Apple’s announcements were music to the ears of many of our readers, but as usual, truly enjoying them meant getting out the wallets and heading to the Apple Stores. But there is one exception: Apple provides a free, 30-day trial of iWork ‘08. Being an enthusiastic Pages user myself, downloading and installing the 460MB disk image was a no brainer. Installation was painless, though I wish there were an option to not install those zillion templates.
So, after spending a few hours with the suite, I’ve put together my first impressions of the new features in Pages and Keynote, plus an overview of the latest arrival, Numbers. Do you dare follow me and dive into the core of Apple’s updated office suite? If you do, keep reading.
Features common to all apps
iWork’s best new feature from a productivity and interface standpoint is the new Contextual Format Bar, hands down. Slim and slick, it displays the most relevant tools to modify text and images, depending on which one of those is selected, dramatically reducing trips to the Inspector, Color, and Font panels. Huge wrist saver.
Instant Alpha is perhaps the suite’s most sophisticated image manipulation feature. It aims to quickly remove uniform backgrounds from photos of simple objects or company logos so you can overlay those over your document. It works quite intuitively: after clicking in the unwanted background, moving the mouse up and down adjusts the sensitivity. It won’t perform miracles, but it does work well, and it was much needed.
Pages
Track Changes is one of Pages’ biggest additions, but I didn’t get to test it with Microsoft Word - the user guide claims it works - for the simple reason Pages gave me an error when I tried to export Word files. The Word compatibility better be top-notch, because trying to find other Pages ‘08 users to track changes with will be a challenge similar to searching for Zune users who want to squirt with you.
The Format Bar really shines in Pages, but we’ve already covered that. Similar to it is the new Styles drawer: a quicker way to access styles for paragraphs, characters and bullet lists. Too bad it takes up lots of screen real estate for what it does.
A welcome but hidden new feature is Proofreading, which works the same way as spelling. It promises to fix your punctuation and vocabulary, along with many more common English and formatting problems. Grammar doesn’t seem to included, so it doze naught se many mistakes.
As for the Apple-touted “Page Layout” and “Word Processing” modes, I saw little difference between them and no way to switch from one to the other after the initial choice of template. I must be missing something here.
Keynote
This year’s update doesn’t introduce any major changes; after all, Keynote is the suite’s most mature app. There are some welcome additions that should spice up your presentations, though. As usual, Apple has added more themes, more effects and more transitions.
To animate objects and images, we’ve now got Action Builds. Those include Move, Opacity, Rotate and Scale; Move is top-notch, with the ability to define a precise path for the object. Smart Builds, also new, are a great way to display photos in an eye-catching way, with animations like Thumb Through or Turntable. Think of them as customizable versions of iDVD’s drop zones, right on a Keynote slide.
Numbers
Ah, the long awaited spreadsheet component. From the point of view of a casual spreadsheet user (mine), Numbers delivers. It sports an elegant interface, notably translucent floating bars at the top and left of tables with the usual column lettering and row numbering. To reduce or increase the number of rows and columns in a table, you drag convenient handles.
Like its iPals, Numbers includes useful templates, a car comparison table for example. Pages and Keynote’s objects and image tools are present, and the Inspector shouldn’t feel alien to anyone who’s used iWork before (especially the Chart tab). When you add a table, you can choose between different types, like Checklist or Sums. You can also quickly apply styles to tables. Creating charts out of these tables is as simple as selecting the relevant cells and choosing a Chart style from a button in the toolbar.
Speaking of cells, they can be easily formatted to display checkboxes, pop-up menus, or other kinds of special data. It’s an interesting concept I’d never explored in Excel, probably because I didn’t know it existed (and still don’t, for that matter). Numbers’ formula list is, from my newbie perspective, pretty complete, and entering formulas works much like in Excel. A nice touch is the ability to define rules for cells; for example, if the number contained is greater than 300, make the cell background red.
Conclusion
Overall, iWork ‘08 is a pretty exciting upgrade, with the Format Bar increasing productivity across all apps. Pages has some welcome improvements, especially if Track Changes works as advertised. The modest Keynote update does add cool ways to animate and display images. As for the newest baby, Numbers, it’s a solid effort; while Excel power users probably won’t flock to it, casual guys and gals will enjoy its clean interface and reasonable feature set.
Nice review Thomas, I'm still downloading it now at a rather slowish speed, but I'm excited to play with it and can't wait.
Take Care
OK, interesting... but is it any better than NeoOffice? which is free...
"As for the Apple-touted “Page Layout” and “Word Processing” modes, I saw little difference between them and no way to switch from one to the other after the initial choice of template. I must be missing something here."
You and me both. Other than that, I like what I see in the trial run so far.
Dowloading it? From where?! Can I purchase and dowload at the Online Apple Store?
Percy, I linked to the 30-day trial download page at the beginning of the post. Here's the link:
http://www.apple.com/iwork/trial/
Of course, to keep using it after 30 days, you'll need to purchase it, which you can do at the online Apple Store or at regular Apple Stores.
But, if you want a full copy now, it's also possible to buy a serial number that'll unlock the trial, saving time and trees. There's a button to do just that when you launch one of the apps in the trial.
Thanks for the info! Is there also an iLife '08 trial?
Unfortunately, no iLife trial.
Nice review, Thomas.
Yes Thomas, nice review. And thanks for pointing out the trial. Having signed my soul *and* first-born over to Apple this year due to iPhone (incl accessories, broken contracts, two new regular cell phones, etc), AppleTV (incl new HDTV and receiver with HDMI switching), and now the iApps '08, I can now enjoy both yet purchase only 1 this week. Just one more Apple related purchase left for this year: Leopard. Next year, I'll get one of those new shiny iMacs!