Apple iWork '08 Family Pack [OLD VERSION]

I use iWork quite a bit and didn't really take iWork 06 seriously due to severe limitations but when iWork 08 came out, I've become so accustomed to using it, I actually hate having to run anything Microsoft.

One thing I did notice is that Numbers is a fair spreadsheet tool if you're only using it for personal reasons or if you're not interacting with anyone else using Excel. Many of the formulas and formats I use in Excel don't work with Numbers.

One other note, the formatting in Keynote doesn't always play nice with Microsoft PowerPoint. When exporting to PowerPoint, I have to open PowerPoint in VMware's Fusion and edit it before I can send it along to my coworkers who are running Windows.

Aside from that, iWork 08 is awesome and because I have several Mac's at home and work, I buy the Family pack to keep everything under license.

Even though I've got some complaints with the interoperability between Apple and Microsoft, I still rate iWork with 5-stars for innovation, ease of use, function and presentation - Apple just gets it!

Keynote and Pages are very good applications that will need some minor tweaks in the future.

Numbers definitely needs more functions built-in (those that are currently standard in Excel). No five star rating until this is fixed. For most users though, this program will perform fine.

This program is very intuitive and will not take that long to get use to. It has many features which are very handy especially in the area of document creation and inserting images and especially in the ease of formatting each document. It seems like it takes 3 less steps to achieve things with iWorks than it does with Office. However, Pages is the one program that I think is better than Word, Numbers and Keynote have great integration with pages, but still are not as good as Excel or Powerpoint.

I take online college courses and my professors require that I submit my assignments in .doc format. When I got my new Mac laptop, I ordered iWork because the people at Apple assured me that when I exported documents in .doc format, they would appear exactly the same as they did on my screen when I created them. Unfortunately, that was not the case. A couple of my professors deducted points on my assignment because some of the settings changed when I exported the documents to .doc format. Margin sizes changed and some of my paragraph formatting changed. When two of my papers lost enough points to drop from A's to B's because of the those changes, I ended up getting Microsoft Office for Mac. I haven't had an issue since.

If you don't need to meet specific requirements on your assignments like I do, this software might be a better fit for you. After all, it was half the price of Office for Mac. As for me, I'm going to stick with Office until I finish my degree.

Covers much more than the basics for a low cost. There is a learning curve moving from other products. Let's hope Apple can keep these productivity products updated and avoid dumping them in the future.