iWorks is installed on my every apple device and I wonder whats the advantage of it over MS Office? Office is the industry standard and why I use it, but are there any advantages of iWork's? I do not use presentations but use Word & Excel a bit.
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Who uses iWorks?
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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Apple's iWork apps are free and that's the main advantage. If a user only has to deal with the occasional MS Office document they're probably OK just using the Apple apps. Users that deal with a lot of those files would be better off with MS Office on their Macs. Users that need total compatibility have to run MS Office on a Windows machine or in a VM on their Mac...and I think there might be times when the Windows version of MS Office run in a VM isn't totally compatible.
I prefer Pages to Word: free, less clutter, does what I need (writing and editing of texts). Also it is connected via iCloud to other Apple gear, so I can start a document on the iPad and continue on the Mac, e.g.
Numbers has similar advantages, but it differs more from Excel, so there will be many cases where Excel is better suited. For simple tables and calculations Numbers is fine.
You don´t use presentations, but for completion of the trio: Keynote is much better in most respects than Powerpoint IMO.
Numbers has similar advantages, but it differs more from Excel, so there will be many cases where Excel is better suited. For simple tables and calculations Numbers is fine.
You don´t use presentations, but for completion of the trio: Keynote is much better in most respects than Powerpoint IMO.
I am basically running a business on iWork right now. Office for Mac is bloated and between OneDrive syncing issues and Outlook hanging up, I decided to try and simplify my life.
So far so good, but there are definitely issues with Numbers. I still have to resort to Excel for those tasks, which is okay because Excel is by far my favorite of the Microsoft suite. Day to day spreadsheets work fine with Numbers. Pages is excellent and Keynote is my go to for presentations.
One difference I noticed right away after switching for Outlook to Mail again is the improved battery life on my laptop. It made a noticeable difference. There are aspects of Outlook that I miss, but the integration of Mail is excellent.
As with everything in life, there are trade offs.
So far so good, but there are definitely issues with Numbers. I still have to resort to Excel for those tasks, which is okay because Excel is by far my favorite of the Microsoft suite. Day to day spreadsheets work fine with Numbers. Pages is excellent and Keynote is my go to for presentations.
One difference I noticed right away after switching for Outlook to Mail again is the improved battery life on my laptop. It made a noticeable difference. There are aspects of Outlook that I miss, but the integration of Mail is excellent.
As with everything in life, there are trade offs.
iWork brings the same major advantage of all Apple software: it's free, lightweight, easy to use and integrates well with the Apple ecosystem. This is no small advantage in my case. I can't stand dealing with expensive, bloated resource hogs like MS (and Adobe for that matter).
The major disadvantage is that iWork generally doesn't provide the power features some people need, though this group may be small and may or may not include you. Also, Apple (in my opinion) doesn't know who they are right now and are focusing nearly all of their efforts on mobile tech (with haphazard forays into entertainment, retail, personal assistants and who knows what next). They rarely update iWork with new features because on the ladder of importance at Apple, it's near the bottom rung of a long, long ladder. Whatever their focus right now, it isn't productivity, and that's certainly not the same situation with MS and Office.
Note: I have no experience deploying or using iWork in an office environment. If you need certain security features, email servers or collaborative functionality, you'll obviously want to do more extensive research before deciding.
The major disadvantage is that iWork generally doesn't provide the power features some people need, though this group may be small and may or may not include you. Also, Apple (in my opinion) doesn't know who they are right now and are focusing nearly all of their efforts on mobile tech (with haphazard forays into entertainment, retail, personal assistants and who knows what next). They rarely update iWork with new features because on the ladder of importance at Apple, it's near the bottom rung of a long, long ladder. Whatever their focus right now, it isn't productivity, and that's certainly not the same situation with MS and Office.
Note: I have no experience deploying or using iWork in an office environment. If you need certain security features, email servers or collaborative functionality, you'll obviously want to do more extensive research before deciding.
- Collaboration is quite simple.
- Documents can be accessed from any device with internet access. You could even use your friends Android to login to iCloud and print a document locally, if you really hated trees.
- Cost = Free on all iDevices
- Multiplatform - create document on a Mac, edit on an iPad, print the same document from a WindowsPC
It has those advantages for sure. However its not the industry standard like MS Office is. But are there many office environments using iWorks? I am looking for a job right now and everyone is using Windows and MS Office.
