would be nice :)
- MacBook Pro, 2.16GHz, 2GB Ram, 120GB 5400RP SATA
T. Molnar on December 18th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Me = academic
Keynote = Incredible
Pages = Not bad (simple desktop publ. only)
Omnigraffle = very helpful
Microsoft and Endnote = Usable but clunky
Mellel and Bookends = OS X, fast, reliable, “clean”, responsive developer
______________________ and___________________
Fotomagico = best mac slideshow app under $100
iLife = podcast friendly
Quicktime Pro = good bridging app
Galerie = Superior image catalogue generator (web work, FREE)
cheers
lmwilliams on December 18th, 2006 at 11:12 am
I like Keynote. I do a lot of presentations and prefer a professional appearance, but just try to manage sounds & music. What a hassle. I know the music industry is obsessed with DRM, but give me a break. I just want a few bars to lead into sections of my very non-commercial presentations. I shouldn’t have to use complex power tools to get simple music transitions.
DAG on December 18th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Maybe my memory is failing me, but I remember Steve Jobs saying ‘we are building the replacement for AppleWorks’ when he announce iWork at MWSF. Kind of like it was an ongoing project. I would expect that we will see another component or two added this year.
For those of us who want a powerful Word Processor and do not need to have full MS Word interoperability, I would suggest Mellel. It’s made by Redlex and is their bread & butter business. Feedback and user requests are taken seriously and implemented. It’s also inexpensive.
Here is the website
http://www.redlers.com/mellel.html
Of course you can always go with NeoOffice J. It’s hard to beat free.
Richard on December 18th, 2006 at 11:29 am
I recently switched from Word to Pages for novel writing, mostly because Pages text looks better on screen, and after hours of looking at a computer screen, anything helps. Pages renders letters better than Word. However, when I deal with editors, I switch back to Word for compatability purposes.
Brandon Eley on December 18th, 2006 at 11:54 am
I don’t think you can compare the popularity of iWork to other Apple software such as iLife, Mail and Safari. Those software packages come free on every new Mac, and iWork is a commercial software package that you have to purchase as an add-on.
The simple fact that Apple includes as much bundled software as they do is amazing, and I don’t expect them to include iWork for free anytime soon, but as long as they don’t it’s not fair to compare them to each other – apples and oranges.
Comparing to Microsoft Office or NeoOffice is more appropriate. Both have to be obtained after the fact, and both are office suites. I have all 3 installed – Office, NeoOffice and iWork.
I use Pages for just about everything simple – fax cover sheets, letters, proposals, contracts, invitations, thank you cards, etc. It’s just easy to use. When I have a Word doc, though, I just open it in Word. I use Keynote when I have a presentation to do, which is very rare.
The one Achilles heel of iWork is the lack of a spreadsheet application. No serious business person can work without a spreadsheet app, no matter what field. I’m not in finance but I use Excel daily.
I think if Apple doesn’t include Sheets (their trademarked name) in iWork ‘07, they’ll lose any marketshare they’ve got. I know I won’t upgrade. I’ve held off upgrading MS Office hoping that iWork ‘07 will include a spreadsheet app and I’ll be able to ditch MS Office for good.
Macmanager on December 18th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
I think APPLE has missed the boat with PAGES. The hidden strength of this product is in the theme pack market. Not so much in home craft projects, but what I suspect is iworks biggest user base, the SoHO market.
Here is my killer app idea. I think apple should get their team of designers to produce new theme packs for SoHo markets. Apple has a few dollars to spend and should spend money researching SoHo business trends, work flows and the types of documents/ forms those Home based businesses need. Develop Theme packs for . i.e. Real Estate, Home based Travel Agents, Graphic designer/Photographers,
Apple has done a good job at producing JAM Packs for Garage band, what about new themse for iMovie? Speaking of iMovie and iWEB- how about a real co-ordinated effort and produce complete solution theme packs that contain not only new iWorks themes in a box but coordinated themes for iweb and iMovie, Keynote. so that my Home business can produce a consistant clean unified look with my company’s communication.
TomH on December 18th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
I don’t think iWork has made a big impact… yet. This is obviously a suite of tools that is still in development and growing. Apple may be waiting to shine the light on iWork until they’re finished building the suite. There’s no sense in starting the comparison when you’re not finished adding components.
Personally, I love Pages. Once you spend some time really going through all of it’s features and adapting a workflow around that, you find that it’s a surprisingly powerful program. Sometimes Apple has a tendency to make a program simple to use but in the process they hide much of the available power.
