For me, the upgrades for iWork 09 are where the money’s at.
I love Numbers as an alternative to Excel, and I’m growing fonder and fonder of Pages. Both get updates that could prove useful.
Pages
Pages finally gets mail-merge, which is a God-send in my work. Having full-screen mode will be nice as well. And while I don’t generally use their templates, every now and then one catches my eye. So I’ll peruse the 40-plus new ones.
For the word-processing power users out there, Pages also offers two new functionalities that are most welcome, but I’m not sure how well implemented. (Seeing as how I don’t use them, I doubt I’ll find out…)
They are:
Dynamic outlines. Changes made in an outline view are automatically made to the document.
MathType and EndNote compatibility. You can now write formulas in MathType and use EndNote for your bibliographic citations.
Numbers
Numbers is where the big improvements are for me. They include:
Table categories. This will greatly improve my abilities to use Numbers on several projects, from budgeting to analysis projects. And having the ability to find automatic sums based on categories is excellent.
Linked charts. I do a lot of data crunching in spreadsheets and then write a lot of summaries in word processing programs. Now in iWork, I can link the data in Numbers charts to the charts I place in Pages. That makes me happier than you know.
New charts. So this doesn’t really excite me that much, outside of an aesthetics point of view. But aesthetics are important, especially in proposals. So, I like it. (Plus, I wanted three examples instead of two.)
Keynote
Keynote also adds some new features, including the Keynote Remote, which allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to control a presentation from their phone or iPod. This is similar to what users can do with the same devices to control their Apple TV.
Apple also upgraded their templates and charts, and have added some new moves and transitions.
As you can tell, I’m not a big Keynote user. I enjoy it when I use it, but I have few demands for presentations of this sort.
iWork.com
Users of Google Docs and power users of Microsoft Office’s collaboration features will scoff at iWork.com. They are really comparable only in the ability to share a document and make comments on them.
In iWork.com, you cannot edit a document online. You can only view it, comment on it, leave general notes and download it.
But I like the idea for two reasons:
Sharing features. iWork.com offers an easy way to share documents between people and do basic collaboration via notes with anyone — regardless of whether or not they have a Google account. For providing proofs and sharing ideas among several people, it’s not a bad idea.
What the future holds. I’m one of the admitted minority who believes Apple will continue to develop iWork and iWork.com for the business community, though probably just smaller businesses. And though iWork was basic when it first launched, it has grown more and more robust. I believe that what we see in iWork.com is just the beginning, and as they develop it we’ll see even more functionality added.
Apple has a history of developing their newer software at their own pace. Generally, they do not allow the public to dictate their timelines (as Microsoft and Sony often do). They want to get it right, and when they offer a final product, it includes what they feel comfortable offering.
In that respect, I’m optimistic about what iWork.com becomes over the next few years.
Of course, there is one glaring exception to my above description of the way Apple develops their offerings, and that is Mobile Me. Considering Mobile Me was designed to offer cloud computing that was capable of being used in the business world, I would hope they have learned from their mistakes and that iWork.com will not be a repeat disaster.
That they offer iWork.com as beta only right now is encouraging.
Final analysis
I’m downloading the trial of iWork 09 today and will begin testing it as soon as I have a few minutes.
My first impression is that it the improvements are a solid set of new functionality, and I’ll happily pay the $79 for the upgrade.
As for iWork.com, I’ll start using it for collaboration projects too. And depending on where the monthly price point comes in, I might jump on that bandwagon as well.
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Just FYI, MathType integration works with all three iWork ‘09 apps! Not just Pages.
Good to know. Thanks for pointing that out.