Product Description

Apple's amazing productivity suite for the Mac, iWork '08 includes three applications: Pages '08 for word processing with an incredible sense of style; Numbers '08 for powerful, compelling spreadsheets made easy; and Keynote '08 for cinema-quality presentations for everyone.Features: Numbers '08 - Introducing Numbers '08, an innovative spreadsheet application that lets you organize your data to fit the way you think. Do everything from setting up the family budget to completing a lab report to creating comp...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46 in Software
• Brand: Apple
• Model: MB624Z/A
• Released on: 2007-08-31
• Platform: Mac OS X
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .82" h x 5.42" w x 5.42" l, .38 pounds

Customer Reviews

iWork 2008
..ermm , i was expecting bit more from Apple with this software. I know it`s cheap but even ... more features guys ! C`mon !

Great product suite - but not Office
As a new Mac convert, I have spent over 20 years with PC's, working with the usual Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). This package came pre-installed with a 30 day demo. I tried it out and it is rather good.

Pages (Word) can be used like a standard word processor or like a DTP package, linking boxes of text to flow from one part to the other. Inserting graphics is easy and changing the layout is even easier.

Numbers (Excel) is like a simpler version. A neat thing is if you highlight a group of numbers, it lists the total, average, mean etc at a glance.

Keynote (Powerpoint) is easier to work with than Microsoft's version, and the transitions are far more polished and better animated.

It is not Office, as in the features are far less. However, for the home user you would only ever use 5% of the Office suite's capability, so iWork is a good cheaper alternative where you would not need to use the complex hidden features of Office.

I have also tried the free OpenOffice suite, and although quite good (especially since its free), it does not have the polish and integration of iWork. Also, being made by Apple, iWork ties in better with the Apple OS, and seems to be part of the OS rather than a separate suite. It is recommended for all Mac and Macbook owners.

Smashing
These applications are brilliant in so many ways.

Keynote is best of breed - you simply will not find a better application for creating slick presentations.

Numbers is very good too, better than Excel in my opinion. That said, many people don't really 'get' the tables idea, preferring instead the 'one-large-sheet' approach of Excel and OpenOffice's Calc. If you take time to get to know Numbers, you will probably find that your spreadsheets become much more organised and compact. They look good too!

Pages is the weakest link; it can be very fiddly to layout headers, footers and tables. It's not bad, mind you, and it outputs pages of the highest quality, it's just not fantastic in the way that Numbers and Keynote are. Because it's Mac, it can create PDFs out of the box. The PDF files it generates are of an amazingly high quality.

Overall, I would not hesitate to recommend iWork, especially at the price. If you aren't sure whether to buy, you can download a demo from Apple and try it for yourself. It's worth the price for Keynote alone.