Pages launches much faster on my MacBook Pro than MS Word and any formatting that is lost is quickly cleaned up when I open Word docs with Pages. I use Pages every day and, for me, its a joy to use.
Keynote is another wonderful program that makes building presentations a breeze but its going to be hard to get widespread acceptance without a cross platform viewer. If I create presentations and go to a MS Windows based conference I’m not able to present the way I want to, IF the presentation was created in Keynote. Apple would be well served to release a cross-platform viewer for Keynote… something like QuickTime Player.
IMHO…
Lou Johnson on December 18th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
We have adopted iwork on every Mac our school district buys.. and we are a very large district. It is better than office for doing documents quickly that look great. Keynote is the best thing to come along in years. It is awesome.
We are hoping that they add a spreadsheet. That would be the best.
adam on December 18th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
I love pages….never tried keynote…
it has totally replaced word for word processing, and it’s the only thing i use to make flyers now…
Dr. Mongo on December 18th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
I have been a MS Office for Mac user for years – updated every time it came out. This year I switched totally to iWork and I love it. LOVE it.
Yes, Pages needs some work – but it works well for what I do. And when I need to get creative to make posters, flyers, tri-folds – it really helps out a bit. My college-aged daughter is using it instead of buying MS Office – and she hasn’t had any problems.
Keynote is great – and I use powerpoint a lot for my worship slides. Beautiful and easy to use.
Charles Gaba on December 18th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
As someone else noted earlier, when iWork was originally announced, Jobs specifically labelled it as “building a replacement for AppleWorks”.
To be a true replacement for AppleWorks, it would have to include:
1. Word-compatible word processor (Pages)
2. PowerPoint-compatible presentations (Keynote)
3. Excel-compatible spreadsheet (rumored “Numbers”)
4. Access (or FileMaker?) compatible spreadsheet
5. Drawing utility
6. Painting utility
7. BE BUNDLED WITH EVERY CONSUMER MAC, like AW was for over a decade.
We have #1 and 2; #3 is rumored to be on the way. #4 would likely be based on FileMaker, not Access (which is fine with me…Access sucks); #5&6 aren’t really vital.
#7 is the key, and given the underwhelming sales of iWork so far (as far as we know), this sounds like a likely thing soon..
Michael Clark on December 18th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
I’d love to have an Apple spreadsheet as part of iWork. Included with new Macs like Appleworks used to be would be priceless.
JR on December 18th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Isn’t it interesting that 20yrs ago, Apple had all the apps your requesting today in Hypercard, MacWrite, MacPaint and MacDraw and to some degree AppleWorks.
JR on December 18th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
so in essence, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Rich on December 18th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
I personally love both Pages and Keynote. I prefer each of them over Word and PowerPoint. But having said that Pages has further to go to be truly competitive with Word (in terms of wordprocessing features) than does Keynote compared to PowerPoint, at least from my vantage point.
We have started using Pages in an office environment. It works pretty well. It needs, in my estimation, at the very least: (i) an auto backup feature, (ii) a track changes feature compatible with Word, (iii) the ability to make more complex styles (interestingly Pages has a great style engine – you can import a rather complex style from a Word document and Pages handles the style perfectly, even styles you could never create from within Pages) and (iv) line numbering. Others would probably have their own list of missing/desirable features.
I have looked for a viable office alternative to Word and right now Pages comes the closest to satisfying our office needs. It seems to do a much better job of importing complex Word doc files than do the other wordprocessors I have looked at.
Anyway, with a bit more polishing, Pages could be a wonderful office wordprocessing application. I am going to be very interested to look at its next iteration.
Strongblade! on December 18th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Well, I have iWork ‘06 and I find it to be an excellent package. I don’t have alot of use for Keynote, but the stuff I have needed it for was completed quickly, looks stunning, and runs beautifully.
Pages still has some rough edges, but for any kind of page layout has been excellent and easy to use. Version 1.0 had issues but they appear to be totally fixed in 2.0
I do find the Inspector to be a little backwards and clumsy, but after an hour or two it became second nature.
I’m still fumbling with MS Office over a decade after being forced to use it. Once iWork has a couple more elements added and is polished a bit, I can’t imagine ever looking at anohter MS program again.
Tex on December 18th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
I had occasion to use Keynote and the iLife tools to turn a bunch of media into a coherent presentation on short order during a trip over the summer, and Keynote rocks. I just have little occasion to use it.
