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iWork

Pages, great; Numbers, worst ever

Written by BH from Portland

Nov 6, 2009

While the Pages module is fantastic and a huge improvement from Word, the spreadsheet program Numbers is just about the least useful and most frustrating piece of software I have ever had the misfortune to waste my time on. If you do any kind of higher-level spreadsheet work (than just summing columns of numbers), I advise you not to waste your time even trying to learn to use Numbers. It is plain garbage. Even simple things like trying to select a line to change its color are made impossibly frustrating.
However, kudos to Apple for making Pages! It rocks! (An equal amount to how much Numbers is lame).

37 of 61 people found this useful

iWork

great product

Written by DH from elgin

Nov 5, 2009

will do much more than microsoft office

27 of 45 people found this useful

iWork

Best applications EVER

Written by BH from Oviedo

Nov 4, 2009

This office suite is amazing and I recommend it WAY over MS Office. Everything is perfect and I couldn't ask for a better set of programs. Thanks Apple!

11 of 17 people found this useful

iWork

Great product!

Written by LH from West Deptford

Nov 1, 2009

I switched from PC to a Mac about six months ago and needed the iWork software to do some papers for school. I was originally going to buy the Microsoft Office software but decided to get iWork because it was significantly cheaper.

Now I will say that all I have used is Pages (the word processing program) but I am very impressed. Its so user friendly. Much better than Microsoft Word. The only complaint I have about Pages is that there isn't a shortcut to get to the thesaurus....which I use alot. Other than that its a great program, and visually is much more appealing than Word. It also has "full screen" mode, which allows you to type your document with a black background to minimize distractions.....beautiful option.

38 of 38 people found this useful

iWork

Love it

Written by SB from Grove City

Oct 29, 2009

I was skeptical. Had used MS Office for over a decade. But I'm an iWork convert. There are a few things to get used to, and I've needed to consult the help bar more than once..... But the majority of actions are intuitive and the help bar is quick and useful. I do end up saving all my files as .doc, .xls, and .ppt files in case I need to email them out, and this is very easy to do. All in all, I just like the feel of it a lot more than Office. I recommend trying the 30-day trial out and giving it a good chance. It took me a week to warm up to it (small learning curve), but I'm glad I did!

50 of 50 people found this useful

iWork

iWork over Office

Written by RS from McAllen

Oct 19, 2009

iWork is easy to use and can open Office documents, including the Office 2007 file formats (.docx, .xlsc, .pptx). I'm new to Mac and chose to buy iWork instead of Office because Office 2007 is worse than its predecessors, much like Vista. After two weeks, I would never consider using another Windows program again. Mac has made Windows obsolete in operating systems, and document processing.

75 of 84 people found this useful

iWork

Must-have!

Written by KK from Orleans

Oct 16, 2009

iWork has a great intuitive interface, you can drag and drop things from anywhere to attach it to your document. Pages, Numbers and Keynote work great together. iWork is THE thing for doing school assignments, with lots of great templates and "it just works" design, it makes doing work that much easier and productive. It should be a no-brainer to get this with your mac. Much better than MS Office in my opinion. And, like iLife, it gets updated all the time. One very nice feature is not only spell checking, but proof reading. Very useful, and not just in english. iWork was designed for and succeeding in making work more productive, easier and quicker.

47 of 50 people found this useful

iWork

iWorks not even close to Office

Written by EH

Oct 16, 2009

I have used iWork for almost a year now, and am still amazed at all the things that I cannot do, compared to MS Office. Example: iWork comes with limited fonts, missing some basic standards, with no apparent way to get more. I have to buy Office for mac to get the high power, professional level applications that I need for my business.

67 of 125 people found this useful

iWork

Decent but with learning curve and only if you stay in the Mac world

Written by WS from VENTURA

Oct 14, 2009

I really wanted to run far far away from Microsoft, so I migrated to Mail, Pages, Numbers and Keynote, regardless of the good and bad reviews... how bad can it be??

Well, first of all, there is a learning curve because I have been using Outlook/Entourage, Excel, Word & PPT for so long, and not being a power user, the basic functions are key for me, so quick access to the simple tasks is important. I found that the iWorks software often required more key strokes to end up doing the same thing, especially so in Numbers. This is okay, but after a while, it gets tedious.

Also stupid little things like in Mail, why can't the bullet pointing be automatic like Entourage or Outlook? In Mail, you have to go to menu to select "numbered list"... I hate reading long letters and force most people (at work) who send me mails to do so in bullet points.... If I want to read a novel, I'll do it in my spare time.

And in Numbers, to merge cells you have to go to menu to select merge cells, why not just put a button up, like in Excel. Also much depends on the use of the mouse or mouse pad and not the arrow keys, such as writing a formula, you must use the mouse to click the cell, why not just use the arrow key when the cells are next to the formula cell? Very strange... or maybe I just don't know how to use it....

What is also the problem is 95% of my counter-parties all use MS Office.... So... all the wonderful little graphical things you can do in iWorks, often do not migrate to Office and so only you can enjoy it yourself, unless you make like a million KeyNote presentations per year and print tons of documents, both of which I do my best to avoid.

