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Apple use MS Office in iPad page instead of iWork

cavi

cavi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 19, 2010
151
28
Haifa, Israel
Hi everyone,
as someone who loves the iWork suite i'm really disappointed from the current version of iWork. since the release of the new suite I hoped that Apple will make efforts to make the suite better but nothing big happened, yet...
we (me and my wife...) are considering a purchase of a new iPad pro which will serve my wife in Med school as a convenient document presenter alongside with her Macbook. we visit the iPad pro page and there is no mention of iWork. instead, you can see in the pictures a photo of the iPad pro which runs Word and Excel in slit view mode...
I really have no problem with that, but I do think that if Apple promotes MS Office in the iPad pro page, which meant to be used by the "pro" sector, what it's says about iWork?
this, with the fact that apple didn't release major update to iWork since October (while ms releasing major updates every few weeks), shifts me to make the actual transaction to MS Office as my day-to-day work tool (something I avoided until now since I REALLY LIKE iWork...).

there are any rumors about a big release of iWork, or you think that Apple just give away the pro sector to MS (something that I think is not smart thing to do because the main reason I buy Apple products is software...)?
 
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iWork had potential once, but Apple have since dumbed down the software beyond belief. iWork is certainly not 'pro' software. Microsoft Office is defiantly the better software on all platforms as far as I'm concerned.

Use what you will though. Use what works for you. Even though I prefer Office, I certainly do not subscribe to Office 365. I still use Office 2004 to write my books.
 
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the thing is Apple believe that "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware" (as far as I know...). for now, i'm looking for the software because iWork suite is no more than entry level product....

few weeks ago I opened a thread and share my disappointment from iWork suit in total and Pages in particular. but today, after I saw the MS suite in a picture which should promote iPad I realized that there is no future for iWork (at least for me, and I hope that I wrong and Apple will release a MAJOR update soon...).
 
I'm still a big fan of iWork ('09 in particular). I have both iWork '09 and the latest versions installed on all of my OSX devices. When I need the advanced features, I use iWork '09, but when I need the flexibility of working on documents on either my iPad Pro or my iMac or my Macbook Air, then I use the newer version. There are still some differences between the iOS and OSX versions of iWork (like no easy way to apply character styles) but there are some work arounds.

I also have MS Office 365. I find the disparity between the iPad and OSX versions to be too great as to be quite frustrating. I have relegated MS Office use to those times when I need guaranteed file compatibility (collaborating with others on MS Office docs).
 
sracer said:
I'm still a big fan of iWork ('09 in particular). I have both iWork '09 and the latest versions installed on all of my OSX devices. When I need the advanced features, I use iWork '09, but when I need the flexibility of working on documents on either my iPad Pro or my iMac or my Macbook Air, then I use the newer version. There are still some differences between the iOS and OSX versions of iWork (like no easy way to apply character styles) but there are some work arounds.

I also have MS Office 365. I find the disparity between the iPad and OSX versions to be too great as to be quite frustrating. I have relegated MS Office use to those times when I need guaranteed file compatibility (collaborating with others on MS Office docs).
Click to expand...
your replay just strength my thought to move completely to MS. why you need to work with 3 different applications in order to achieve one goal?
iWork suite is not powerful as expected, not support MS files (which dominant the market) as expected, so why should I waist my time on it? I'll remove iWork and continue with MS only and that's it...
PS, for me MS Office costs the same as iWork because I use cloud services and in order to have the same package like MS Office (or less...) I need to purchase 1TB of iCloud storage which costs like MS suit for 5(!) different users ("family members...) which each one gains 1TB of storage...
 
mildocjr said:
Used to Love iWork 09, since then it's become more like iNoteTake 11.

But placing images in pages is still 100x better than Word.
Click to expand...

This is what I use Pages for - placing images, shapes, text boxes etc.

Also, Numbers is a lot easier for basic spreadsheets. For example, to add up a column, just click and drag. In Excel there's no shortcut, you have to type "=SUM( )" each time. And the formulas just don't work if you get the slightest thing wrong - Numbers seems a little more forgiving.
 