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Do you have Office 2016? I had problems in 2011 with Outlook but nothing so far in 2016.
Very true.
Not sure what your definition of many would be, but I could give you my scenario. I work for a company that has 30,000+ Windows machines around me. I do everything in Pages and Numbers and send PDF of completed projects. If I need to collaborate, I send the link. Windows users can work right along with me, online.
I also have a very small software development company: < 5 employees < $150,000 per year. All but one of us develop using Macs, our CPA is a die hard Windows user.
Seems to be true everywhere, but should not change anything for you. Some people drive to work in a Porsche, some ride a bike. They all get to work, just the same. The end result is what is important, not the path or tool to get there.
One of the features I appreciate most and probably unique to iWork is the use of tables in Pages and Keynote. Each table has a name and is basically a Numbers sheet wherein you can do computations. Best of all is when you need several tables you can link values among the tables so when you change a cell in one table it is updated in all the linked cells in your other tables and all computations that may be involved. All without having to open Numbers which would be the Windows Office approach I believe.
You can do the same in Keynote linking cells in tables on different slides. You update one cell and the values in all linked cells are updated! Quite cool.
You can do the same in Keynote linking cells in tables on different slides. You update one cell and the values in all linked cells are updated! Quite cool.
Although MS Office is indeed the "industry standard", an overwhelming majority of the people I interact with who use MS Office do not use anything beyond the basic functions that are available in iWork and Google Docs.
For a variety of reasons, I prefer to use iWork '09 and the latest version of iWork. I have MS Office and use that at work and when required for specific home tasks. But even then, I try to steer folks towards using Google Docs because of the collaboration capabilities.
In the end, it is more important to understand the underlying concepts involved in creating documents and working with spreadsheets rather than the specific "do it" button automations available with MS Office.
It depends upon the situation. For cross-platform collaboration, for being able to walk up to any computer log in to google and access and edit documents, for more features that can be expanded by extensions, it would be Google Docs.
I regularly work on short documents that have advanced formatting. It is the easiest to create and work on these docs in Pages. Easier than MS Word, LibeOffice Writer, Google Docs, etc. I can recreate these docs on all of those other tools but they all bring with them annoyances.
But my day job involves heavy use of MS Office and Google services. I encourage my co-workers to shift from Office to Google Docs by modeling it myself. When they see how flexible and capable Google Suite they become converts.
If one is leveraging the Apple ecosystem (phone, tablet, computer), it would be beneficial to thoroughly give iWorks a try before defaulting to MS Office or something else. It's not perfect, but depending upon one's needs, it could be best tool for the job.
I am in the middle of learning Office (Excel and more advanced Word and have to look into Access) for jobs, but just realized that some jobs are fine with iWork, so devoting time to learn these too. Apple's help is very comprehensive so far.
iWork is great for home and personal projects. I find Pages really just as powerful as Word for most things and it handles graphics and tables far better. I once did a full page ad mockup for work with background images, a pricing table, and multiple offset product graphics. Pages click-n-drag features are far easier to use than Words detail dialog box. I think Pages’ typography controls are better than Words’ too. Pages’ sidebar is better laid out and easier to navigate than Words’ new sidebar in 2016.
Numbers, on the other hand, is a poor substitute for the processing power of Excel. It’s fine for lists, budgets, and simple math, and it’s graphing features are easier to use, but the lack of pivot tables and multi-level sort is frustrating. Numbers does have one huge bug IMO… if you have a column of numbers and a total at the bottom, change one cell from numeric to text and the total will change to the sum of the numeric data only. It won’t even warn you that one cell is the wrong format.
Numbers, on the other hand, is a poor substitute for the processing power of Excel. It’s fine for lists, budgets, and simple math, and it’s graphing features are easier to use, but the lack of pivot tables and multi-level sort is frustrating. Numbers does have one huge bug IMO… if you have a column of numbers and a total at the bottom, change one cell from numeric to text and the total will change to the sum of the numeric data only. It won’t even warn you that one cell is the wrong format.
I’ll disagree on this point. This past year or so Apple has brought a number of new features to iWork such as collaboration and use of iCloud. Keynote gained several new features. They also have brought back long missing features such linked text boxes in Pages. After several years of relative quiet Apple has stepped up support for iWork.
