iWork '08 - Review

[Paranoid Marvin]

Apple’s iWork suite has now reached it’s 3rd version, and with it, has gained a new application - Numbers. This, plus Pages and Keynote is a worthy suite of office tools, but is it enough to take on the almighty ‘Office’? (Note, it seems Keynote and Pages remembered my settings from ’06, including my toolbar layouts, so when you use them, it may not look quite the same)

 

Keynote

 

Now into version 4.0, Keynote is perhaps the most mature of the 3 applications. It can be directly compared to PowerPoint. Version 4.0 includes, along with a flood of new features, a new icon (a much nicer one, if you ask me). Perhaps Apple followed the same logic as the iLife ’08 suite and is suggesting an entirely new app by the new icon.

 

 

At first glance, Keynote seems to be pretty much the same. There is approximately 35 themes included with this version, most of which (as far as I know) will scale to any of the 5 resolutions you can chose to make your slideshow at.

 

 

Here’s one I made earlier. I run a short photo carousel for an astronomy club I am a member of. I use Keynote because I find it makes much prettier slides than the competition. It looks the same as it did in ’06, thank god, so I shouldn’t need to change anything because of the update.

 

 

One of the touted features of Keynote 4.0 is the improved animations available. A new “action” tab is available in the Inspector that allows you to move about the images or text in any way you want.

 

 

It’s quite easy to make an image go flying around the screen.

 

 

Next up is the “Instant Alpha” feature. This really is a great feature, and Apple has made it work really well. You simply drag the cursor across the image and it makes part of the image transparent, whilst giving a lot of visual feedback.

 

 

As you can see, however, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

 

 

Keynote has the capability to add charts to slides, as expected. They’ve not done much to improve this feature, so it does remain quite simple. Apple does, however, include some beautiful textures to use in the charts (the Stained Wood ones are exquisite!)No change on the feature that allows the user to show notes on the second screen during presentation. It is still, however, a very useful tool.

 

 

Apple has added a few extras to the “Export” menu, including an iPod mode. It exports the slideshow to iTunes so it can be viewed on your iPod (and AppleTV, presumably).

 

 

One feature that is quite cool is the send to Youtube, under the “Send to” menu. This, quite simply, allows you to export your slideshow to your Youtube account. This, perhaps, provides a simple way to create simple, image based videos easily.

Keynote 3.0 was a really good piece of software, and it seems that Apple hasn’t fixed what wasn’t broken. Keynote hasn’t received much in the UI way of updates, but it is certainly faster. There are a few new things that make it a bit more powerful, but Apple hasn’t improved too much on what was already, in my opinion, the best presentation software out there.

 

Pages

 

Next up, is Pages, at version 3.0. Pages is somewhere between Word and Publisher. It can be a simple word processor, or can go into more advanced page layout functions. Pages keeps the old icon, which is a shame, because I think it’s a bit bland, and quite frankly, ugly.

 

 

Pages has a similar startup to Keynote. You are presented with a wide range of templates (much more than the ’06 version). They come in to categories: Word Processing and Page Layout. The former consisting of letters, envelopes and invoices with simple graphics and the latter, newsletters, brochures and posters with rich images and layouts.

 

 

The default templates in Pages are quiet appealing (unlike those of Publisher or Word) and look modern and almost professional.

 

 

When you start to add your own images, things begin to come to life. The images that are already there are merely placeholders. You just drop in your images either from Finder, iPhoto etc, or the built in Media Browser. The masking feature of Pages 2.0 was a little too simple for my liking. Once you made a mask, there was no editing the content behind it. In this version, however, you can make any changes to the original image and it is very intuitive.

 

 

Again, we can use the Instant Alpha feature. As you go over areas of the image, the software stains the parts that will become transparent with an odd, purply colour.

 

 

As with most modern word processing software, there is a drop-down menu of styles. The ones in the image are set by the theme.

 

 

These styles can also be displayed in a draw.

 

 

All the applications in iWork ’08 (and ’06, for that matter) include a simple image enhancement panel, similar to the one in iPhoto. As you can see here, however, the “Enhance” function has completely wrecked my sunset image (I guess you have to do some things yourself). Everything, of course, is completely undo-able.

