iWork '09

I’ve used Pages 08 to exchange drafts (originating in Scrivener, of course) with 3 different Word-using editors in recent weeks, and none of them had any problems seeing comments or tracking changes. It was an utterly transparent process. I much prefer Pages to Word, but if you don’t want to pay for it, you can also use NeoOffice as a bridge between Scrivener, and change tracking and comments will show up in Word and vice versa. at least that was my experience. Anything to avoid using Word…
It would be great if we didn’t need that intermediate step but that would entail making SCrivener more of a word processor than it already is, and that’s not Keith’s vision for it.
These were all journalistic articles, but I’ll be using footnotes or endnotes later this year and will report how that goes.

Its a 451mb download which when unzipped is about 1gb. This is for three common programs.
For that size I would expect it to think for me.
Also if you compare the prices on the US and UK sites us Brits are getting screwed.
WHILST I am a Mac fan I am not a fule.
NOTWITHSTANDING it is downloaded and I shall play it like a a FLAUTIST.

Paul

WHILST I am a Mac fan I am not a fule.
NOTWITHSTANDING it is downloaded and I shall play it like a a FLAUTIST.

No fule you, agreed. In fact, you are very suasive/persuasive, take your pick–unless, that is, you are annoyed by both in which take your pique.

Ah, but are you FLAUNTING your FLAUTISM? That is the real issue. I like Pages for things like creating simple brochures and promotional materials, but would never use it for really heavy word processing. Mellel is my choice for that, having written my dissertation in it (in my pre-Scrivener years). I wouldn’t have been able to use Scrivener at some point either, since I had multiple footnote/endnote streams which Mellel handled very gracefully (yes, I know it’s user interface is ugly and sometimes unwieldy, but it’s still the most powerful word processor I’ve used).

Alexandria

Over the years I’ve used a dozen word-processors, and Pages is the best yet. It’s clean, simple, and fast. It has a single tool bar and a powerful Inspector; a near-perfect interface. One of the nicest features is the Search function, which displays every form of a word in a file, in a left-hand panel, better than Scrivener. Very nice if you want to check on a character’s appearances throughout a text, or the use of repetitive words.

I can share files, comments, and revisions with Word .doc and .docx users, no problem. The PDF export is fantastic, and all the URLs remain live. The new features in '09 are terrific. Today I tried out the sharing of files on iWork.com: it’s a fantastic tool for posting changes and comments to colleagues or editors. A year ago I threw out Office '08; now I get along entirely with Pages and OpenOffice. I haven’t tested the integration with EndNote for footnotes and bibliography, but I expect Pages will perform very well.

I like Pages although I haven’t tried the one in iWork '09 yet.

Pages always seems very easy to use.

I’m also a fan of Numbers which seems to have been designed very well for my sort of of spreadsheet use.

I’m doing my accounts at the moment so I’m using Numbers a lot. I used to use AppleWorks for this. I would start with a “Draw” document in AppleWorks and include little spreadsheets as tables for the calculations. So, Number suits me very well.

I’ve been testing Pages '09 for three days now, and it seems to me that this is still beta software: 5 bugs and counting… :frowning:

I feel the same way. The only iWork application that I like better than the alternatives is Keynote. I have not tried iWork '09, but based on my experience from the first Keynote beta (prior to iWork) to iWork '08 I think I will wait for iWork 10 or 11 :smiley:
Which reminds me of another advantage that Mellel has; years of free updates and upgrades. The same applies to Microsoft Office. In contrast, iWork does not even offer an upgrade path for previous users.
It does have the advantage of ease of use and “shiny look” which reminds me of

theonion.com/content/video/a … olutionary

:mrgreen:

Ok, I did some thinking (dangerous, I know).

How much does the non-educator MS-Office suite cost? Say $400. Don’t argue with me, I just checked.
How much does the UPGRADE cost? If you said $239.95 consider your self as accurate as the Microsnot website.

So Apple wants me to pay $79 no matter if I am upgrading or not. That means that I can buy the next four iWork versions before I get to the cost of 1 MS Office version. Not sure how I lose there.

