Actually, the question I needed to answer was whether or not to get the Snow Leopard Mac Box Set. I want Snow Leopard, and I want iLife ’09. Do I get the Snow Leopard Upgrade and iLife ’09, or do I get the Snow Leopard Mac Box Set, which will come with Snow Leopard, iLife ’09 and iWork ’09? Snow Leopard Upgrade and iLife ’09 together costs less than the Mac Box Set, but if I wanted iWork ’09 as well, the Mac Box Set would be a better deal. Basically, what I needed to figure out is if I want iWork ’09.
I’m not exactly comparing costs here, or at least not in the fair sense of it. I already have Office 2008 for Mac. iWork ’09 was going to be additional cost. If cost was the bottom line, there was no need to consider iWork ’09. But I’ve heard so much good things (and some not-so-good things) about iWork ’09, that I wanted to know if I will find iWork ’09 useful. I’ve been pretty impressed with how Apple software works, from Mac OS X itself, the apps in it (like Mail, Safari, etc), iLife, iTunes, and how generally everything integrates very nicely with each other. iWork ’09 is supposed to be pretty wonderful too.
I’ve read reviews after reviews. The general gist of things is that iWork ’09 is nice, but it is not as powerful as Office 2008 for Mac. This is also the general message I hear from friends who have had some experience with both iWork ’09 and Office 2008 for Mac. But, reading and hearing all these still didn’t help me figure out whether I want to go along with iWork ’09. The best thing is to try the software for myself.
Fortunately, Apple does make available a free 30-day trial of iWork ’09. So, I downloaded a copy and starting giving it spin. My plan was to try to do something for real with iWork ’09. There is no point to just launch the program, click around the menus and play around with simple features. I was going to try writing a real document and create a real presentation. This will be my test.
First impression of iWork ’09 is that the apps are really pretty. They come with tons of sample templates that are all very nice and attractive. It’s not so pretty, actually, when you start from scratch with a blank canvas. But if you use the sample templates, it looks like I can easily produce impressive looking documents and presentations. Things are not terribly familiar, that’s because I’ve been mainly using Office 2008 for Mac (and the equivalent on the Windows platform), but it doesn’t seem difficult to figure out where things are.
Trying to get real work done quickly shows up some problems. For example, while I was in Pages, I realized I could not create a footnote reference from inside a table. Maybe it is something silly I didn’t know how to do. A quick Google search confirms that this is one of those thing that Pages does not do. I wouldn’t call this totally a show stopper, but it is really annoying to have such a problem. I got discouraged.
Keynote is nice. The transition effects and such are nice. Then I thought, hmm, can Powerpoint do the same? I launched Powerpoint and tried to recreate some of the beautiful things I saw in Keynote. Yes, Powerpoint could do the same. The difference was basically that Keynote made it a whole lot easier for me to create beautiful presentations, while Powerpoint needed me to poke around its interface to achieve similar results.
I started to consider another angle to the iWork ’09 vs Office 2008 for Mac matter. How often will I work on a document, presentation or spreadsheet that I will not have to share with other people? By “share”, I mean in the sense that we are working collaboratively and the files will have to be sent back and forth several times through multiple people. This is the kind of thing that preservation of formatting and other features are highly critical. If I don’t have t share my files, iWork ’09 would be good. If I have to share my files, I think Office 2008 for Mac would be quite necessary.
Well, I have to share my files. Almost all the time my documents would have to be shared with other people. More often than not, my spreadsheets and presentations also have to be shared. So it looks like I would be needing Office 2008 for Mac anyway.
So, now, is it worth to spend S$128 on iWork ’09 (or about S$92 extra to get the Mac Box Set) just for those rare occasions when I create documents, presentations or spreadsheets that will never have to be shared with others?
Probably not.
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