iWork - An Initial View
14/03/05 17:32 Filed in: Apple
I'd actually
forked out on iWork at the same time as iLife '05
(more on that later). So what do I reckon to the
package?
Pages
This is clearly an unfinished package. The speed of this package on my 867MHz G4 PowerBook is sluggish. The manual is printed (unusual) and small (more unusual). The product is activated with a serial number (not typical with Apple products). The actual program itself is OK, I struggle more with the speed at present than the functionality but I find that I'm trying to use Pages like Word. This is not a good idea. There are functions missing - such as delete a page. Though the feedback option is readily available. I expect Pages to develop quickl;y and i wonder why Apple brought it out so early.
Keynote 2
Keynote 2 unlike Pages is a next step from an established package with a clear target in mind - PowerPoint. In this case, it does do very well. But many of my work uses for PowerPoint are less about transitions and themes and more about content. In this respect, Keynote struggles to allow me to have more content.
In summary, one of the main things that both packages lack is numeric data manipulation - tables, charts that are created, edited and referenced separately from the applications. I hope that the next iteration of iWork will include an Excel equivalent. Though secretly I hope that it is based on FileMaker (doubtful) or MySQL or OpenBase that can act as a data repository for iWork. Maybe they could get it allow catalogues to be written in Pages with product data held in a database. You never know, what wit the live web content in Keynote 2, we can make a dashboard document in Pages.
Pages
This is clearly an unfinished package. The speed of this package on my 867MHz G4 PowerBook is sluggish. The manual is printed (unusual) and small (more unusual). The product is activated with a serial number (not typical with Apple products). The actual program itself is OK, I struggle more with the speed at present than the functionality but I find that I'm trying to use Pages like Word. This is not a good idea. There are functions missing - such as delete a page. Though the feedback option is readily available. I expect Pages to develop quickl;y and i wonder why Apple brought it out so early.
Keynote 2
Keynote 2 unlike Pages is a next step from an established package with a clear target in mind - PowerPoint. In this case, it does do very well. But many of my work uses for PowerPoint are less about transitions and themes and more about content. In this respect, Keynote struggles to allow me to have more content.
In summary, one of the main things that both packages lack is numeric data manipulation - tables, charts that are created, edited and referenced separately from the applications. I hope that the next iteration of iWork will include an Excel equivalent. Though secretly I hope that it is based on FileMaker (doubtful) or MySQL or OpenBase that can act as a data repository for iWork. Maybe they could get it allow catalogues to be written in Pages with product data held in a database. You never know, what wit the live web content in Keynote 2, we can make a dashboard document in Pages.
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