Oh wait, you don’t like the fact that I am comparing Windows software (the MS native platform ironically) to OSX software? Right.

So Office standard for OSX costs Let’s see what store.apple.com says … wait for it … wait for it … $399.95!

We don’t want to user office standard (which is the minimum for any business use, check the EULA)? OK, $149 for “Home/Student”. Still seems to me that iWork is cheaper.

I guess I am not real sure what all the complaining about price is about. No matter how you stack it Apple’s offering saves you money even without a special upgrade price.

What am I missing?

Jaysen,

you are not missing anything in principle. Just the tiny fact that many universities in an attempt to provide their students with the latest and greatest in software technology hold campus licenses which require paying less than a hundred bucks for the entire Office 2008 suite (I even think I heard like 50). Which is the reason I get sent manuscripts in docx format all the time. Plus I discovered that formatting back and forth isn’t so great despite all the press is saying (try putting a figure somewhere on a page precisely in Word and you will know what I am talking about).

No, I haven’t caved in yet, I still write using Scrivener and Mellel, but only when I write alone. Collaborative writing is back to Word . Although that isn’t so hot either because not even the 2004 (which is the version I own and I refuse to upgrade) and the 2008 version are 100% compatible.

Just great.

Prion

This pricing practice is arguable illegal. I can’t believe that more folks don’t consider a class action on this. Even worse is the out and out theft that occurs as the EULA on these purchases are pretty clear that the software is for “academic use only”. Any commercial use, even by the University, is actionable. My corporation got hit by this.

But the core of the argument was PRICE, not functionality. Upgrade pricing has nothing to do with functionality other than most folks expect an upgrade to be a better functioning app than the original. While I can not attest to any issues with Word, Excel, or Power Point import exports under '08 I would expect '09 to be just as functional. Again, function and price are not the same thing.

For me, a commercial user, It makes perfect sense to smile and give Apple my $80. I will pay $80 for my kids (or get the family pack) and smile all the way to the bank because, while there is not discount, it is still cheaper than anything legally available to me from Microsnot.

I am one of the sole Apple users in the office still. Everyone assumes that I am editing files in a VM. I am 100% iWork at this point and no one but me knows (I actually deleted my work VM from my internal HD). At this point I haven’t run into anything that doesn’t work. I may be lucky. The funny thing is that I see M$ users running into the same version issues (in M$ land it is 2003 and 2007). I am the “converter” for most of them. And I use Pages to do it.

I will concede that my docs are short, and fairly simple. Not to rub it in or anything, but a non-Microsnot life is very nice.

Not trying to defend the education price here, but bear in mind that schools are non-profits, often running at considerable losses, and yet a campus license offers Apple a market of many thousands of users, now and tomorrow. I have no idea of the cost of a license for 10,000 users, but I bet it more than justifies the discount Apple offers to individual buyers.

In other words, the University subvented my copy, probably making the final cost close to street price, anyway. So I doubt there’s anything illegal or even unfair about the arrangement. In the early days of computing, users formed clubs and made bulk purchases of hardware and software, to get discounts. Maybe the same ought to happen again.

Education in the US is just about as non-profit as religion. Which is just as non-profit as any other corporation. This is not to say that the educators and pastors/priests are in it for the money, but that the institutions themselves are VERY profitable. Example: the Ivy League schools and the Catholic church. My location in the US may be tainting my view but …

As to site licensing: Savings of multiple hundreds of thousands. Get into a major institution (non or for profit) and you are quickly in the millions. Don’t kid yourself. The school is making more money and M$ gets you on the next non-educator upgrade. It really is as monopolistic as the Linux kooks claim. Don’t forget that I actually deal with this type of stuff for a living.

As to Apples approach… Hey, for once the average guy gets the same discount as everyone. Which is to say that no one gets a discount, but that the software is priced to some level of equality. That should be an ideal supported by all those non-profits. Why should I pay more because I work some place that is not a school? It is just as hard for us to make ends meet as everyone else.

