iWork. Microsoft May be Worried
Posted by Fraser Drew on 12/6/07 in Apple, Office
We caught wind of some interesting news here at MacApper, something that I’m sure that many people would have cast aside as a load of rubbish, just a couple of years ago.
iWork, Apple’s productivity suite, has managed to capture 16% of the Mac Office Productivity sales. This really is a fairly big achievement. Microsoft Office is a monster, everyone everywhere uses it and it is the standard for Office Productivity apps. So how have Apple managed to crack Microsoft’s dominance in this market?
Well, iWork ‘08 gave Apple the ‘Holy Trinity’ of office apps (Word Processor, Spreadsheets and a Presentation’s App) meaning that for the first time iWork wouldn’t just compliment Office, but was actually able to replace it.
Price may also have a factor; at just $79, iWork’s at least half the cost of office, which stands at a staggering $150-$500, for a suite which does essentially the same job.
Another factor is that iWork has proved itself to be better at some things than Office. Keynote is a better app for presenting than PowerPoint. Period. It just works better on the Mac, and features such as instant alpha, as well as the ‘Apple’ design make it ahead of PowerPoint. Many reviews have pointed this out, with AppleInsider recently putting the two head to head, and coming to the conclusion that Microsoft should scrap PowerPoint and start again.
Numbers can also be better for the average user, as it is simpler to use, with drag and drop formulae for the most simple functions; as well as multiple tables of one page. Pages is also nice to use, as it is better than Word at Page layout and currently runs faster as it is a Universal Binary app (Did anyone think we’d still be talking about whether something is a universal binary nearly 2 years after the transition?).
So could it really be that iWork is better than Office? Simply put, no. But if you delve deeper then it becomes clear that although power users will need Office for some of it’s advanced features, the majority of users will be more than happy with iWork and never meet any of it’s limitations.
But, having said that, Office is now 4 years old, in which time iWork has been written from scratch and been through as many as 3 iterations (Both Pages and Keynote are at version 3, while Numbers is at version 1). The fact that Office still runs in Rosetta may have temporarily converted some users until Microsoft finally deliver Office 2008 in January. This may push users back into Office, meaning that iWork may return to the shadows.
So what will the future bring? Well who knows, Office may re-assert its dominance after it becomes a universal binary, or iWork may finally have moved into the spotlight, after many people, including myself, have used iWork and decided that it does everything they need it to, without the expense of Office. All will become clearer after Office 2008 is released in January, probably at the MacWorld Expo.
So what do you use? Are you sticking with what you know in Microsoft Office, or have you switched to iWork? Tell us in the comments!
Via Ars Technia; Statistics are from recent NPD Group research
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