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August 16, 2007

software

Mossberg: iWork “elegant, but wimpy”

Posted Aug. 16, ’07, 2:10 PM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

Mossberg and iWorkWell, sure, that’s a headline that’s bound to grab your attention. But the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg actually gives iWork ‘08 a very fair, balanced review. He commends Apple for its trademark attention to design and detail, but registers concern that iWork lacks some of Microsoft Office’s power features like (noooooo) pivot tables. Okay, I admit it: I have no idea what a pivot table is. And I’m blissful in my ignorance. I hope to never understand pivot tables.

Walt also knocks Pages for some of its commands being hard to find, a sentiment with which I agree heartily even as I cling, weeping, to the rotting corpse of AppleWorks. As he points out, despite the addition of a “Word Processing” mode, Pages is still much more of a layout program than a hardcore word-processing app.

You know, I think that’s kind of where Apple’s going with the whole suite though. It’s kind of a competitor for Microsoft Office, but it’s more like a subset of the features people most commonly use. It’s almost like Apple’s version of Microsoft Works. And I’m sure that’s deliberate: I think the crowd Apple’s going after are more like me, the people who opt to buy nothing instead of buying Office.

Gotta say though, my favorite part of the review is actually in his video, where the little “Walt Mossberg” logo starts dancing. Welcome to 2002, folks.


7 Comments

Robert Sesek said:

I don't know what a pivot table is either, but after using Pages and Keynote for part of last year's school year I couldn't find anything I needed from MS Office that Pages didn't do, with the only exception being spreadsheets. Now, for this coming school year, I intend to use iWork exclusively--I even took off the MS Office trial from my brand new MBP.

August 16, 2007 3:14 PM
Shaun said:

Good points! Comparison of iWorks and MS Office makes no sense at all since one is not comparing an apple with an apple. The two application suites occupy different niches and as you so rightly stated, iWorks is more an entry level product albeit one that follows the Apple tradition of super cool. Practically, iWorks is to the office what Garageband is to the recording studio.

I use both iWorks and MS Office and choose the best application for the job at hand. Why? Because I want a solution that just works!

If i want/need to use an alternative to MS Office then I will fire up OpenOffice or NeoOffice. Which begs the question, why doesn't Apple hack the OpenOffice code base just as it did with FreeBSD? No offence to the NeoOffice team on that one! That would result in an uber cool, pro office suite that would satisfy power users.

Are you listening Mr Jobs?

August 16, 2007 3:59 PM
Michael Leddy said:

I like reading Walt Mossberg's columns, but this review leaves me cold. I recently switched to a Mac, and when I did, I decided to forsake Office. (And boy, was I not pleased to find a trial version on my machine.) I'm quite happy with Pages. It's not as "powerful," but it's also free of clutter and distraction. In that respect, it's a lot more conducive to the writing process, at least for me. Pages lets me keep the work of writing and the work of formatting largely separate.

A sidenote: Pages can't do drop caps, but I just figured out how to do them with text boxes. What's more: I can finally work with text boxes, after countless frustrating experiences with them in Word. The combination of Show Invisibles and Show Layout makes many matters of formatting beautifully clear.

August 16, 2007 4:25 PM
Andre Da Costa said:

For someone who is such an Apple shill, I expected him to call it the best thing since the invention of the Universe.

August 16, 2007 6:49 PM
Dimitri said:

Regarding Michael Leddy's comment "Pages can't do drop caps":

Use the services menu. It's golden. I forget if the "Convert" service sub-menu is a default install, or something I added on, but tons of text conversion there, such as caps, drop caps, initial caps, etc.

In otherwords, Pages does not do drop caps because the Services menu offers this capability to all apps; therefore, no need for an app-by-app implementation of a common-use text manipulation feature.

Cheers,
Dimitri

August 17, 2007 3:09 AM
Michael Leddy said:

WordService, which Dimitri recommended to me, looks like a great tool. It adds many text-conversion options. But drop caps are something else. This picture shows what I was after (and was able to get, with a text box).

If anyone would like the details of making a drop cap with a text box, let me know; I'll write them out. (Is this kind of thing common knowledge?)

August 17, 2007 3:37 PM
Joel said:

pivot... shmivot... I want table software that's intuitive.

The new Pages now clearly edges out MS Word.

August 19, 2007 11:49 AM

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