Many people had the opinion that iWork ’06 was a bit of a let down, and there were many missing features or quirks that didn’t make it worth the price. In this version, however, Pages has had a serious overhaul that makes it much more intuitive and simple yet more powerful. Certain little things like a new toolbar with font details in it make it simpler and easier to understand. The most useful feature I have found whilst writing this review is that you can right click on a word and look it up in the Dictionary, Spotlight and Wikipedia (the Wikipedia option will integrate better in Leopard, as Wikipedia entries are included in the system Dictionary). Overall, Pages 3.0 is a welcome update and is a much more satisfying piece of software.

 

Numbers

 

The newest addition to the iWork family is Numbers. A proper spreadsheet application has been missing from iWork for the past two versions, but Apple has set things right - and they are doing it right from the start. Not being an accountant or business man, I don’t use spreadsheet applications often, or to great complexities, so it is hard for me to say if this app is suitable for such jobs. At first glances, Numbers seems new, but strangely familiar.

 

 

The template chooser window is almost identical to that of Pages and Keynote, but it seems like a strange thing to have in a spreadsheet application. Apple’s strange focus in this application becomes more apparent as you dig further…

 

 

One of the simplest of the included templates is a simple to-do list. Do you see anything like this included with Excel? Not to my knowledge!

 

 

Perhaps the most interesting templates included with Numbers is this “School Savings” spreadsheet. It seems to be a tool for calculating the amount of money that you would need to invest to attend University or a private school. I actually went and filled out my University plans early today. The spreadsheet calculates (quite nicely) many useful facts and figures, such as how much savings you will need by the first year. It even takes into account the interest rates and inflation - not bad for a bundled template!

 

 

Numbers makes formula editing quite simple by colour coding and small boxes. It also allowed you to resize different tables and position then on the sheet.

 

 

Apple almost seems to have taken the ‘Work’ out of ‘iWork’ with this bundled template. It is a simple collection of handy checklists and other lists that will help you plan a holiday. All the images can be interacted with in much the same way as Pages.

 

 

 

I then endeavored to do my chemistry homework using Numbers - to draw up some simple results from a previous experiment and to draw and label a graph.

I used the blank template, and began to fill in my figures. Numbers was quite intuitive, and for basic functions, is the same as nearly every spreadsheet application out there. I then selected my data and went to make a chart. Making charts in Numbers is almost identical in process to Excel - after-all, most people have used Excel and will know how to use it. It makes sense to go with what people know, right? Making the chart was easy. I couldn’t, however, work out how to put a line of best fit on my graph. Maybe I’ll need to delve into the manual to work that out. For atheistic purposes, I resized the chart from taking up the whole window, to just fitting the data. Along with charts, you can easily position them on the page is a Pages like fashion. (oh, and Numbers includes Instant Alpha and a Media Browser too)

 

 

Numbers also included much more corporate and business-like templates such as Expense Reports as well as advanced functions (not that I know how to use them).

Overall, I can say that Numbers is the most pleasantly surprising application I have used in a long time. Whilst retaining the complexity, power and format of Excel, Numbers seems to be an application that focuses on the less business and mathematical things in life. The checklists and holiday planner is a good sign of this, as well as the media support. Numbers is more than capable of handling most things that Excel can do, but also seems to overlap on Pages’ features too. I think Numbers is a good application, and really does make iWork seem much more complete - and worth the price!

 

iWork ’08 is full of some really great things. It will swallow any job ranging from a primary school exercise to a corporate slideshow or advanced accounting and brochure design.

I would definitely recommend iWork ’08. Soon, like me, it will become a vital part of your everyday work and leisure - and best of all, it looks pretty!

 

I definitely think it is ready to compete with Office 2008, but time will tell who the winner is.

:star_smile:

[lord_muad_dib]

nice 1 Paranoid!

[munky]

good work my friend

[cabron]

Nice review man

I agreed about Pages, it could look like a very simple and mimimalistic word processing tool

 

But when it comes to the hands of someone that have the basic knowledge of design and interfaces, this tool is more than "magic" and awesome, you simply feel the main idea and apple propose, i love my pages copy and with that i can make things above the limits of my imagination.

[EFI]

Nice review mate.

[Detosx]

My local Mac stockiest can't get iWork and iLife in quick enough! Nice review. Good job!

[Ed]

Nicely does it Marv, learnt a few things myself there!

 

Dunno if anyone else has found this but in Excel I used to "lock" my 'A' column so that all my headings are fixed, and then when I scroll across to the right (cos it's a long-ass table) the A column stays put so I can see what numbers pertain to the heading - I can't seem to find any similar sort of thing in Numbers - am I just being a dunce or does Numbers not support this kinda thing? Or is there a different solution?