My whole point is this: Apple’s policy is cheaper once you compare equivalents AND is it actually more equitable to all participants. BTW this extends to hardware as well.

Oh and Apple does give an educational discount. store.apple.com/us/browse/home/e … n_routing/
If you get M$ office for $50 it will cost you $20 more for iWork. So [size=125]I[/size] am still subsidizing the eduction sector.

I guess I don’t see the validity of the whole price thing. I see the raping of the public as executed by M$ and the corporations (non and for profit) that force it down our throats and look over at the $80 price tag and wonder what everyone is complaining about. I’ll keep my $320 and smile.

I am trialing iWork '09 now. I love some of the new features. The outliner in Pages in nice, and there are several very handy functions in Numbers that appeal to me. However, I have found that Numbers is very sluggish on my year-old MacBook. I have a fairly large spreadsheet – about 1000 rows and six columns – but there are no formulae in it, and it is quite ponderous. So much so, that it is a deal breaker for me.

Is anyone else encountering this disappointing performance?

I am so glad I don’t have to deal with spreadsheets no more - I just opened a somewhat larger document (some 300000 words) in Pages and it worked well on my MacBook - fast scrolling, finding, replacing. I write all business stuff like invoices with Pages & Numbers, never ran into problems there, so I think I will keep using it. Perhaps I will update to 09, only to use the internet-sharing stuff; currently it seems just great.

I do think iWork is a well designed software suite which covers most peoples needs. I even like the Pages fullscreen mode - and discovered what kind of joke word 08’s fullscreen mode really is.

Where did you check? A few days ago Amazon had “Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition” for around $160. Current price is $195.

Again, retailers have it cheaper. $154.39 including shipping was the cheapest I found today, just doing a very quick Google search. You could buy iWork with the savings!

I’ve used iWork since the first version of Keynote became available, before it was called iWork. I stopped purchasing it. The only application that was worth it for me was Keynote. The lack of an upgrade path made it more expensive than Microsoft Office for me. IIRC I paid around $120 for Office 2004 -which offered MUCH more than iWork- and later paid around $115 to upgrade to “Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition.” So far $235 has been cheaper than buying iWork with each release. And I’m sure that it will be a couple of years before I need to spend money on Microsoft Office again.

Your reasoning seems to be geared towards justifying an anti-Microsoft / pro-Apple position. If I looked at list prices for Microsoft products I would probably agree with you, but the fact is that they’ve made Office very affordable. I missed the $32 offer, but I’m still quite happy with their product and their customer support, and prices have been reasonable. I can’t say the same about Apple. In terms of price, quality, and support they’ve been a disappointment. Early iWork versions were nothing more than glorified betas. I’ve learned to wait until the third release before I buy (or use) an Apple application. Eventually they do get it right, as has been the case with Safari, mail, etc., although I prefer alternative programs.
Office 2008 is far from perfect. I kept my 2004 copy, and will use Word and Excel from that version quite a bit, but I’m glad I got the new version.
At the current $155 price, you could say it’s like paying $31 per application:
Word
Excel
PowerPoint
Entourage
Microsoft Expression Media

And getting these as a bonus:
Microsoft Server Exchange Support
Automator Actions for Workflows in Microsoft Office

Out of the aforementioned applications, the only substitution I would use is Keynote instead of PowerPoint. I may start using Quantrix Modeler Professional Edition in addition to Excel. Now that is an expensive program!

My pricing is from the Microsoft site.

I am not sure how one can say that any 3 digit number is less than a 2 digit number. So even if we go to “retail” sites Office products are still more expensive than Microsoft. Last time I checked 150 is still BIGGER than 80.

As to the functional issues with iWork, I have never seen one. It may be that my needs are less sophisticated. If so then i guess I am lucky and iWork gets everything done that I need.

There are actually 3 different lines of reasoning.

One is admittedly anit-Microsoft. I think that is clear to anyone who has ever read any of my posts dealing with their products. I don’t like their business practices and I don’t like their products. I never have and have been forced to use them until iWork '08 and Leopard.

