iWork '06

[rendezvouscp]

Um, if all you need is a simple word processor, use TextEdit. It come standard with Tiger, reads most Word .docs, spell checking, thesaurus. If you need something better, wait to see if the next iWork is good. If not, go with Office. Pages is great as a page layout program, for making things like flyers. But TextEdit works fine for creating simple .rtf files. As long as you don't need anything complex like tables, you should be fine.

Even tables work perfectly fine in TextEdit; I agree with the rest though. Another thing: as an owner of both Office and iWork, I use both for different things. Everyday stuff, Word. I only use Pages when I need to really design something, like a form, guide, brochure, etc. Pages is really for design work, where you need to use the design capabilities and templates. Word works really well for just documents, and is everything I need for all of my regular papers for school.

I hope I'm making some sense.
-Chase

 

[solvs]

TextEdit is useful for short-form writing and note taking, but it lacks word processing basics like page numbers, headers, footers. You'd never get away with using it for an academic paper.

Yeah, you're right, I didn't think of those. Still, for basic stuff, it isn't bad. Didn't realize tables worked though, always just assumed they wouldn't. Heard they get messed up when trying to go back and forth with Word. Good thing new Macs come with Office and iWork trials, you can test them both out yourself.

 

[rendezvouscp]

Yeah, you're right, I didn't think of those. Still, for basic stuff, it isn't bad. Didn't realize tables worked though, always just assumed they wouldn't. Heard they get messed up when trying to go back and forth with Word. Good thing new Macs come with Office and iWork trials, you can test them both out yourself.

The most interesting thing (I think) about TextEdit is that it can do so much for being so light weight. Recently a friend sent me a tabled document that was made from some open source software and it worked in TextEdit and Word. I'm unsure if TextEdit can number pages though.
-Chase

 

[IJ Reilly]

Even tables work perfectly fine in TextEdit; I agree with the rest though. Another thing: as an owner of both Office and iWork, I use both for different things. Everyday stuff, Word. I only use Pages when I need to really design something, like a form, guide, brochure, etc. Pages is really for design work, where you need to use the design capabilities and templates. Word works really well for just documents, and is everything I need for all of my regular papers for school.

I hope I'm making some sense.
-Chase

Pages works great as a general word processor also. Start creating your own templates for reports, memos and correspondence, and you'll see what I mean. Text and paragraph style sheets are much easier to create and maintain in Pages than in Word. When I import a Word document into Pages, I can see how poorly this function is understood by most Word users -- sometimes they contain dozens of paragraph styles, most of them unused!

 

[starnox]

I use pages for all my school work. I find I can easily create things in Pages - much more easily than Word even though I have used it for like 5 years. Pages also has more of an OS X feel than Word does.

 

[devman]

Pages works great as a general word processor also. Start creating your own templates for reports, memos and correspondence, and you'll see what I mean.

I quite agree. My only gripe is the load time for Pages (time it takes to launch the app first time).

Text and paragraph style sheets are much easier to create and maintain in Pages than in Word. When I import a Word document into Pages, I can see how poorly this function is understood by most Word users -- sometimes they contain dozens of paragraph styles, most of them unused!

And I agree again. Well said

 

[Angrist]

I'd recommend both. (If you can afford it.)

iWork and Office are totally different animals, with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Word/Pages:
Any time you need compatibility with Windows users for editing, then you need Word. This is a necessary evil, Pages, openoffice, neooffice, none of them export well enough yet.

Any time you just need to print a document, or export as a .pdf, then go with Pages. It's not super quick (on any machine in the sig), but it's clean and makes excellent documents. Proper paragraph styling and page setting really adds a nice consistency that most Word documents lack.

Personally, I use either textEdit or CopyWrite for all my actual writing. (CopyWrite is designed for authors, particularly novelists, but has a VERY nice full screen mode with nothing but the text you're working on.) Once I've got most of the text that I want, I switch to either Word or Pages, depending on my application, and deal with layout, page numbering, styles, etc etc.

PowerPoint/Keynote:
As in the word processing area, if you need to be compatible, you need PowerPoint. Keynote does NOT export things correctly, trust me I've tried. Every time I need to do a perfect export, I export to a series of jpegs, then insert those into PowerPoint. You can't edit the result, but it will always look exactly the way it did in Keynote.

If you can give your presentations off your own laptop, then Keynote is the way to go. Its slide transitions are better, the presenter display ROCKS, and the default templates blow away PowerPoint.

Overall I'd say that you can't replace Office with iWork, but you can't replace iWork with Office either. You'll have a better experience when you combine the strengths and weaknesses of the two packages.

 

[jacg]

I wonder if there will be iPod Video related enhancements to Keynote?

I know there are 3rd party apps around that do this stuff, but wouldn't it be cool to 'export to iPod' direct from Keynote.

As a teacher I would love to be able to distribute MPEG4 movies of presentations, perhaps with an audio track (recordable in Keynote 3?).

 

[silverback66]

I'm not even quite sure why, but I'd love to have some kind of project management software packaed in but it's probably unlikely that we'll see that this go around.