[Numberzz]

the only thing that annoyed me was that when u had to enter the code, u had to put "-" in between the different sections, apple u owe me 5 MIN!

[Cubric]

nice review. eventhough i skipped i few paragraphs but it got me thinking of getting iWork. anyway, how compatible is iLife with office or vice versa?

 

EDIT: wrong app. >.<

[nothingtoseehere]

Why won't Apple add an autosave feature to Pages? Argh.

[ksec]

the only thing that annoyed me was that when u had to enter the code, u had to put "-" in between the different sections, apple u owe me 5 MIN!

 

Yes and like all Apple software they should have done better. I cant understand why this still hasn't been implemented yet.

 

Why won't Apple add an autosave feature to Pages? Argh.

 

I would like this feature too.

[Krazubu]

An other thing that I don't like in the whole suite is that there's always an annoying delay when you push a key or click something, this was the same with iWork 06. That gives a general feel of slowness and can be confusing when fast connecting several actions. It looks like as if it were running through rosetta and this is alarming to see this kind of behavior for an app nowadays, when we have so powerfull CPUs

[Taylor_C]

I haven't actually gone back to college classes yet, obviously, but I'm wondering what everyone's opinion is on using Pages as a complete Word replacement. Do you think the word processor mode provides enough functionality for this purpose? I plan to put it through its paces in a few months, but I'm seriously hoping it can.

[belkheiri]

what is your version of mac os ? Or if it's a skin, where i can find it ??

I like the icon of the HD

[Paranoid Marvin]

what is your version of mac os ? Or if it's a skin, where i can find it ??

I like the icon of the HD

 

It's just Tiger. I've added icons from various packs off Interfacelift, and I can't remember what they were.

[Ed]

Does anyone know what the equivalent of Ctrl-D/Ctrl-R is in Numbers?? It's buggin the hell outta me!!

[minimalco]

i was especting this for long time, especialy because the last version had a lot compatiblity issues with the office formats, i think the new menus are really usefull.

it could be a little better but by now i think i can delete the moco$oft office from my pc

[wdb69]

I haven't actually gone back to college classes yet, obviously, but I'm wondering what everyone's opinion is on using Pages as a complete Word replacement. Do you think the word processor mode provides enough functionality for this purpose? I plan to put it through its paces in a few months, but I'm seriously hoping it can. Taylor

 

Hey Taylor,

I am writing from the dated perspective of iWork ‘05 (dated - a whole 2 years!). I used Pages for most of grad school and was immensely pleased with it as a word processor. What sets Pages apart from Word is the Templates. If you are going to be writing academic papers in a particular format, then Pages is the program. That is, learn to create your own “academic paper” Template or perhaps use one that is provided. It took me about an hour to create my own and by doing so I saved numerous hours of the frustration of trying to prevent Word from doing the formatting for me. Instead, you create the template and then with mouse-clicks and keystrokes you can create sections, headers, long quotes, footnotes that are exactly to your (or your instructor’s) specs. The best compliment I can give is that Pages allows me uninterrupted thought in the writing process.

 

So that is why I still use Pages 05, it works just fine. I guess I am also a bit of a ludite. Anyway, I am going to check out the new 08 bundle of iWork. I am interested in Numbers. And hopefully the changes that have been made to Pages are, for my use, good ones. If so, I’ll buy it!

 

Hope this helps! Late, Wes

[REVENGE]

Excellent and thorough review. Paranoid you're setting the standard for good application reviewing on this site.

 

 

 

That said, iWork is mediocre product work in progress.

[Urbz]

Why won't Apple add an autosave feature to Pages? Argh.

Can you say, "Applescript" ?

[belkheiri]

I found the skin

It's great !!

[Zacharias J. Beckman]

A nice review but too biased for my taste. I recently wrote a review myself, now that I've been using iWork '08 for a few months. In this case, I'm looking at iWork to see how it stacks up as an office suite for use in a professional setting. Bottom line, while I do love iWork, I also feel that it's just not ready for prime time. There are a handful of truly mandatory features that would change that. For instance, automatically numbered figures and tables. I can't believe that Pages has no support for this. If I need to label my figures (e.g.: Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) I have to do it manually. And if I need to insert a new figure at the beginning... I've got to manually edit every single figure. This is just such a horrendous oversight, I still can't believe it... and it just kills Pages as a viable word processor for anything beyond casual letters, memos and the like. I sure hope Apple puts some real effort behind fixing the deficiencies. Until then, we'll still be using Windows for office work.