Analysis: iWork and Office for Mac

I think you are all missing the elephant in the room: Exchange. With more and more companies and agencies switching to Exchange and SharePoint, the importance of compatibility is greatly increased.

The University of Akron wasn't able to come to terms with MicroSoft, so all student licences have been revoked. We have been instructed to remove it from our computers or be sued to death.

iWork is looking pretty good.

iWork looks more appealing now than ever. Still, I'm not sure whether I'll get it because I receive Office for cheap as a federal employee. MS has a program that lets you order Office for only the "shipping cost"--about $20--if your U.S. government office has it installed. Because work has Office 2003 for Windows, I get Office 2004 for the Mac!

It should be said that Microsoft Office 2004 runs well in Rosetta, as long as you have enough RAM.

It was a shock, after hearing about Office speed in Rosetta, that we had to retroactively upgrade the standard RAM configuration for the intel Mac minis we deployed last year.

Office runs well if you have at least 2 Gigs of RAM, and you are not opening, running, and switching between apps in the entire suite, plus other Rosetta apps.

The print dialog box is particurly slow to come up under those circumstances, even with 2 Gigs RAM.

Better to just say Office "runs under Rosetta" than to promote the idea that the current Office product performs well, because that performance rating only works under certain circumstances.

You quote: "He starts with a little self-congratulatory back-patting for Microsoft's embracing an "open" XML file format and talks a little bit about the challenges involved with "starting from scratch" in writing an office application."

You should read: Microsoft Office XML Formats? Defective by design: http://www.arstdesign.com/articles/OOXML-is-defective-by-design.html

I've been aggressively Office-free on my machine for over a year, and it's been fantastic except for spreadsheets. Now that I have Numbers I hope that will change.

I do think the MacBU's days are numbered. If you're raison d'etre is compatibility, there's no room for innovation or imagination. Just document encoding rules, and that's just maintenance, not real development.

The only thing missing from iWork, in my opinion, is an iphone update to open native pages documents.

I think you're dead-on Mat Lu. Well put. On thing I don't hear much about though when considering the iWork suite, are people's general opinion on Apple's move to not offer upgrade pricing, but rather to keep the price point extremely low, and just sell each new version at "full price." I find this to be a novel approach, and I've certainly forked over my money each time gladly enough.

I had always thought that compatibility was the point. Else why keep piling tons of features on and convoluting the U.I. to the point where it is frustrating for the average user. I think that is why we have seen the emergence of programs like Bean, Mellel and to a lesser degree NeoOffice.

I am still stuck with Entourage, as my company won't provide IMAP or POP mail accounts. All the other Office:Mac icons are long gone, replaced by iWork 08. I haven't had the chance to use Numbers 08 properly for the time being, so I really cannot tell if it matches Excel..
Office:Mac running under Rosetta was a real pain, selecting cells in Excel was some sort of "fishing job" since the table would scroll in a weird way with a huge lag compared to mouse gestures.

Microsoft better get their act together...
Personally I think Microsoft Office for Mac will be a nice software because in the Mac world Mac BU has something unheard of compared to other departments in Microsoft... COMPETITION.

Mac users are much more "aware" that there is competition (here I speak about the average user as well as corporate ones). And Apple actually delievers some valuable product itelf (at least for the average user) something which Microsoft (with their "Works" suite never quite managed to).
All in all Microsoft's MBU faces some stiff competition and much more "aware" users compared to their Windows counterpart.

Until now I really can't say they did a better job in a competitive environment.

This is reflecting also in the Windows world, where "in the cloud" apps (Google and others) are increasing their user base.

I suggest Microsoft Office as a whole to rethink some issues in a more "user centric" way.

PS- I just hope we won't get a Microsoft Office "home basic" "home advanced" "business" "ultimate" and whatever other stuff they can think about...


PS2- Apple should release iWork 08 for Windows... That would be something :-)