Funny, I think Pages '13 is just as bad as Office when it comes to placing text boxes and images. Pages '09 was amazing at it though. The two versions of Pages does not work the same way for me when inserting images, even though they have the same settings, it is quite strange.
 
cavi said:
your replay just strength my thought to move completely to MS. why you need to work with 3 different applications in order to achieve one goal?
iWork suite is not powerful as expected, not support MS files (which dominant the market) as expected, so why should I waist my time on it? I'll remove iWork and continue with MS only and that's it...
PS, for me MS Office costs the same as iWork because I use cloud services and in order to have the same package like MS Office (or less...) I need to purchase 1TB of iCloud storage which costs like MS suit for 5(!) different users ("family members...) which each one gains 1TB of storage...
Click to expand...
I can understand that. I prefer to use the right tool for the right job. I have more than one hammer, more than one screwdriver, etc. because they serve different purposes.

I didn't even mention LibreOffice. :) I'm equally versed and proficient in LibreOffice, MS Office, and iWork. I work with a LOT of text, spreadsheet, and presentation documents and it is helpful to know a variety of tools well.

For my uses, it was extremely frustrating to work on a MS Word doc on OSX and then attempt to edit it in iOS only to discover that the feature is missing. Yes, the formatting was well preserved, and I could make some changes to the text content, but often times I couldn't make substantive changes.

Forget anything with moderate to advanced formatting. It was near impossible to update those docs in iOS.

In contrast, virtually everything that I can do with the latest iWork on OSX I can do with the iOS version. Yes, there is a reduced function set, but it is consistent.


T'hain Esh Kelch said:
Funny, I think Pages '13 is just as bad as Office when it comes to placing text boxes and images. Pages '09 was amazing at it though. The two versions of Pages does not work the same way for me when inserting images, even though they have the same settings, it is quite strange.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. Pages '09 is terrific. Thankfully it continues to work perfectly with the latest version of OSX.
 
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mildocjr said:
You've obviously never tried using Pages exclusively.
Click to expand...
and why is that?
I have used iWork exclusively for 3 years (from the release of the last version until the release of RTL support in Office 2016)...
before pages I used Mellel (which is the BEST word processor, but not friendly for collaboration...).
 
I only thought that way because those 3 apps provide all the core functionality that people are looking for when they invest in a document suite. Pages also blends the functionality of both Word and Publisher and integrates iCloud a lot better than Word does with OneDrive. The closest Microsoft has come to a nice app was OneNote and the only people who know how to use it are in seemingly in the tech field. I can say that I don't like the sidebar layout and would rather have toolbars (or even a Ribbon) in it's place, but the implementation of the header and footer is much more polished than with word. Setting up paragraph and placing tables is much easier than having to hunt though all of the tabs in Word. OK so MS Office has Access, but out of my time in the industry and 3 different companies, I've only known 3 people to use Access databases. Excel vs Numbers, now that is a debate. Both are pretty evenly matched. Perhaps my qualm with Office is that Microsoft is still charging for consumer licenses. With all the money that Microsoft makes through all of their sources, they should be able to make free for personal use, and their Windows client should just be one version with all the functionality and free. If they want to charge for a license program that's fine but geez, they can give us all a break with the cost.
 