Pages is slow. Pages is beautiful, however, and I cannot make myself use anything else now that I have seen its output, unless I really require features Pages lacks. There are some specialty features for legal writing that nobody’s gotten right since WordPerfect, but WordPerfect doesn’t ship for Macs (nor does IBM’s Lotus SmartSuite). However, for ordinary letters, pamphlets, and so on, the appearance of Pages places it at the top of my list. The problem is that someone seriously needs to do some performance profiling on the app and fix its glacial speed. The app is not snappy to begin with, and after being in use for a while becomes unusably slow even on a late-generation G5 iMac 20″. This is most pronounced on long docs, even without lots of images. Fifty pages? Ugh.
If Apple offered a spreadsheet, and enabled integration of between it and iPhoto, iMovie, the spreadsheet, Keynote, and Pages, one would have a very attractive environment for creating written and live presentations, and keeping both live and written versions synchronized.
I see iWork as a work in progress, though the price of this work in progress is admittedly galling. If I’m going to beta test a product, I want a price break. However, the products look so good, it’s hard to complain at the results.
I suspect Apple’s avoidance of the enterprise market may be impacted by fear that moving before it is really ready to pose a threat, that is, before it’s really ready for the all-fronts attack, will result in nasty consequences that will harm short-term marketing. Apple’s incompetence at Enterprise can’t be an accident, it has to be a deliberate decision that Apple is not yet ready to approach the market. The question is whether Apple will ever decide that there is a good time, or whether Apple really just does not want to succeed in that market.
Don on December 18th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Keynote is worth the entire price of iWork and more. I used to teach PowerPoint at a major university and I don’t want to go near it any more. Keynote is much better with graphics, presentation, and ease of use. Are there more things I’d like to see in it? You bet! But as a presentation tool it is miles ahead of PP.
Pages is another story. Its problem, IMO, is that it is a taint–taint a word processor and taint a DTP application. That is, it’s more powerful than just a word processor but nowhere near as powerful as XPress or In Design.
So people use Word. The thing is, Word has far more stuff than Pages, but the fact is, most people don’t use all that flab. They use it like a word processor. Professionals don’t use it for DTP, amateurs (and cheap businesses pawning it off on secretaries), however, do. So the high-end DTP apps have their place, and the word processors have their place. Where does pages fit in?
So I agree that Keynote is the star and Pages doesn’t have a market.
brett on December 18th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
I’ve demoed Pages but not bought it because although I write for a living, I don’t print anything, just send rtf files to editors. For that, TextEdit is often all I need, though I also use Scrivener (and, once upon a time, Mellel) for more complex documents.
Some of my editors do use Word, so I have to keep using it in those rare cases, and I agree that when Pages can handle track changes and seamlessly translate Word files with change-tracking, back and forth, I’d consider buying iWork.
Actually Apple has steadily improved TextEdit over the years and Im’ surprised they don’t ever mention it when publicizing the Mac’s bundled software. In word processing, less can often be more, and I really prefer TextEdit’s minimalist approach to Word’s bloat. It gets out of the way of my writing whereas Word impedes it.
Al Pawlowski on December 18th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
I still use AppleWorks every day. Why? Like iWork mac-easy (compared to Office), but it has the dbase component I need. IMO, a small scale relational dbase added to iWork would make it a smash hit.
jon on December 18th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
iWork is great, I love pages and keynote. I’m a pro creative user, but still find great use for both applications–especially keynote. Still, the biggest limitation is that the very types of documents I would create in iWork are the documents I would need to share (most of the time)…and guess what? Most people are on a PC. Yes, the files can be exported in Powerpoint, word, and others, but that’s just not as good as the real source. Not everything can be translated to those crappy formats, which is tough when you are collaborating. So, in order to really use iWork, people need iWork on a PC!! I swear this would work, iwork is great and people hate office. For $80? they’d just pick up PC iWork to be compatible with us crazy mac users…and just might like it enough to make their app of choice. Heck, they might even switch after using Apple products.
Michael Whitney on December 18th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
I use AppleWorks everyday too. I’ve found Pages to be too clunky and cluttered for most my writing (which is very simple). I think AppleWorks (formerly ClarisWorks) is an absolute gem in Apple’s lineup. It’s a shame it hasn’t received any love in the last 5 or 6 years. A minor overhaul of the AppleWorks interface would result in an “Class A” must-have app.
Doug Petrosky on December 18th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
I have to agree with the general feeling on this board. iWork is a great product, but Apple has left people with the feeling that it is not quite finished yet and I think that is for good reason. IT NOT! When they add the Spreadsheet to it, the vast majority of current users will upgrade to get this new application along with the updated features in Keynote and Pages. At the same time a new segment of the Mac community will decide it is now worth spending money on and iWork market share will grow.