LibreOffice is my go to for personal use. Since uses ODF format files, gives me flexibility to move between vendors re: software and operating systems, including Google Docs which uses ODF format under the covers. And does a good job with Office files.
I keep Office 2011 around for those situations where you get/send an Office document that just does not work well with LibreOffice.
Most of what I use office suites for at home are spreadsheets. Numbers was one of the better ones re: Office function compatibility, but as mentioned in a different post, ran into some odd behaviour, especially with date/time math and formatting. LibreOffice is probably closest to full Excel functionality/compatability and working well with Office's iOS apps (ie. Round tripping the file and not having to go back in and reformat lost formatting).
Add: and as someone else pointed out, if not changing/collaborating, can use whatever tool makes you happy and send the end-user a PDF.
I keep Office 2011 around for those situations where you get/send an Office document that just does not work well with LibreOffice.
Most of what I use office suites for at home are spreadsheets. Numbers was one of the better ones re: Office function compatibility, but as mentioned in a different post, ran into some odd behaviour, especially with date/time math and formatting. LibreOffice is probably closest to full Excel functionality/compatability and working well with Office's iOS apps (ie. Round tripping the file and not having to go back in and reformat lost formatting).
Add: and as someone else pointed out, if not changing/collaborating, can use whatever tool makes you happy and send the end-user a PDF.
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Updates are at a glacier’s pace. Even after all these years, when Apple brought back linked text boxes, it is only a rudimentary level of support. All linked boxed must be on the same page. Better than nothing, but not what once was.
It is almost exactly 4 years to the day that this new iWork was released. When that version was released it was a mere shell of the ‘09 version. 4 years later, only a fraction of those missing functions have returned. So many of the functions that made these apps surprisingly useful are still missing. Numbers ‘09 had pivot tables, the new Numbers is even further behind than Pages.
It really is a sad situation for us iWork fans.
I use Numbers on my iPhone for keeping track of my foreign ATM withdrawals when traveling but otherwise not at all. I prefer to use the opensource LibreOffice on my iMac.
iWork is free with your Apple Product. For personal writing, spread sheeting, or presentations, the product is fine. I would rather use that than pay MS $80 - $90 per year.
In the enterprise world and for large inventory spreadsheets, medical and financial MS Excel is the standard.
I avoid using MS office whenever I can. I run my practice on iWorks and iCloud.
The catch is on "whenever I can". Running my local practice on the Apple ecosystem is a delight, but when it comes to an enterprise on a national level I get forced to use MSWord, Excel and dropbox, because not everyone uses Macs and iPads for bussiness.
To each its own I guess, but when you are forced to collaborate with Windows users, you'll avoid a lot of headaches by using MS Office.
The catch is on "whenever I can". Running my local practice on the Apple ecosystem is a delight, but when it comes to an enterprise on a national level I get forced to use MSWord, Excel and dropbox, because not everyone uses Macs and iPads for bussiness.
To each its own I guess, but when you are forced to collaborate with Windows users, you'll avoid a lot of headaches by using MS Office.
I agree, but in that case I use my company supplied laptop. For personal use, iWork is totally fine.
Even the Mac version of Excel lacks all the features and stuff of the Windows version.
I vastly prefer iWork over MS Office. I find the latter to be a UX cluster****, and horrible to use. It has so many features in each application, that it absolutely drown in UI options. And the ribbons view is so unbelievably illogical. I can *never* find what I need - In iWork, even if I don't know where a specific option is, I always know where to look. I also find them easier in general to work with; WYSIWYG and page layout is miles better in Pages over Word, and Powerpoint feels like a toy compared to Keynote when you do any work more complex than dragging an image onto a slide. Also, all the iWork applications visually look much nicer.
The only caveats I have, is that Excel has much more useable functions over Numbers, and the latter gets quite slow with even medium sized sheets. It is still such a larger enjoyable experience to use Numbers though, so for the more complex functions, I just tend to write them myself.
The only caveats I have, is that Excel has much more useable functions over Numbers, and the latter gets quite slow with even medium sized sheets. It is still such a larger enjoyable experience to use Numbers though, so for the more complex functions, I just tend to write them myself.