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| Apple iWork '08 [OLD VERSION] | ![Apple iWork '08 [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RdeDRd6KL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | From: Apple
Category: Software
List Price: $74.00
Buy New: $56.95
You Save: $17.05 (23%)
New (17) Used (11) from $35.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  121 reviews
Sales Rank: 63
Format: Dvd-rom
Platform: Mac Os X
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 5.3 x 0.8
MPN: MB624Z/A
Model: MB624Z/A
UPC: 885909244300
EAN: 0885909244300
Release Date: August 11, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Fantastic August 24, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I've been using Apple's Office-type offerings since Appleworks 1, and iWork '08 is the apotheosis of the line. I find the ease of use and visual quality of Pages to be top rate, Keynote continues to blow away Powerpoint, and the new Numbers is a dream to use. Apple continues to advance software development beautifully.
Great Product at a Great Price August 24, 2007
46 out of 47 found this review helpful
This is a great office suite at a great price compared to MS Office for the Mac. Keynote is a presentation program like PowerPoint but is a much better product. The templates which are included are beautiful and rich and can incorporate drawings, photographs, documents and tables by simply dragging or inserting them. The program also has a wonderful feature that automatically allows you to find exactly where to place such items if you want them to be, for example, perfectly centered. And of course you can open Power Point files with it and you can, if you want, save your own presentations in PPT format to share with Windows people. The spreadsheet is also terrific. It is easy to have multiple tables on the same worksheet, and has some very attractive templates ready to use. It also has some neat features which permit you to "slide" or "step" values up or down within limits you define. I prepared a retirement planning spreadsheet yesterday which permits me to consider variable yield and withdrawal rates. If you insert a chart in your spreadsheet linked to this data, it will automatically redraw your chart. It's just great. Mossberg's column criticized it for having fewer built in formulas than Excel. In fact, Numbers, which is the spreadsheet program, contains 150 built in formulas, including the ususal ones for finance, statistics, etc. If there are fewer formulas, I don't know how important they might be to you--but it has everything I need. Finally, Pages is the word processing component of the program. It looks a bit lighter than Word, but it turns out that that is only because it doesn't have the hundreds of toolbars and buttons that Word clutters up the screen with. But in my experience it does everything Word does, only in a much more attractive way. iWork does not come with a built in calendar, email, or contacts program, but that is because Macs all come with those included so you don't need another add on.
iWork will open any Office document and you can then save it as an iWork document or (if you insist or need to share) you can save it in the Microsoft format (.doc, .xls., .ppt extensions.)
All in all, a much better and cheaper mouse trap.
it's so simple August 23, 2007
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I've used iWork '08 for a few days and it has completely replaced MS Office on my system. Pages can import pretty much any word doc (I have documents with lots of embedded pictures which were imported perfectly). It can export to Word, PDF or RTF formats as well and the process is pretty quick. If you're using an Intel Mac, you will absolutely notice the difference in speed.
Numbers is also a wonderful program - you get a canvas where you can place multiple tables or worksheets, move them around. Best of all is the dynamic print view, its like a print preview where you can resize the size of the page with a slider.
I haven't used Keynote except to import powerpoint files, and it worked flawlessly for this as well.
My only complaint is that there's no option to change the default file type s to be MS Office (OpenOffice allows this). Overall an excellent product and great value for the price.
Numbers! August 22, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Numbers is a great addition to iWork. It's probably worth the price of admission alone.
Perfect If You're Looking For ... August 19, 2007
39 out of 42 found this review helpful
iWork consists of three apps, PAGES, NUMBERS & KEYNOTE.
PAGES: While being billed as a word processor, it really is a mini page layout app that has word processing features. It has dozens of classy, elegant templates from business letters to flyers to brochures. If you want to create a newsletter, other than the typing, a few clicks will bring in your photos and you are set to go. Comparing the stark ugly templates in MS Office and the fact they are weird & wonky to use is NOTHING like your new experience with PAGES. MS Office templates are is changing a tire by the freeway in the rain while PAGES is driving in a convertible on a sunny autumn day.
And to carry the pleasure & pain analogy further, KEYNOTE is flat out the best presentation software while Powerpoint is a visit to the dentist - necessary but hardly anyone looks forward to it. The only problem is that most people are stuck using Powerpoint without a choice but if you have a choice, KEYNOTE isn't just day and night but while Word is a fine app, just not very exciting, Word templates are like changing a tire in the rain ... Powerpoint is changing a tire in the rain while a thousand ball peen hammers work you over as you do it. KEYNOTE is sitting at a cafe drinking a cappucino. And on top of that, it's so classy and elegant that you can't really mess it up ... no pink and bright green templates.
NUMBERS on the surafce does not seem particularly exciting - after all, it's a spreadsheet app. It is a mini Excel, but that's not necessarily a knock if you don't need the 1,000 features of Excel & ESPECIALLY the major flaw of Excel is that its charting while plentiful are fairly unattractive looking. In NUMBERS, you can create great looking charts, place a photo underneath in about two clicks. You can also move cells as objects around just by dragging them around - again, like PAGES - elegant & classy looking are really just a few clicks away. Unlike PAGES though, you do not get that many templates - the ones included are all nice or downright gorgeous though. THERE IS NO WAY you can match the design and presentation aspects of NUMBERS in Excel and I've been using EXCEL since version 1.0. For power users, macro writers and DB front end, and major number crunchers - Excel still is the main choice but if your needs are more towards standalone spreadsheet but in particular - number oriented presentations and making checklists, NUMBERS is great. NUMBERS also requires a little learning curve (a few weeks) since it offers all of Excel's most popular features but requires a little time to learn where they are in NUMBERS. Again, like PAGES, NUMBERS is a presentation & layout app disguised as a spreadsheet.
MS Office is great for corporations, a thousand features - lots of macros and customization for the IT department. It's a fine functional app (well, other than Powerpoint) - iWork is really a subset of that - the features that a small business, a club, an organization, church group or a consultant who does presentation pitches wants that looks good, runs fast and is easy to use ... that's iWork.
But if you want to create flyers, newsletters and have access to dozens of classy & elegant templates ... and you want the best presentation app around - iWork at @$75 is a great deal.
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