I rarely use Excel so I don't know if it's worth buying Office just for that. I have Office 2003 on my Windows machine if I ever need it 
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iWork vs. Office 2004
- Thread starter SuperSnake2012
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I don't have any real use for Excel and yet find Office way better than iWork. I use Keynote 2 a bit more than Powerpoint but like them both. Word is superior to Pages for my purposes (general word processing, not designing handouts, etc). I too bought at edu pricing. I also like Entourage, though Outlook is way better.
I had both when the iwork came out because I bought the iwork (a friend let me use his second install of MS word 2004) and I was forcing myself to use pages and keynote, but eventually i gave back into ms word. However, I do still use keynote because I think it is a lot smoother and easier to use.
not really a fair comparison
comon, guys. pages is only on, what, revision 1? how many revisions has word been through?wait a couple years for apple to work the kinks out, then get back to the issue. hell, what was the first version of word like?? now, compare THAT to iWork and see what you find... but for the sake of argument, i did find pages more useful for doing my resume. same with keynote for different reasons; as for excel? wait for 'numbers'...
comon, guys. pages is only on, what, revision 1? how many revisions has word been through?wait a couple years for apple to work the kinks out, then get back to the issue. hell, what was the first version of word like?? now, compare THAT to iWork and see what you find... but for the sake of argument, i did find pages more useful for doing my resume. same with keynote for different reasons; as for excel? wait for 'numbers'...
myself, i never use spreadsheets. in fact, i never use presentations either. i'm a cartoonist, so i spend most of my time in things like photoshop and illustrator. however, when i need to work on a script, i didn't want to shell out a whole lot of money for MSO. iwork was a lot cheaper, and it can read .doc, and export to .doc (wish it was just a save as feature!), so for me, iwork does all i need to. however, if i was in an office setting, i reckon excell is the key thing to have.
patric
patric
Good call - I don't really use iWork at all, but my company has massive site licenses for Office 2004. Though I would go as far as to say that Pages 1.x has been a far better application than Word ever was all the way through version 6.0 - I remember when Word 6.0 came out and everyone was so excited, until it started crashing six different ways every ten minutes. There were a lot of folks who downgraded to Word 5.0... IIRC, it wasn't really until Word 7.0 that M$ finally beat out WordPerfect.nxent said:
Word and Powerpoint - I'm close to even hating them. Both their UIs are strangely unintuitive. Word seem to be extremely CPU-heavy compared to what it essentially does: proces text. I don't have any use for it's more advanced publishing features - I'd use CS 2 for that, which is made for doing exactly that. Therefore I totally prefer Pages, though I agree it dosn't feel fully developed. If for no other reason than the way text just floats around any picture you drag'n'drop in it - intuitive, meaningful and practical.
Keynote is simply brilliant. Again, the UI is - - intuitive, meaningful and practical , fx drag'n'drop a group of pictures from anywhere and they automatically each become a slide. What have the Powerpoint developers been doing the past 5 years I ask myself. It's simply an app to make slideshows - that really is not able to handle pictures very well.
I guess Excel is rather nice app for what it does. The few times I've used it I've found it quite practical. And rather logical to learn.
A
Keynote is simply brilliant. Again, the UI is - - intuitive, meaningful and practical , fx drag'n'drop a group of pictures from anywhere and they automatically each become a slide. What have the Powerpoint developers been doing the past 5 years I ask myself. It's simply an app to make slideshows - that really is not able to handle pictures very well.
I guess Excel is rather nice app for what it does. The few times I've used it I've found it quite practical. And rather logical to learn.
A
Unfortunately, it's an Office world. And so I run Office for Mac on my machine.
I'd rather have a third-party challenger running on my machine though.
It is true. The feel of a Microsoft program is so different than an Apple program. Apple stuff just feels right. Whereas Microsoft is clunky and bloated.
I'd rather have a third-party challenger running on my machine though.
It is true. The feel of a Microsoft program is so different than an Apple program. Apple stuff just feels right. Whereas Microsoft is clunky and bloated.
I'm told all the time that it's a "Windows world," so maybe we should just forget this Mac thing altogether and get with the complete Microsoft program.
iWork AND Office.
I think Keynote is way better than PowerPoint. (And, I just had a PowerPoint presentation emailed that crashed PowerPoint, but worked flawlessly in Keynote. Go figure.)
I *NEED* a spreadsheet, and I've been using Excel so long, no alternative can open my spreadsheets correctly.
As a general-use word processor, Word is better than Pages.
But, MS doesn't make Publisher for Mac, so Pages is my Publisher replacement. (Now if only it could import Publisher for Windows documents.)
I think Keynote is way better than PowerPoint. (And, I just had a PowerPoint presentation emailed that crashed PowerPoint, but worked flawlessly in Keynote. Go figure.)
