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Apple iWork '08

Apple iWork '08

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From: Apple
Category: Software

List Price: $74.00
Buy Used: $49.00
You Save: $25.00 (34%)

Qty 1 In Stock


New (21) Used (6) from $49.00

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars 115 reviews
Sales Rank: 34

Format: Dvd-rom
Platform: Mac Os X
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Operating System: Macintosh
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.8
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 5.3 x 0.8

MPN: MB624Z/A
Model: MB624Z/A
UPC: 885909244300
EAN: 0885909244300
ASIN: B000BQXTSS

Release Date: August 11, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Complete in Retail Box.Due to nature of product,all sales final. We will give a replacement if item is not working

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Features:
   Apple's productivity suite for the Mac, iWork '08 includes three applications: Pages '08, Numbers '08, and Keynote '08
   Powerful word processing and page layout with 140 Apple-designed templates with Pages
   Effortlessly create stunning presentations, complete with Apple-designed themes, cinema-quality animations, and voiceover narration with Keynote
   Create compelling spreadsheets for everything from family budgets and event planning to invoices and complex financial reports with Numbers
   Import and export compatibility with Microsoft Office

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   Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition
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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Pages '08 offers an intuitive way to create beautiful, media-rich documents using impressive features such as Writing and layout modes, Change tracking, Contextual Format Bar, Automatic list formatting, Graphics tools and templates. Pages '08 supports industry-standard formats to easily open documents from other word processing applications that were created on a Mac or a PC.
Amaze your audience with cinema-quality presentations using Keynote '08 and its new features Text effects & transitions, Action Builds, Instant Alpha, Voice-over Recording, Smart Builds and Apple-designed Themes.
Numbers '08 does everything from setting up your family budget to completing a lab report using Intelligent Tables, Interactive Print View, Flexible Canvas, Import & Export Excel, Charts, Images, Text Labels and Customizable Templates. New Templates - Use more than 80 new templates Keynotes '08 - Text effects & transitions - Captivate viewers with elegant transitions Action Builds - Move objects along a path Instant Alpha - Change backgrounds with simple click & drag Smart Builds - Add photos with sophisticated animations Apple-designed Themes - 9 themes for creating a professional presentation Numbers '08 - Intelligent Tables - Create multiple resizable tables Interactive Print View - Scale and arrange documents Flexible Canvas - Move objects wherever you like with comments, photos and graphics Import & Export Excel - Share spreadsheets with Microsoft Office Charts, Images, Text Labels - Add 2D & 3D charts, photos or a map Customizable Templates - For Home, School and Business System Requirements - Macintosh computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or PowerPC G4 (500MHz or faster) processor, 512MB RAM, 32MB video memory, Mac OS X Version 10.4.10 or later, QuickTime 7.2 or later, iLife '08 recommended, 1GB free space and DVD drive required for installation


Amazon.com
With iWork '08, you get three easy-to-use applications in one package. Pages offers powerful word processing and page layout with 140 Apple-designed templates--and all the writing and graphics tools you need to create beautiful documents. Keynote lets you effortlessly create stunning presentations, complete with Apple-designed themes, cinema-quality animations, and voiceover narration. The innovative new Numbers makes it easier than ever to create compelling spreadsheets for everything from family budgets and event planning to invoices and complex financial reports. And all three applications give you import and export compatibility with Microsoft Office. So whatever you need to communicate, do it beautifully with iWork '08.

Writing comes naturally when you're using Pages '08, the streamlined word processor for the Mac.

Pages. Word processing never looked this good.

Jump-start your next writing project by opening one of the engaging Apple-designed templates.

If you collaborate with others, you'll find the new change tracking tools invaluable.

With the free-form canvas, you can move photos, charts, shapes, and other objects wherever you like.

Import your Microsoft Word documents into Pages '08 with ease.

New in Pages '08.
Letters, reports, resumes, brochures, newsletters, business cards--whatever you write, Pages '08 offers an intuitive way to create beautiful, media-rich documents. With two distinct modes, one for word processing and one for page layout, Pages puts the tools you need right at your fingertips. Powerful page layout tools offer complete control of where objects appear and how text flows, letting you create impressive newsletters, brochures, and flyers. Whether you start with one of more than 140 Apple-designed templates or a blank page, creating beautiful documents is quick and easy with Pages '08.

Get started in minutes.
Beautiful Apple-designed templates. Immediate access to your media. Powerful graphics tools. Tables. Stunning 2D and 3D charts. Pages '08 provides the tools you need to create elegant documents that communicate superbly.

More than 140 templates.
Jump-start your next writing project by opening one of the engaging Apple-designed templates. Pages includes more than 80 word processing templates and more than 60 page layout templates.

Your media just a click away.
Thanks to the built-in Media Browser, you can browse your iPhoto or Aperture libraries. When you find a photo you like, just drag it into your Pages document. Powerful graphics tools let you make image adjustments, add frames or masks, or remove backgrounds.

