iWork 08

[Amuso]

I never tried iWork 06, and now I am actually glad I did not. Because iWork 08 includes the new application Numbers, a piece I would have greately missed in iWork 06!

 

I was surprised to learn that iWork 08 is just a CD, not a DVD. And it also made me worried that this is probably a flaky product. Well, I guess I should know better. Apple has not disappointed me much ever so why this time?

 

Installing was a breeze. I got Pages, Numbers and KeyNote. I tried to open the different ones just to look at them. Then I headed over to the video tutorials. Great idea, and since there was perhaps 10 short video clips to explain functions for each program I quickly viewed them all which I highly recommend anybody to do. You learn a lot from these tutorials, and that makes you able to be more creative in using the programs.

 

Being a user of MS Office for years I have some background to compare these products. Note that I am not a power user of any means. And that is mostly down to the fact that I have not wanted to spend hours figuring out all possible ways to use Word or Excel. I used them when I had to because they made some pieces of work easier to deal with.

 

After seeing the tutorials I felt like I could be a power user of Pages and Numbers in no time. And I must say, these are awesome products. Easy to use and the drag and drop combined with numerous templates for everything. That is just brilliant! And integration with the Adresse Book is great too.

 

The speed of the apps compared to Office 2004 and 2008 is, well not comparable. Apples apps are so lightweight and quick that everything else just seems sluggish. Yeah, I am not on the greatest hardware ever, but Numbers and Pages are definately my choice for the future. I have used it to create documentation for a job I did a couple of days ago, and the result is very pleasing to the eye. And it did not take me forever to make it good looking either, which I greatly appriciate.

 

I look forward to many many hours of fun with documents and spreadsheets now. You should really check it out. It integreates well with MS Offices Word and Excel too, so you will not really need Office even though your campus or office is crowded with Windows users.

 

Apple should bundle this with every Mac! The price is so low that I am sure they could make a huge marketplace share difference if everybody knew that these apps exists. Now, I am not quite sure, but I think there is a trial version on every new Mac shipped? And that is a great move if that is true.