Apple iWork '08

Monday, 10th of December, 2007

Apple iWork '08's three applications have excellent comment and mark-up support; the ability to open documents saved in the native Open XML format used by Office 2007 for Windows; Page Layout mode gives consumers much of the capability of professional tools like Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress at a fraction of their cost; Apple Keynote '08 gives you the ability to record a voice track for a presentation

We would have preferred to see Apple include some layout-only, contentless templates for Numbers and Pages in Apple iWork '08; clumsy way of creating a layout in Word Processing mode that you can make in Page Layout

Users comfortable with Microsoft Office may find it takes time to get used to Apple iWork '08. Advanced Word and Excel users, especially those who rely on specialised features and functions, will probably find Apple Pages '08 and Apple Numbers '08 to be limited. If you do rely on specific functions in Microsoft Excel or features in any of the Microsoft Office applications that are even slightly outside the more general types of usage, you will probably want to download the Apple iWork '08 30-day trial to ensure that the tools you need are there before buying. And, to be sure, the process of having to export files when interacting with Microsoft Office users could get old quickly if you have to do that regularly. But overall, Apple iWork '08 is beautifully designed -- a compelling product and great value for consumers and small business alike. It brings tons of innovation over previous versions of Apple iWork as well as many office suites on the market. And it turns typical office tasks and documents into creative outlets. That it offers all that it does for $99 is, frankly, hard to believe.