mildocjr said:
I only thought that way because those 3 apps provide all the core functionality that people are looking for when they invest in a document suite. Pages also blends the functionality of both Word and Publisher and integrates iCloud a lot better than Word does with OneDrive. The closest Microsoft has come to a nice app was OneNote and the only people who know how to use it are in seemingly in the tech field. I can say that I don't like the sidebar layout and would rather have toolbars (or even a Ribbon) in it's place, but the implementation of the header and footer is much more polished than with word. Setting up paragraph and placing tables is much easier than having to hunt though all of the tabs in Word. OK so MS Office has Access, but out of my time in the industry and 3 different companies, I've only known 3 people to use Access databases. Excel vs Numbers, now that is a debate. Both are pretty evenly matched. Perhaps my qualm with Office is that Microsoft is still charging for consumer licenses. With all the money that Microsoft makes through all of their sources, they should be able to make free for personal use, and their Windows client should just be one version with all the functionality and free. If they want to charge for a license program that's fine but geez, they can give us all a break with the cost.
Click to expand...
My criticism is not on the "ease of use" rather on the functionality (but I must agree with you that the slidebar could be better [like MS's Ribon]).
if you feel that iWork suite meets all your need it's very good for you. I don't ask for esoteric stuff; I really think that Cross-references, track changes (in tables, which is missing in Pages), outline view, document comparison, secondary font (you can't say that Pages is multilingual tool without secondary font...), ability to insert wide range of files and not just AV, ability to use one horizontal page (which is not possible - you can make the whole document horizontal, but not just one page), ability to set one paragraph outside the page borders, ability to apply more than 10 shortcuts and ext. are basic things (at least cross-references, document comparison, secondary font and outline view...). note that i'm not talking about more "pro stuff' like insert file name, use more than one date option, use textbox for each chapter (like tab) and more which are useful, but I can live without it.
I'll be happy to pay for iWork Pro suite or add-ons which resolve my "power issues", but there are no solutions like that...
regarding to Excel and Numbers: Excel much more "powerful" tool.
 
cavi said:
My criticism is not on the "ease of use" rather on the functionality (but I must agree with you that the slidebar could be better [like MS's Ribon]).
if you feel that iWork suite meets all your need it's very good for you. I don't ask for esoteric stuff; I really think that Cross-references, track changes (in tables, which is missing in Pages), outline view, document comparison, secondary font (you can't say that Pages is multilingual tool without secondary font...), ability to insert wide range of files and not just AV, ability to use one horizontal page (which is not possible - you can make the whole document horizontal, but not just one page), ability to set one paragraph outside the page borders, ability to apply more than 10 shortcuts and ext. are basic things (at least cross-references, document comparison, secondary font and outline view...). look that i'm not talking about more "pro stuff' like insert file name, use more than one date option, use textbox for each chapter (like tab) and more which are useful, but I can live without it.
I'll be happy to pay for iWork Pro suite or add-ons which resolve my "power issues", but there are no solutions like that...
regarding to Excel and Numbers: Excel much more "powerful" tool.
Click to expand...

I've only had to worry about most of that when I was a technical writer, outside of that position I've never had to use any of those features and can say that pages takes the clutter out of word. I can agree with you that Pages is not without faults and there are some features that made it a great program in iWork 09 that just don't exist in the newer versions. But Word is a bit too powerful for the average user. Showing Office on the iPad was more for convincing financial managers, project managers, and owners that iPad can be used in the office because the mindset is "if you want to run a business you must have Office" which is not the case, but that's a different argument.
 
but, who is the "average user"? is a student who wants to publish his/her thesis or another "ordinary work" and has no option to cross reference is an average user? is a small business owner how asked to sign a lease contract and wants to be sure that the file he sent before is the exact file he received and for that he asks for document comparison option is an average user? I think that we define "average user" differently... =]
 
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I think we've fleshed this out enough to determine who each product is for. You are correct, we do define them differently because the average user in my neck of the woods is data processing accountants and secretaries who don't track changes and usually fire something off without checking it. Those same average users for me are still asking me how to save documents to a thumb drive so I don't even begin to explain manipulating tables in a word document. And if Word opens up in outline view, they think the program is broken. Just my idea of the average user.
 
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mildocjr said:
But Word is a bit too powerful for the average user.
Click to expand...
Word is so prevalent in today's world. Like it or not, it is the gold standard when it comes to word processing. Many people in school, and offices use it, so it stands to reason that they'll also use it at home.

Do we use all of its functionality, no, but I may use certain features you may not, and vice versa. Just because it has more features means we shouldn't use it.

My 10 year old daughters use Word and have no problem with it, where as the Pages is a different, they stumble on that.
 
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