The second is a simple argument of math that seems pretty clear to me. Apple’s product is simply cheaper. Reread your post and explain to me how a “$154.39” upgrade is cheaper than $80. If you want to complain about a lack of “upgrade pricing” then you need to justify the need for it. Based on competitive comparison, even using YOUR numbers, one could purchase 2 full licenses for the cost of ONE MS upgrade. Not sure how the math on this one works, but iWork seems cheaper.

The third argument is that the educational/upgrade pricing schemes is an affront to the “common” folks like me. Why am I expected to subsidize other folks purchases? Apple “levels” the pricing field while STILL keeping the price for educators within $20 of a site license scheme of questionable legality. If you do not have access to the scheme you are still looking at $150 for MS. Take that $150 and go back to the second argument (150 > 79 so iWork is cheaper).

As to a $32 offer I (a person who manages a multi-million dollar budget with a significant amount of that going to Redmond) have NEVER had access to anything like that. And yes i get lots of “special” offers from them.

As to the support, we have apparently had different experiences. I make an appointment at the apple store, show up and I et my questions answered. For free. I call MS and unless I have an enterprise contract I get to give them my CC number. Oh and to date I have never had a MS issue resolved in 15 minutes. Apple always gets it in 15 or less.

As to your $31/app I am again confused as to how this is better than Apple’s pricing. Lets break it down per app. There are three apps so all the apps in the bundle cost $26.66 (I know I am old, but 27 should still be less than 31).
Pages $27
Numbers $27
Notes $27
Mail FREE
iCal FREE
iChat FREE

As to media manager unless you bought after market Mac you have iLife. So MS gives me something i don’t need. Fine. One freebee.

As to exchange integration you DO have that out of the box with Leopard. Could it use improvement? yes. Then again entourage, the actual MS product, has the EXACT SAME ISSUES with exchange.

Maybe I am just a narrow minded fool. Maybe I am blinded by a serious dislike of all things microsoft. It is possible. But in full disclosure let me point out that I willingly use Messenger 7 for mac because it works better with the folks I need to communicate with. So maybe not.

Again I may be lucky that I have not experienced any of the issues that “power” users of Pages have. But until someone can explain how $150 is less than $80 (your numbers, not mine) I will not give any credit to the cost argument.

I downloaded a trial of iWork 09 last week, and I’m playing with Numbers. It has been an enjoyable experiment, and Numbers is really good for my (admittedly small) spreadsheets. I love the layout capabilities, and the template set is actually useful for a change. I am almost tempted to buy it after the trial period. I say almost, because I have no excuse whatsoever for using Keynote, and I need yet another word processor like I need a hole in the head. I know they have bundled the three apps together to emulate an Office solution set, but I really only want Numbers. Which makes it rather pricy.

There’s a big difference between MSRP, MAP, and actual price. Reminds me of the time I purchased a Gibson Les Paul guitar for $1000. List price was around $3500. Usual sale price was around $2300. Quite a bit of the price of those guitars has to do with branding. At $1000 I’m sure they still made a very nice profit. I don’t think anyone would pay $3500 for that guitar.

It has to do with perspective, and I just offered mine. I’m not saying that a 2 digit number is greater than a three digit number. And you’re right, I just Googled 150 vs. 80 and indeed 150 is bigger as of 01/17/2009 :wink:
When my parents wanted a water filter they asked me for advise. I recommended a unit that cost a few hundred dollars. They ended up buying a PUR filter for $30 or $40. They also argued that it was cheaper. But after a few years of use the expensive model turns out to be cheaper since it requires virtually no maintenance or frequent filter replacement, filtering was more efficient, and the cost per gallon of water was significantly smaller. $30 or $40 is definitely lower than $200 or $300. From my perspective, considering the use of a filter for a few years, the TOTAL investment is higher with the “cheaper” alternative. If I only wanted a couple of glasses of water, the $30 is probably a better option. It’s a matter of perspective. I could use Numbers to create a comparison and show that after a certain point, the expensive alternative becomes cheaper than the initially cheap alternative. :slight_smile:

Sure. And it’s not necessarily about being lucky. We all have different needs. If iWork works for you then it becomes a good choice for you. For others -myself included- iWork fails to fulfill certain needs. I would actually recommend iWork to many people I know. It’s easy to use, has a very nice interface, and it has evolved quite nicely. Still no database. People who love Apple can use Bento or FileMaker. Others may prefer ProVUE’s Panorama or 4D.