BTW: If you want to see how cool the spread sheet program will be, just add some formulas to a table in pages to see how nice the UI of a spread sheet can be. iWork will have it’s day, just like iPhoto now does (do you remember how many people trashed iPhoto 1.0?).
Walt Atwood on December 19th, 2006 at 11:27 am
The bottom line in all of this is that the iWork suite is not complete. So far, all we have is a word processor/DTP in Pages (Apple’s answer to Microsoft Publisher?) and a slideshow program (Keynote). These are nice, but what about other office-productivity tasks?
Some say Apple needs to come out with a spreadsheet app to compete with Microsoft Excel and Corel’s WordPerfect Office Quattro Pro. I disagree. Spreadsheets are too tied to certain data structures and functions. What Apple should do is come out with a database app, like a FileMaker Lite. Apple could call this new app Data, or DB. This database app could still serve as a number-cruncher for spreadsheet users, but also work well with mailing lists and other data structures. Then iWork would be more complete. If iWork had a “Data” app that could also work well with Apple’s Address Book technology and its iCal and Mail.app, (or perhaps acts as the next step up from them, much as Aperture is professional software versus the consumer-oriented iPhoto) then you’re getting somewhere!
Ryan on December 19th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Frankly, I am really baffled as to why Apple is even competing in this market.
Media apps like iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie were of course utterly brilliant because they got right in front of a massive wave of consumer interest in rich media.
Internet apps like iWeb attempt to get in on the ground floor of the “next Office” — Internet content creation and publishing. (Unfortunately for Apple, Web apps will almost certainly dominate this space and Google is way out front with Blogger and Google Docs+Spreadsheets.)
But a document-oriented app? To control how things look when printed out on paper? How old school is that? Plus they just antagonize MSFT for no particular reason.
Unless they know something about the future of Office for Mac the rest of us do not.
Tunes on December 20th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
iWork is great but there is room for several improvements!!!
Pages – need more professionally / academically focused options (endnotes, easier compatibility with word, etc.)
Keynote – NOTHING AT ALL :)
SPREADSHEET AND DATABASE programs with at least the functionality of those found in NeoOffice/OpenOffice…
although this is a long shot, if apple integrated this software into leopard, it would truly provide an all-inclusive out-of-the-box feeling!!! You wouldn’t really need anything!!!
scott hampton on December 21st, 2006 at 9:44 am
OK, we run our consultancy on Macs. Toolset:
Keynote — so much better than PP, and we can do really polished work that looks clean and feels tight.
NeoOffice — daily use for text and spreadsheets we can share w/ clients & contractors. A bit clunky, and not pretty for graphs.
MS Office — last resort, but still stuck with Excel for complex modeling because our monte-carlo tools only run there. Excel graphs are also prettier.
Pages — anything on letterhead goes out pages -> PDF. The para numbering doesn’t get screwed up, and images behave properly.
Many of the “needed” feastures above are needed before Pages will replace NeoOffice. Pages is a bit slower (!), doesn’t allow us to create complex templates, and is generally bizarre about some things. Plus side is that paragraph formats and rules can be enforced, and since Adobe (may they rot in hell) dropped Framemaker we’ve been bereft.
The Stig on December 22nd, 2006 at 11:57 am
I made the switch to Pages when it first came out. Why? Because I despise Word. Mind you I made my own business templates. That investment paid off because I have a large collection of templates for all forms of biz communication. Is there room for improvement? Yes, anything can be improved.
Pages, IMO, is close to FrameMaker in conception and ever since Adobe dropped the ball on a native OS X FrameMaker port I’ve been using Pages for everything, big and small. It works if you make the minimal investment to learn it well and construct your own templates.
iWork is dirt cheap compared to Office. This alone makes the suite compelling. The bottom line is that Pages has replaced Word in the things I do and it has worked out exceptionally well.
While there are problems (most of them are newbie issues) the simple fact is that Pages can compete with Word and if you don’t think so, either you’re using a lot of Office integration (I do not) or you don’t understand things. So take a step back and learn it.
James Lloyd on February 17th, 2007 at 4:50 am
I get the impression that people who write these reviews about Pages have never really looked at it properly. Here’s what the massive CNET corporation say about the relationship of Pages to Office. Be amazed. You obviously haven’t been paying attention.
http://news.com.com/Apples+iWork+emerges+as+rival+to+Microsoft+Office/2100-1012_3-6030011.html