iWork: Apple's Alternative to Microsoft Office?
Date: Jun 10, 2005
2005 is looking to be a banner year for Apple. The iPod is selling in the millions; iTunes is set to break the one-billionth downloaded song by the fall; and Macs are selling like they have never sold before. Yes, sir, things are looking good. What is coming to be called the "halo effect" of people buying Macs because they purchased an iPod is encouraging stronger innovation and sales in software. But one of the reasons why people buy a computer is to help organize their digital life. Part of that life is work, and Apple thinks it has another winner with a new productivity package called iWork.
What Is iWork, Anyway?
Office suits and products are not new to Apple. Over the years they have dabbled with a number of products, but each time Apple was not able to deliver products that customers wanted. Microsoft and other companies, such as Lotus, were able to displace Apple's own software. Has that changed with iWork?
Two products, Pages and Keynote 2, form the new productivity suit from Apple dubbed iWork, which is designed for office workers who want to give their paper work a little more flair. Pages is a word processing package, and Keynote 2 is a presentation software package.
It is almost impossible to review these two products without having to cast an eye at the competition. In this case, here are the three products that compete heavily in the office productivity space:
- Microsoft Office
- Open Source project Open Office
- Corel WordPerfect
Apple has tried to not "overbloat" Pages and Keynote with hundreds of features that are seldom if ever used. (When did you last construct a form and connect it to a database in Word?) The focus is on keeping the products lean and mean. Get in, get what you need done, get out, and make it look cooler than all heck.
What Apple has done is to focus on what it is good at: cool. Both Keynote and Pages come with tools that claim that even the visually impaired can make cool, beautiful, and stunning presentations and documents. Keynote uses themes, and Pages uses templates. But, is cool enough to buy this product?
A Flair for Presentation: Keynote 2
I spend a lot of time presenting—in classrooms, at conferences, and in corporate offices. A mainstay of my life has been Microsoft PowerPoint. It's not that I particularly like it; it is just simple to use. Presentations can be knocked out in minutes rather than hours (if I were using a product such as Macromedia Flash). I'm not a great believer in adding charts, pictures, and other cool media elements to my presentations. The focus of a presentation is the presenter, not PowerPoint.
So, rather dubiously, I looked at Keynote 2. What I saw when I opened Keynote is that it's stripped of many of the features found in competing products. It's a straightforward tool that allows you to get started with your presentation immediately.
Tools include features such as the Slide Organizer (found along the left side of the screen). Quickly and easily you can move, group, and arrange your slides. Other tools, such as the new presenter tools, give you control over your slides. The new presenter tools give the presenter a view of the presentation, showing the current and next slide. This is not broadcast to the screen. All the animation tools in Keynote are cool, but the presenter tools are the most important reason why I like this product. It seems like such as simple idea, but it's one that Microsoft and Corel appear to have missed.
Apple has gone to town with its presentation theme designs. You will not find the quirky, odd, and just plain weird theme styles of PowerPoint in Keynote. Each slide looks beautiful, and the beauty does not stop with themes. There are also stunning slide transitions and text animations. Unlike other programs, Keynote's visual effects are made effective at supporting the presenter simply because they are professional and elegant. You do not have spinning pixilated text effects.
If you are the controller of your own beauty, you will find that Keynote does time in elegantly with iLife. Photos, music, and movies can be pulled from iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie into Keynote and used on any slide. Additional touch-up tools in Keynote will add extra polish to any image imported. In addition to importing from iLife, you can also import the following formats:
- JPEG, PNG, and TIFF
- Macromedia Flash
- Adobe Acrobat (PDF)
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- QuickTime
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
- AppleWorks
- Microsoft Excel
- XML
I still like to use PowerPoint, and I still have to use a Windows PC when I am at some clients' locations. A key feature that must be available to me is compatibility. This is not a Mac-only world, and Apple recognizes this. Instead of trying to build a compatibility war, Apple has taken an open-door approach to Keynote. You can export files out of Keynote in the following formats:
- JPEG, PNG, and TIFF
- Macromedia Flash
- Adobe Acrobat (PDF)
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- QuickTime
The export works well. Visual animations and transitions do not export, but the themes and screen layout do. One export feature that is missing, however, is a, HTML/web export. A web page export has been standard for PowerPoint since 1997, and it would be good to see it in Keynote.
Overall, what I like about Keynote is its simplicity. I am not a "power user" of PowerPoint; I only want my presentation to look clean and support what I am saying. With that said, the beautiful transitions are almost impossible to use. Not because they are gaudy and bold but because they are subtle and sophisticated. Unfortunately, unless Apple comes out with a Windows version of Keynote, I will need to keep using PowerPoint (although I will certainly choose Keynote when I can).
Using Pages Instead of Word?
After my experience with Keynote 2, I have to admit that I was pumped up and ready to see what I could get out of Pages. Has Apple one-upped Microsoft as they have with Keynote?
To be frank, no.
Don't get me wrong, Pages is a good product. I just don't see it displacing Word or WordPerfect. Keynote is a second-generation tool; Pages is a first-generation tool. As soon as you open Pages, it wants you to create brochures, handouts and printed materials. It does this with a good sense of style and ease.
The problem is this: I don't use word processing tools for printed materials. I am just a humble writer, so I use a word processor to, well, process my words. I am guessing that most of us use Microsoft Word to jot down notes, ideas and interoffice memos. If you are going to begin creating a print-quality newsletter or flier, you will use tools such as Quark or (heaven forbid) Microsoft Publisher.
With all this said, Pages does have its advantages. If you want to create a printed document, the creation process is easy and the end result is often elegant (by using tools such as Templates). You will also find that Pages does export and open competing file types such as Microsoft Word. Finally, you can also export as an Adobe Acrobat file.
Overall, I just did not get into Pages in the same way I did with Keynote. Maybe Pages 2 will blow me away. Maybe.
The Bottom Line
Apple has done really well with products such as the iPod, iLife, and Mac OS X to make computers easier, more reliable and fun. iWork is addressing a missing element: productivity. It has introduced two tools, Keynote and Pages.
Keynote is certainly the stronger tool and worth the $79 you will pay. Pages is good, but I will still end up using Microsoft Word because Pages really wants me to make my words more beautiful than I need them to be (remember, I am just a humble writer). I am also a creature of habit, and Word lets me get the job done. In addition to the two products in iWork, I feel that Apple has left out other products. In WordPerfect and Office you get at least a worksheet tool and sometimes a database tool in addition to a word processing tool. I do not expect Apple to get into the database market, but I do expect an excellent version of Excel.
The bottom line for iWork is really this: If you do presentations, you need to check out Keynote 2, you will fall in love with the product. If you do not do regular presentations, you might want to hold off until iWork is fleshed out with more products. It is a good tool, but it is not a great tool in the way that iLife is. There just needs to be more than two products to meet the average needs of office users.