"I think there are a lot of great features in iWork," Swenson said. IWork '08 does not include an e-mail app, though Mac OS X comes with a Mail program. With a full copy listing for $149, and $25 rebates available the whole summer, the price gap with iWork suddenly shrinks.Īnd while Microsoft is aggressively upselling consumers to pricier editions of Office 2007 by removing the popular Outlook e-mail application from the Home and Student edition, Swenson said there is no indication that Microsoft will follow a similar strategy by removing the Entourage e-mail app from the Home and Student version of Office 2008. Initial reports from Mac fans who bought iWork '08 on its first day say that Numbers, while not as powerful as Excel, should be sufficient for most users.įinally, $79 looks attractive compared with Office 2004 standard edition's $399 list price ($239 for an upgrade).īut Swenson, himself a Mac user with both iWork and Office installed on his machine, remains skeptical.īecause of "zero enforcement" by Microsoft or its resellers, any consumer can easily buy Office's Student and Teacher edition without proof of academic affiliation, he said. Office 2008 for the Mac, meanwhile, is now scheduled to be out next January, missing not only the back-to-school market but Christmas.Īpple claims that iWorks '08 can also open and save all Microsoft Office documents, including the new XML-based ones created by Office 2007 and the future Office 2008. The updated suite also has its release timing - the back-to-school season - going for it. With it, Apple hopes to finally catch up to Office on its home turf, while "creating an insurance policy" should Microsoft ever decide that hurting iMac sales by retiring Office would outweigh Office's booming Mac sales, Swenson said. "The fact of the matter is that most everyone that has been switching to the Mac has been buying Microsoft Office," said Chris Swenson, an NPD analyst.īut with its third version of iWork, Apple has belatedly rounded out the suite with a long-rumored spreadsheet app called Numbers. Moreover, revenue from Mac Office sales has grown at an average annual rate of 73% in each of the past five years. The lack of a spreadsheet, along with Office's general ubiquity, explain why iWork has made little headway against Office despite its $79 price - about half that of the cheapest version of Office.Īccording to NPD Group Inc., iWork held just 16% of the Macintosh office software market as measured by copies sold in retail and e-commerce stores in the past 12 months in the U.S. Though Pages could display tables and columns, it could not open Excel spreadsheet files. In an attempt to defuse that threat once and for all, Apple released a beefed-up iWork '08 this week.įirst launched in January 2005, iWork included just two components: a PowerPoint-like presentation maker called Keynote and a page layout/word processing application called Pages. Every closely watched delay in Office 2008 revives some fear among Mac fans about Microsoft's long-term commitment. But the sword of Damocles that is Office continues to hang over the Mac.
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