I’m not in favor or against either company. There are things that I like and dislike about both companies (Apple and Microsoft). Based on my experience of the past 10 years, I tend to like Microsoft a bit more than Apple. But Microsoft’s products have worked better for my needs than Apple’s.

Why limit yourself at 2 purchases?
I agree with you regarding the “need” to upgrade. Please feel free to correct the prices if they’re inaccurate, since I don’t recall iWork’s past price.
I started with Keynote. I don’t remember if I paid for it. I think that I got it for free, so let’s leave it at $0.
iWork '05 ($79). Added Pages, and Keynote 2 was a considerable improvement over the previous version. Pages was pretty bad.
iWork '06 ($79). Added many features, and of course bug fixes which were not available for people keeping iWork '05.
iWork '08 ($79). Introduced Numbers, as well as enhancements to Pages and Keynote. I did like both Pages and Keynote in this version. Just as was the case with Keynote 1 and Pages 1, Numbers left a lot to be desired.
iWork '09 ($79). I think that Numbers is significantly better, but have not tried this version. Support for iWork.com

If I relied on iWork for actual work, each upgrade was definitely desirable. $316 total. I don’t recall, but I’m pretty sure that shipping and tax are not included.

Microsoft Office 2004 has worked from 2004 and I think that the most recent update is from last December. Total price from 2004 to 2008 was the initial $120 or so that I spent. Even though I have the 2008 version, I’ll keep on using the 2004 version as well. Still works wonderfully, and with the exception of Keynote, I prefer these applications to their Apple counterparts. It included:
Word 2004
Excel 2004
Entourage 2004
PowerPoint 2004

In Apple’s defense, Mail is finally a decent email application. I still use Entourage, but Mail, iCal, and Address book are quite decent now. From what I understand, some bugs still persist regarding synchronization though. But now, in 2009, people can certainly choose iWork '09 and Apple’s free applications and they’re getting some very good programs.

Why is upgrade pricing an affront? You’re not subsidizing anything, and companies can reward customer loyalty. And “common” folks have been able to purchase Office at very low prices, which I thought was a nice gesture.
I do agree that $150 is more expensive than $79. Again, in my case, $120 has been cheaper than $316. Even buying Office 2008, $120+$150=$270. Cheaper than $316.

Well, many people had access to that. I missed it, but I’m happy for the ones who took advantage of it, as well as their other promos.

And it’s perfectly valid to have different experiences :slight_smile:
-My G4 is the “Yikes” model. It’s actually more a G3 than a G4.
-Shortly after the G4 came out, Apple tried to take away features while charging the same price. Users complained and (fortunately) Apple listened.
-When OS X first became available, many of us who had external FireWire drives lost all of our data. It turns out that many drives were incompatible with OS X. In my case, EZQuest repaired my drive free of charge, but the data was lost. Even though the problem was mentioned quite a bit, I don’t think Apple did anything about it.
-About a year after I got my G5, my Apple (Maxtor) internal hard drive stopped working. I still had a warranty, but after spending a long time on the phone with support, they finally said that my warranty was void in this case, since I had added other hard drives to the G5. It didn’t matter that both things were totally unrelated. The “geniuses” I spoke to said that there was nothing to do, and that the drive was beyond repair. I’m definitely no genius, and I recovered my data using Data Rescue II. DiskWarrior was also an option, but it didn’t work.
-My former boss wanted an upgrade to his daughter’s laptop so that she could transfer MP3s between her Mac and a phone she used. The Apple “geniuses” told our computer tech that this was impossible. That to accomplish this they needed to upgrade to Tiger, but that Tiger could not be installed in that laptop. He said that they should purchase a new laptop.
Our tech person was not too familiar with Macs, so he asked for my opinion. I think that we spent 20 minutes upgrading the OS to Tiger, and everything worked perfectly.

