Yes, but… does it support ODF?

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And will the "track changes" option work with Pages?

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I'm pretty sure this isn't the first that opens them, as Neo Office has opened them for awhile.

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Apple's page on Pages says it will preserve tracked changes.

woot.

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Like David said, NeoOffice has had this for several months now.

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Can I set it so that it also saves to Word format by default?

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perhaps becuase its an open format?! lol tuaw.

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It's a little more broad-reaching than Pages, folks ... Pages, Keynote, and Numbers ALL import and export their Office 2007 equivalent formats. That's huge.

Not only did they beat everyone else on the Mac (NeoOffice currently opens xlsx and pptx only in the paid early-access experimental version), but they did it the week MS announced a several-month delay of the "real" Office 2008.

NIIIIICE. If this works 2/3rds as well as I expect, I'm never looking back.

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"That sound you just heard? The MacBU screaming in frustration."

BIG smile!!! (laughing actually)

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Good. I'm tired of people treating the Mac BU like it's a demigod simply because it brings a huge and important application to the Mac. That's fine, but they need a kick in the ass for competition as badly as anybody. 30 months to ship a Universal Binary (with possibly the biggest development group of any Mac developer outside of Apple itself)?

Mac BU, I hope you're listening: Time to kick it into high gear. The last thing your higher-ups want is for Apple to pull with iWork what they did with Safari: a sexy, compelling Windows port.

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dugg! - http://digg.com/apple/Suck_it_MacBU_Apple_Pages_08_can_open_Microsoft_s_Open_XML_format

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So we can use Pages to convert Word 2007 to pre 2007 formats. Nice going. I wonder how long it takes before Microsoft discontinues Office for Mac and Apple will take over some engineers.

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This IS Huge. I would be happy to not have to rely on MS's lackluster support of the Office Suite for Mac.

One question why did this take so long? I would think this would be a priority over Aperature. MS Makes more money from Office than it does from Windows.

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I'll believe it when I see it. Between TextEdit, NeoOffice, OpenOffice, Pages 06, AppleWorks and Bean, I can never get complex Word documents to open remotely accurately. If the new Pages can open Word documents with tables and bullets correctly, then they've achieved a major computing milestone. Hopefully someone on the MacWeb will put this to the test...ahem...

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I think Gruber said it best
Translation: Microsoft, go fuck yourselves. This is the “bring it on” release of iWork.

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Hate to disappoint--but the Apple site says that iWork will import the Open XML files, but it doesn't say it can actually generate/export them (just says ".doc" etc, which is the old, non-XML format). That means you're going to see degradation of any feature that is in a newer version of Office that relies on the XML files (e.g. Office 2007).

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Heh. I am one of those people who has never fully converted to Apple's apps because I don't mind Office too much and it's more "compatible." Well now that Apple's own productivity apps are more Office-compatible than Office, maybe we won't need MS by the time January rolls around.

I'll be heading to my local Apple Store for iWork (and iLife) in the morning, and I'm looking forward to making the attempt to get Office out of my life (except Entourage, at this point).

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Does Pages in iWork 08 open Open Document files?

I've seen no comment _anywhere_ on this. I can't test, because I haven't yet got iWork 08 myself.

I guess what people are mostly looking for is compatibility with Ms products, because that's what most of the world is using. However, it would be nice to know whether Pages can now handle ODT or not, since that's a format that could well become more prevalent in the future.

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It's all very well iLife supporting the new MS2007 file formats, however until Apple actually makes Mail.app (or something better) completely compatible with MS Exchange server, then many of us business users will still need MS Office for Entourage. I tried Mail app with my 2Gig exchange mailbox and the poor thing nearly choked. Completely useless. If Apple can 1-up microsoft on the email front here, that would be the final nail in the coffin. Until then, iLife 08 is just a "nice to have", not an MS office killer.

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Important to remember in all this discussion about OOXML being "Microsoft only" - Apple is a FOUNDING member of the OOXML coalition. In fact the first OOXML meeting was held on Apple's campus. OOXML is a open standard, regardless of what IBM would have you believe. The big winner should be Mac users, because we are much less likely to ever be left out in the dark again no matter which format a client/employer uses.

It's even more ironic that the people demanding that governments should mandate "ISO open standards" fail to note that the default Pages/Keynote formats are not ISO approved "open standards". This only serves to underscore that the format wars we see between ODF and OOXML are nothing more than marketing plays by the big vendors. Saying that one should be government mandated is like saying the government should mandate "Coke" and ban "Pepsi".

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