I *NEED* a spreadsheet, and I've been using Excel so long, no alternative can open my spreadsheets correctly.
As a general-use word processor, Word is better than Pages.
But, MS doesn't make Publisher for Mac, so Pages is my Publisher replacement. (Now if only it could import Publisher for Windows documents.)
ehurtley said:
The only reason I have Word or Excel (or PowerPoint for that matter) installed at all is for compatibility with other people. MS Office has a huge installed user base, that iWork can never (in the near future) compete with. As far as compatibility, future XML-based document formats might open the door for other apps to cut into Office's stake on the Mac, but I doubt it.
For presentations I use Keynote 2.
For papers/articles I use LaTeX.
For data manipulation/graphing I use Matlab.
For spreadsheet stuff/gradebooks I use Excel (to be compatible with the front office and their grade repository).
Word is installed so I can open emails from other people (some department flyers are sent out as .doc files instead of .pdf or .txt). The same for PowerPoint since some professors only post .ppt presentations online rather than .pdf. I know I could use Pages or Keynote for these files, but I don't really trust Apple's ability to open the files properly. Not that I blame Apple for this, since its Microsoft's fault for using proprietary document formats.
It would be nice if somebody wrote a plugin for the Win versions of PowerPoint and Word that would allow them to open Keynote and Pages documents (so iWork users wouldn't have to export to .doc or .ppt just for Win users sake). Microsoft would never go for it, so even if such a plugin showed up they'd probably kill it with the next round of patches. Still....
Keynote is a lot better then powerpoint, but if I was going to buy one of the two, I would buy Office 2004 just because I get Word with it.
The only things I really need is a basic word processor and something to do presentations once every blue moon. I think I'm going with iWork because it's a lot cheaper and I don't need the MS Office functions. Plus it's really ugly
physics_gopher said:
Yeah, I like NeoOffice (the Aqua-fied beta of OpenOffice,) and it has excellent Office compatibility, but it won't open my Excel spreadsheets.
A few months ago, my company (a computer consulting firm,) advertised for new computer techs. The ad specifically stated resumés would only be accepted in-line in email messages, in plain text. No HTML, no RTF, definitely no Word files or other attachments of any kind. The ad made this VERY clear. It was easy to filter out those who can't follow simple directions. If the email contained an attachment, deleted. If the resume was in HTML or embedded RTF, deleted. Come on, people! If you can't even copy and paste into plain text, how am I supposed to think you can handle troubleshooting other people's computers!? :-D
I'd say fully 1/3 of the responses we got violated that simple rule. (Not to mention the guy who faxed his in. We didn't even include the fax number! It said 'no calls, email only' in the ad.)
edit: The one thing I wish someone would come up with is a universal spreadsheet format that Microsoft would support. They support RTF for text, but why nothing for spreadsheets? And I don't mean CSV, I mean a real format that supports formulas and embedded objects like graphs. (I want PDF for 'publisher' type documents, Flash or MPEG for presentations, RTF for documents, and an equivalent for spreadsheets. Is that too much to ask? iWork does all but the spreadsheet right now.)
Did you make it that way because it was easier for you, or because it was a good test? Putting directions like that in a 'help wanted' ad is always a good idea, usually does a good idea of filtering for you.ehurtley said:
Wake me up when Keynote can do curved lines and has much better shape capabilities. That's been the one thing that has kept me a Powerpoint user.ipacmm said:
Iwork is more of an everything simple sort of app.You can handle wrapping,graphics fonts with ease. I love those aligners!
Word is more of a WORD processor, and takes longer to find features, because of the way it is(n't) organised
Word is more of a WORD processor, and takes longer to find features, because of the way it is(n't) organised
iwork
I can predict what iWork is about to do. Not with Word.
For some reason, Word at one point started giving all of my documents 0 inch margins by default, so I had to change that every time I wanted to write a paper. So I'd select all and drag the margins. Then I'd write. If I pressed delete at the beginning of a line, however, it'd change the margin for that line back to 0 inches. I HATED both of those.
And all the auto-formatting - makes it very, very tough to write "normal" papers (which is 99% of my work). I know I can turn all this off, but I don't want to have to dig through preferences and more just to do that.
iWork starts up quickly, works easily, and is predictable.
I can predict what iWork is about to do. Not with Word.
For some reason, Word at one point started giving all of my documents 0 inch margins by default, so I had to change that every time I wanted to write a paper. So I'd select all and drag the margins. Then I'd write. If I pressed delete at the beginning of a line, however, it'd change the margin for that line back to 0 inches. I HATED both of those.
And all the auto-formatting - makes it very, very tough to write "normal" papers (which is 99% of my work). I know I can turn all this off, but I don't want to have to dig through preferences and more just to do that.
iWork starts up quickly, works easily, and is predictable.
