I have been using iWork ‘08 since Friday as a part of their 30 day trial program and I love it.
One of the things I’ve always bemoaned about my beloved MacBook is that I have to run Crossover Mac + Office 2003 to get office suite interoperability in a nice package. iWork now features an application called “Numbers” so that I have interoperability between Word (Pages), PowerPoint (Keynote), and FINALLY Excel (Numbers).
I suppose that alone is not going to send anyone screaming out to get iWork on their way home from work or to re-evaluate Apple as THE business solution workstation for employees.
I would submit, however, that this is a huge step for Apple.
One of the applications I used to think was really sorely missed on an Apple is Access. Now that I’ve seen what a disaster 99% of all Access “applications” or “databases” end up as when unskilled or untrained users create them I can honestly say that it is not missed at all. Of the 10-15 “databases” I’ve seen created by Access in my work, only 1 was actually a relational database and it was converted to a fully fledged web application because Access couldn’t effectively deal with the user requirements.
The bottom line is that for nearly all business users Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are more than enough.
I have been impressed in my short time with the product by really the small things at this point.
Pages
USEFUL templates - It’s not that the templates in Pages are any different in topic or category than those in equivalent products. I would argue that beyond the basic business letter and newsletter what are you actually going to provide? They are eminently more useful to me because they are more in line with what I am creating for my own identity management. The graphic design is far superior to those in Publisher or Word. These templates are also much easier to customize from my iPhoto library.
Numbers
Independent Tables - I have been dreaming of this particular feature in Excel forever. I HATE sending out invoices that look like I had to build them with my hand behind my back. Similarly, I hate preparing metrics reports in Excel and then forcing them into a report in Word with my graph. Allowing users to move and style “tables” within the worksheet is a huge advancement for folks like me who aren’t using numbers to run statistical analysis on large scale research projects!
Keynote
I honestly think Keynote is pretty run of the mill. I understand the uber animation it holds and how the way slides are integrated with iLife apps, etc. is great. I honestly never had a problem building “useful” PowerPoint presentations. My presentations have always looked like what Keynote promotes and enables. I can respect, however, that the tools here really force you to think about design as you build a presentation.
Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my first week with iWork ‘08. Great job Apple.
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