Yes, I’d Like To Order a Productivity Suite, Hold the Microsoft May 21, 2008
Posted by gerryc in Tech.trackback
Those who’re in my circle of friends know me well enough to confirm that I’m a Mac Evangelist. Almost everything and anything Apple produces I lust over and try to get others to feel the same way. But, in certain circumstances, you have to look outside the company’s offerings to get things done.
Enter Microsoft Office: the necessary evil of the business world. This suite of apps has a stranglehold on the productivity market. Many companies have adopted the software giant’s cash cow as their defacto tool for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, leaving little space for other competitors to offer any alternatives.
In 2003, Apple tried to make a dent in Office’s impervious force field by releasing Keynote, a presentation software with stunning visuals, sleek transitions and their trademark ease of use. Even though it wasn’t touted as direct competitor to PowerPoint and lacked certain advanced features, at a $99 price point it was pretty obvious the direction where the engineers at Cupertino were headed: to offer an affordable productivity tool for use at home, school or even the workplace.
Let’s skip ahead to today. Apple now offers a suite named iWork, which includes Pages, a simple, yet robust word-processor and visual page-layout program; Numbers, an easy-to-use spreadsheet application with gorgeous graphs; and, of course, Keynote, including even more eye-catching transitions, templates and advanced features. All this for a mere $79. Huh? What’s that? How much for Microsoft Office for Mac? A whopping $400 bucks!
Ok, ok. Before I get the Microsoft-nerd hate mail, I’ll admit I have Office installed on my computer and use it fairly often. This is due to the almost daily exchange of .doc and .xls her at work, but personally I prefer to use iWork for my personal projects. Know what else? I can open those files in either Pages or Numbers and they almost look better! Oh, and I don’t bother PowerPoint. Keynote wins hands down!
So, if your business thrives on anything made in Word, Excel or PowerPoint and you have the money to burn, Microsoft will gladly take your dollars. On the other hand, if you need an affordable and uncomplicated way to be productive on your Mac, give iWork a try.
Trust me. It’s so nice to see my Mac OS X Dock Microsoft-free!
No Microsoft-nerd hate mail? Well, I just want to say I enjoy using Microsoft Office specially Access, Power Point and Excel. I had used various versions of Microsoft including the latest Microsoft 2007. I had got my Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 free from my University since they have it ncluded with the course materials. But I guess if I had to buy a Productivity Suite I would go for an open source and free one like Open Office: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html
But if I had a Mac, I should go for iWork. The price is good and I know that Gerry can be trusted on what he says.
You should try Lotus Symphony!! I like free alternatives.. or OpenOffice works too, but since they don’t have a Mac alternative (yet, unless you want to do the 3.0 beta), Lotus Symphony is better.