Apple iWork '08 Family Pack [OLD VERSION]
by Apple
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Software Reviews of Apple iWork '08 Family Pack [OLD VERSION]
Customer Review: Keynote: Great, Pages/Numbers: Hmmm
Summary: 4 Stars
I have Office v.X. I never upgraded to 2004 or 2008. From what I hear I don't want to.
Keynote is awwsuuumm. Much better than Powerpoint. Easy, looks great, works. Nuff' said. I'm now a strictly Keynote user as far as the Mac goes. Rating: 6/5
Pages: I'm trying to use it, but I find certain tasks to be, well, clunky. I think there are things that are promising. I like the simpler interface. I like the automatic object line up. I like the inspector, for the most part. I would like a little more customization in the buttons (like more options, or build your own). One grip: I teach chemistry part time, which means I need easy access to superscripts and subscripts, I've got the buttons up on the 'bar', but there is no highlighting on when the button is active or not. I'd like more control over numbered lists and outlining. Maybe a little more learning curve than I like. Rating for Pages: 3/5
Numbers: I haven't used it a whole lot. Graphing doesn't seem to be as complete as Excel. But I think this will work. Rating 3/5
Overall, I think if Apple continues to improve this product, it will be pretty nice. I'd like to see a little more work on Pages (mostly customization on the buttons), but otherwise not bad. Also moving to/from MS Office is a little clunky (import/export?) why not just a 'save as' option?
Customer Review: Apple gets it, Microsoft doesn't
Summary: 5 Stars
I hope Apple understands what they are doing right and keeps doing it. I have multiple computers at home, they used to be windows machines but recently switched to Macs. One of the reasons I switched was the cost to keep legal with my families licenses was outrageous with Microsoft, not just the OS but the Office suite too.
The Mac has a nice port of OpenOffice called Neooffice, but with how cheap the family pack of iWork is I went ahead and got that too. It does exactly what I need it to do, for the most part I create basic documents and spreadsheets and it works great.
I'm pretty excited to use Keynote also for some presentations, but have not done so yet.
Overall a good product at a great price.
Customer Review: Amazing Upgrade
Summary: 4 Stars
Well, I have the first iteration of iWork and I must say that I am extremely pleased that I upgraded. Pages is vastly improved and I love fooling around in Numbers. If you purchased iWork 06, I am not sure if this is a worthy upgrade. If you purchased the original iWork and did not upgrade to 06, this is definitely worth it. Besides, I got the Family Pack with 5 installs for a great price here on Amazon. Go for it, you won't regret it!!!Customer Review: A great suite of apps....almost
Summary: 4 Stars
I converted to the iWork suite a couple of years ago, and this update is a nice improvement.
I use Keynote to do presentations constantly; presentations are easy to create and edit, allowing the user to define multiple "master" slides to control the design (PowerPoint, on the other hand, only allows the user 2 masters - the title slide and a bulleted text slide). The text editing options are very flexible and the presentation a snap. There's no way I would go back to PowerPoint or OpenOffice after using Keynote -- does save to .ppt if necessary, though.
Pages is a nice design app - a bit over featured for simple form letters (TextEdit is simpler to use and free with the Mac OS), but works very well when dealing with graphics and text. I've used Pages to design large posters and longer documents with figures and have been very happy with the results. The only complaints I have are table editing (slow and cumbersome still :() and the default font (Helvetica. I can change it, but it's not that simple). Converts easily to .doc and .pdf if you need to share your results with others.
Numbers (the new addition for '08) is not quite enough to replace Excel...but I expect it will be in the next revision or so. It just doesn't have the calculation/analysis options (creation of histograms, for example) that Excel does. The view options and charts are a bit more flexible than Excel, so this app shows promise - its just not there yet. Fine for balancing checkbooks or creating lists, but not quite for data analysis.
This is a good start -- and it will keep MS Office off of my Mac, with the exception of Excel. Word and PowerPoint are no longer necessary. Pages and Keynote alone are worth the cost...the only reason this is 4 stars instead of 5 is the limited features in Numbers.
Customer Review: Great Suite of Software
Summary: 5 Stars
Warning: I'm a Mac fanboy.
This another great installment of this wonderful software. My wife is a physician and does a lot of public speaking and Key Note always gets noticed. Presentations done using Key Note stand out. Powerpoint can not hold a candle to it, and if your used to using PP don't worry the transition will be painless. The controls are intuitive, and you can import your PP presentations to Key Note and it will convert them for you.
Pages in this version is moving toward being a full fledged replacement of MS Word. Very few users will find Pages lacking, it's not bloated like Word, it just what it supposed to do, help you communicate.
With the addition of numbers, most Mac users can dump MS Office because now iWork is a complete package that can work in all but really large offices. Projects can be exported or saved as MS documents, and you could keep any of the open source office solutions for occasional use.
I noticed a couple of one star reviews, be sure to read those. They're just former windows people who expect a lot for nothing. The updated to iWork, and iLife aren't free, or marked down but they are reasonably priced. And why they would complain about 80 to 100 dollars is beyond me. And have they noticed there's no registration keys, Apple respects its users, unlike Mr. Softy.