Imagine getting all this for the cost of a Macmini? I can see it now.For a purchase of Tiger, iWork, and iLife, you get a free Macmini. After the next upgrade or two of Pages, just how will Micro$in justify their huge cost of Office, when a $79 app eats their lunch in every category? Then I think Apple should nail the coffin by offering it free w/a Mac purchase. The idea is to slowly and subtly take bites out of Office and Adobe and not lose money instantaneously. To me this version of Pages seems sluggish doing the same exact things I do in Keynote 2, but we all know that the next versions marketing will be focused on drastically improved performance, plus added Cells, and eventually a consumer lever web design program. In the keynote speech, when describing iWork, Steve said, “we are building…”, he didn’t say, “we’ve built…”. The instant access to iPhoto, etc, and the interface similarities with Keynote is alone worth $79. I like pages and it suits the average Joe like me. It gives most Mac users an affordable alternative to Word, and whets the appetite for a more filled-out suite, which we hope is in the works,” Mendelson writes. “Pages resembles a cross between a page-layout program (think Adobe InDesign) and a word processor (à la Word), combining all their basic features and a few of their advanced ones… In our tests, Pages imported our Word test files with only minimal changes in page layout… All told, iWork ’05 is a fine effort. Rumors that the suite would include a spreadsheet called Cells turned out to be false, but they do suggest that Apple has plans for a more full-featured suite in the future,” Mendelson writes.
The suite is strong in typographic and visual features-the areas where Office is weakest. “iWork comprises a new word processor (called Pages) and an updated version of the Keynote presentation package that Apple introduced in 2003. Though this new two-application office suite for Mac OS X won’t replace Microsoft Office on most corporate Mac desktops, at just $79 (direct) it gives home, small-business, and education buyers-that is, the vast majority of Apple customers-an affordable alternative to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint,” Edward Mendelson writes for PC Magazine. “Apple’s new iWork ’05 application suite is a small but significant assault on Fort Microsoft.
0 kommentar(er)