All in all, if you like the extra small buttons and nice little graphical possibilities (eye candy) for yourself or your Mac world readers and you don't mind the extra key strokes or mouse clicks, then iWorks would be fine, and as well, if you are not already brainwashed and programmed to use Office software so your brain starts with a clean slate.

But if you have to share documents with others who are in the Office world, then better stick to Office. No worries if your version of the file is saved as Office compatible or able to read or not read an Office or Open Office document and all those little bothersome, but nevertheless, important things in everyday usage.

Sad to say, I put Office 2008 back onto my computer but I saved myself lots of headache and frustration and if it means anything, increased productivity and hopefully the next version of Mac Office will get rid of some of the bugs and small problems....

34 of 36 people found this useful

iWork

Great....BUT!

Written by SN from Carson City

Oct 12, 2009

always a but. This product does exactly what it says it will do. Need to remember what it is and what it is not. It is an alternative to Office for Mac users. It is not Office for Mac. If you want/need to share MS files then get office. If not iWork is marvelous. To those who said they purchased something because a kid at some apple store told them to....they got what they deserved.

23 of 34 people found this useful

iWork

Better Than MS Office

Written by DB from Jacksonville

Oct 3, 2009

Don't bother buying MS Office. Apple does it again with this easy to use office application. I have been using it for five months now and never use MS Office anymore. Office is way more expensive while offering a more cluttered interface and less refined final product. Keynote is the best... I have presented a number of Keynote presentations and gotten much higher grades over my Power Point classmates. Seriously, thanks Apple...

44 of 54 people found this useful

iWork

Visio - if only Apple would develop Visio =

Written by MN from San ramon

Sep 29, 2009

Concept Draw is nice, but Apple needs to provide solution matching visio.

19 of 39 people found this useful

iWork

Numbers needs major Revisions

Written by RD from Marblehead

Sep 26, 2009

I purchased iWork mainly for Pages, which I think is a great program, but Numbers is so inadequate in comparison to Excel it is shocking. A simple table that would take me 10 minutes in Excel has taken me over 2 hours in Numbers. When you want 1 simple table for some inexplicable reason Numbers fragments the sheet into multiple pages when you go to print. My simple table that should take up 1/2 of a 8.5x11 sheet of paper for some reason is 6 pages.

To copy cells and blocks of cells also creates additional sheets.

Apple software has always been very good for me. I typically swear by it, but this Numbers product is very very disappointing. It needs a major overhaul.

If you are a heavy Excel user do NOT buy Numbers. You will regret it.

22 of 22 people found this useful

iWork

Don't have to go back to MS

Written by NI from Lethbridge

Sep 25, 2009

I have been using iWork for about 3 years now for massive business applications. Never a crash or issue. Keynote is powerful! I have created extremely dynamic presentations and videos with it.
Before this, I have only used MS office (15 years). It took some getting used to iWork. However, all the capabilities seem very similar. The only complaint I'd give is the no F2 option for getting in and formating a cell in numbers (instead of having to use the double click of your mouse). Of all the shortcuts, this seems to be the only one that doesn't exist in numbers. I hope someday the Mac programmers will do their little thing and make me and probably a lot more people happy.

33 of 38 people found this useful

iWork

Simply put, it is FAR, FAR superior to Office any day of the week

Written by CW from Victoria

Sep 25, 2009

When I do anything desktop publishing related at school and that also includes teaching I use IWORK'09 everyday!
Hands down it is better than Microsoft Office.
Keynote is a teaching utility that cannot be beat. It handles HD video, large High quality pictures although it doesn't support flash files still. Big deal... not really a problem.
I like the way Keynote is able to contain all of it's resources in one file rather than linking which is what powerpoint does.
I use pages everyday for doing all my planning and documentation! Pages rocks!

THANK YOU APPLE!

24 of 32 people found this useful

iWork

Pages Not an international product

Written by PB from Tranbjerg J

Sep 24, 2009

International spelling is a weak point in Pages. I'm Danish, but I prefer to have my OS in English. But this preference makes using Pages really hard. If I want to have Danish spell checker in Pages I have two options either change the entire OS to Danish or use the Inspector to change language.

The latter is a pain because when you change some text from normal to heading 1 for example the the language defaults back to English again. This "bug" alone makes Pages worthless to me, but I guess the developers of this program only work within one language...

Please add the option to change the language per page and make it stay in that language.

27 of 59 people found this useful

iWork

An awesome program

Written by LB from Belmont

Sep 23, 2009

this is such a good program with the magic move in keynote the premade ideas in pages and the excellent spreadsheets in numbers. If you are a fan of apple you need this program.

13 of 18 people found this useful

iWork

Just Doesn't cut it!

Written by JM from Butler

Sep 19, 2009

The installation went great and i was so excited but then when i started to use it i was just thinking of all the things that Office 2008 could do and it didn't even compare! I could not wait to get it un-installed and install Microsoft office. It just did not live up to my expectations!

27 of 61 people found this useful