I’ve contacted Microsoft probably 3 or 4 times in the past decade, and each time it has been a great experience. I did contact them many years ago regarding a Word issue, and the tech had no idea what I was talking about. That was a bad one.

It’s not “better” as long as you’re happy with what you’re getting from Apple. You are, I’m not :slight_smile:
If I could buy just Keynote, I would.
For me $27 or $31 or $50 is quite reasonable for many of these applications. I remember when just a spreadsheet was around $400. Or Quantrix at over $1000.
For my needs, Excel is immensely superior to Numbers, and for my word-processing needs I always choose Word over Pages. I use Entourage instead of Mail, and preferred to spend money on Daylite and Contactizer Pro instead of using Apple’s free mail and Address Book (which you forgot to add as FREE). I haven’t used iChat in years. Sometimes I use Adium. Again, Apple’s applications have evolved nicely and they’re not as bad as they were in the past. Some are even quite good.

I don’t use it too much, but have used it a few times already and I like it. I did not have to buy it for $199, and I did not have to pay for the $99 upgrade to version 2. For my limited use of cataloging pictures and fonts, previewing multiple files, watching segmented videos, etc., it has worked wonderfully.
As a side note, I used iView when it was first available as a $30 shareware program, before the absurd price increases. The increases took place before Microsoft acquired it.

There’s always room for improvement. I hated the lack of VBA support, even though it was announced well in advance. I wish there was a “light” version of Word for the many times when I don’t need all of its features.

Regarding your attitude towards Microsoft, Steve Jobs often reminds me of the things people criticize about gates and Microsoft. We’ve gone from a highly individualized Mac user experience to a highly homogenized one. These days, particularly with so many switchers, I find people using Safari, Mail, iCal, iWork, iLife, iTunes, etc. And it’s hard to compete with a free product that is included along with the computer :mrgreen:
iTunes is horrible. I’ve used it since it was SoundJam and I still wish that Apple would have gone with Audion which I also used back then.
QuickTime is maybe as bad as Windows Media Player. Fortunately there’s still Perian and VLC and other alternatives.
And then there’s the Apple stories regarding Watson, Konfabulator, and probably others. Or the time when Steve Wozniak intervened on behalf of a kid who was going to be sued by Apple. I remember reading about many “cease and desist” letters back then, many aimed at Mac supporters and enthusiasts!

$150 will always be greater than $80 (I just Googled it again :slight_smile: ). but price only tells part of the story.

When I buy cereal, I look at the price per gram (?). A $5 box may be a better value than a $3.50 box.
When my mom buys stff that says “30% less fat” or “only 100 calories” I try to tell her to read the whole label. 30% less fat may still have a lot of fat. A 100-calories granola bar may be 100 calories because it’s too small, or it may have a small print saying that one bar equals 2.5 servings.

$150 and $80 only tell part of the story.

Value = Attributes / Price

To me, Office has been a better value. I consider attributes to include programs, features, support, upgrade path, quality, etc. You may have your own set of attributes that are important to you, and iWork may represent a great value to you.
Price is the actual price we pay. $150 vs. $79. Chances are that when iWork '10 or '11 comes out it will be $79, and will include an additional application. I’m pretty sure that Microsoft will not ask me for more money for at least a year or two. i certainly hope that if/when VBA support is added it will be free of charge.

For a person just buying iWork '09, it may be a great deal. If they don’t have the need to upgrade once a new version comes out, it may even be an amazing deal. By now many bugs and fixes have already taken place.
Just offering my perspective :slight_smile:

Eddie,

All valid arguments. I think the primary differences in all arguments of this nature really come down to opinions on value. Thanks for sharing your views and thinking.