RocketTheme

I was curious to which office suite people preferred, either iWorks, the one from Apple; Office, the one from Microsoft; and NeoOffice, the open source and free alternative.

On windows I did like Office and the new 2007 layout. Therefore, when I got my Macbook I decided to try out Office 08 for Mac. I really disliked it, seemed too flashy for me and didn't really suit my work flow. The plethora of inspector windows to the right was clumsy for me.

Therefore, I did try out iWorks 08 (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). I am really impressed with the full selection. Pages isn't as powerful as word but has a very simple, elegant layout and discovered that it had a sidebar last night which comes in very handy, much better than the inspectors used in Office Word. Keynote, no matter of a doubt is superior to Powerpoint in my opinion - there are more effects which are more advanced and professional in my opinion. The whole software just seems very elegant and polished. Numbers is no were near as powerful as Excel but I use it so infrequently, that it doesn't particularly matter to me and as an addition, the graphs are very cool :)

iWorks seems to be aimed at the general home user in my opinion, not as a full professional suite like word but I like it all the same and have subsequently removed Office 08 from my Macbook.

As for NeoOffice, I haven't really tried it as I am comfortable with iWorks now so any thoughts on that would be quite interesting.

So, what do you use, what do you prefer and why?

Being an Office junkie, I chose office but I can't say for sure as I don't have Office '08 installed.  >:(

I got iWorks with my mini and must say for 80 bucks, I'm impressed.

Don't know if I'm really interested Office '08 anyway, seems to be a watered down version, missing Access, Publisher, Outlook, no Visio equivalent, etc.

Along with that, iWorks can open Word and Excel and it can save to both formats.

This may be true for Keynote as well, but I haven't tested it.

A little OT on the Office topic, but there are a couple of other things I was impressed with when I started playing around...

One OS localizes to multiple languages, and iWorks localizes as well, totally unbelievable!

Native PDF viewing and printing!

No need to download Acrobat or install print drivers.

Just my 2 yen....

I'll be sure to check out Neo Office, thanks for the tip, James.
 

Having PDF abilities at the core of OSX makes it really handy, I really disliked Acrobat so its just an easy convert in Pages to PDF or even DOC file types :)

For the price, iWorks is really worth it in my opinion.

I have to say I really like iWork, it just has the bits I need.  If only it would save it's files in a regular file rather than a bundle.. grrrr.

I voted for iWork because its the easiest way for me to create something that looks good.  For the most part, I don't need all the features from Office that iWork is missing.  The one thing I do use Word for is typing notes.  As a teacher, I type my notes and put blanks in to hand out to students.  Once they're typed I can send them to PowerPoint.  If its formatted as an outline, Powerpoint will break them up into slides for me.  iWork and Neooffice don't have this capability.  So, unfortunately, I'm stuck using Word.

OpenOffice v3 Public Beta for Mac is available from http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/ (http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/).

Seems OK - and interface is not too bad.

But, since Microsoft gives me a free copy of Microsoft Office 2008 (I'm an Apple Reseller), I don't use the Office "clones" unless I need to "open" a PC database. :P

I'm just so fearful of actually installing office on my mac.  I installed the old one and it messed up my fonts so badly I basically had to reinstall. And that *bleeping* updater would run constantly!

Yah, installing Office crashes your fonts on first install...kinda sucks.

So I use VMWARE Fusion and run Microsoft Office and other windoze apps on my MacBook that I can't run normally.  I tried looking at Iwork, but the charting functions and worksheet layout were very strange.  Every excel file I have opened in Iwork looks nothing like it does in excel.  It took me years to understand excel and I need to stay with a common platform that other PC users can recognize.

Excel is a more powerful than Numbers anyway so if you use that functionality, I would definitely use excel. Have you tried the Mac version of Office? What do you think of it? I personally prefer the windows interface so anytime I use Office its within Parallels.

google docs?

seriously?

I have a full version of Office 2007 for windows and was planning on installing it on my Vista bootcamp, but to be honest I am not sure I will...

After going freelance I don't really use any office applications any more, so I might just use iworks..

I use Microsoft Office 2008. But have used both iWork´08 and NeoOffice too.

That day Numbers´08 be filly compatible with Excel, that day i go from MS Office. 

 

iWork all the way....

Even Numbers gets my vote now....had to be weened off Excel gradually.

Stopping the use of Pivot Tables can seriously damage your health !!


Ian.

on my Mac, I use NeoOffice. Does everything I need.

I almost always reach for iWork these days. Pages is great--if it were available back when I started (way back) I never would have bothered learning PageMaker and then InDesign. That is not to say it has the capability of those programs--Pages is no InDesign, but it has enough. Keynote is a joy to use compared to PowerPoint. I'm getting used to Numbers, but I still launch Excel 2004 when I get frustrated. I very much doubt I will ever buy MS Office again.

Pages has everything I need, love the layout, functionality and simplicity, its been working everyday for me in my business and has never let me down. These days I never touch anything else! I barely have to even think about what I need to do , I just do it, very intuitive.

The standard Apple way of doing things with new products seems to be to release basic functionality in the first version, be it iWork, iPhone, iPod or whatever, and if the product proves commercial, they start adding more features, with the pattern continuing through the life of the product. Sounds commercially sound to me!

I think the Numbers thing is Apple taking an entirely new take on spreadsheets, making spreadsheets available to everyone to use for the first time. Sounds like the Apple way of doing things to me (and isn't that the same thinking that has just made Nintendo a smash hit again!) Expect the next version to have more new features in accordance with its market acceptance, and continue improving in power and functionality from there on.

Even if Apple had the same resources to spend on program development as MS, and made iWork as big, bad and ugly as Office, it still wouldn't make 1 iota of difference to market share, if anything it would turn Mac lovers into Mac haters. What Apple has been doing right now to promote market share is perfect, and no one could have even predicted the amazing turnaround of the last 10 years!

As for Office Mac, YUK! Obviously done on purpose, like the hand out to save Apple, Uncle Bill does the minimum he has to, to prevent the deserved breakup of his company that was imminent under Clinton before Bush stopped it... Americans think.... Standard Oil.... Bell...

Neo Office, UGLY, SLOW, CUMBERSOME, WINDOWS-LIKE, TOO COMPLICATED, CPU HOG.

Abiword, YEP that just crashed again! (sorry just taking a moment to remember my Windows days of crashing computers!)

Another old debate could be whether it should be free with the sale of a new Mac, especially in Australia, as we seem to get the privilege of paying far higher Mac prices than the rest of the world for some reason, and no thats not tax related  ???

Only thing I'm not happy about and need, is the option of exporting in HTML, which was there in '06 and lost in '08. Pages is so easy to use to quickly mask, shape and alter images for my other site(not J), I find myself switching between both '06 and '08 constantly. If anyone else knows how I can export images I make into png or jpg any other way in '08, please let me know!

To sum up, always a very happy Mac user and iWork all the way!

Your last point about exporting HTML and in particular images is functionality I'd love to see in Pages.