Tables that click.
With a single click, you can add a table to your Pages document. Format numbers in table cells for currency or dates. Enter simple calculations using cell references. Even apply functions such as sum and average.

Charts paint a beautiful picture.
It's easy to create 2D and 3D pie, line, bar, column, area, and scatter charts. Just pick the one that fits your needs. You can customize charts by adding a realistic texture, controlling the lighting, or rotating them.

Writing the Mac way.
Writing comes naturally when you use Pages '08. The most intuitive word processing application on the Mac, Pages puts the tools you need within easy reach. Now writing is as easy and enjoyable as using a Mac.

All the tools you need.
The new context-sensitive Format Bar lets you add a personal touch to your document's appearance. Choose fonts, set leading and alignment, and apply paragraph and character styles. All the basics--just a click away.

Pages automatically formats lists on the fly and generates tables of contents on demand. You can insert headers and footers and add footnotes. Apply polish to your documents using the proofing and editing tools. And navigate quickly through even the longest documents with page thumbnails.

Powerful page layout.
Newsletters. Brochures. Flyers. When you want to switch from writer to designer, Pages provides the layout tools you need. Suddenly it's easy to build beautiful, media-rich documents certain to impress readers.

Complete layout control.
Produce documents that look exactly the way you envision them. With the free-form canvas, you can move photos, charts, shapes, and other objects wherever you like. And place them precisely using the built-in rulers and alignment guides.

Control text wrapping.
To add a photo to a page, simply drag it from the Media Browser and drop it into your document. Turn on Wrap to control how text flows around the photo. Use the format bar to set text to wrap to the left or right, around, or above and below images.

Follow the flow of text.
New to Pages, visual text box links let you follow the flow of text through your document. Say an article starts on page two and jumps to page five. Text links track it and let you see at a glance if you have more copy to place. All it takes is a click to create a new text box into which the remaining text flows.

Widely compatible.
Pages '08 supports industry-standard formats, so you can easily open documents created in other word processing applications and share documents with others. Whether they're using a Mac or a PC.

Open for business.
Import your Microsoft Word documents into Pages '08 with ease. Whether they're Microsoft Office 2007 (Office Open XML) or earlier Word files, Pages will open them. Pages imports not only the text, but also the styles, tables, inline and floating objects, charts, footnotes, endnotes, bookmarks, hyperlinks, lists, sections, change tracking, and other elements of your original Word document.

Pages '08 also opens AppleWorks word processing documents, as well as files saved in Rich Text Format (RTF). It imports a wide assortment of audio (AAC, AIFF, and MP3), image (EPS, JPEG, PNG, PDF, PSD), video (MOV), and other media types.

Getting the word out.
When it's time to share Pages documents with friends and colleagues, you can export them as PDF documents, in Word .doc format, as RTF, or as plain text documents. Or send your documents to iWeb for publication on your website as Pages '08 or PDF documents. (For the former, readers will need a copy of Pages; for the latter, Preview or Adobe Reader.)

Create absolutely stunning, cinema-quality presentations more easily than ever before.

Keynote. Cinema-quality presentations for everyone.

New in Keynote '08
Want to create presentations that light up the screen--and the audience? Keynote '08 makes it easy to capture everyone's attention from the first slide to the last. Get started in seconds with stunning Apple-designed themes. Apply cinema-quality animated transitions and builds with drag-and-drop ease. Add another dimension to your presentation with photos, music, and video from the iLife media browser. Record voiceover narration for your slideshow and put on a great presentation even when you're not there. With Keynote '08, you've have all the tools you need to make an amazing presentation amazingly simple.

Get started in minutes.
Professionally designed templates. Superb organizational tools. Dynamic tables. Elegant 2D and 3D charts. Even comments to jog your memory. Keynote '08 provides the tools to get you started, stay on track, and cross the finish line.

A theme party.
An impressive collection of more than 35 Apple-designed themes means you can create a cinema-quality presentation in minutes--even if you're using Keynote for the first time. Each theme has multiple slide masters with coordinated fonts, textures, and layouts for bullets, charts, images, and more.

Navigate with ease.
With the powerful Slide Navigator and Light Table in Keynote, you can efficiently organize your presentation. Both tools make it easy to review and scroll through slides. Handy controls even let you increase or decrease thumbnail size.

Dynamic tables and stunning charts.
With a single click, you can add a table to any slide. Fill cells with text, graphics, or photos. Format numbers for currency or dates. Or add a calculation--even aggregate functions like Sum--and let Keynote do the math. It's just as easy to add 2D and 3D bar, line, and area charts complete with realistic textures.

An impressive collection of more than 35 Apple-designed themes means you can create a cinema-quality presentation in minutes.

Create images you need on the spot using predrawn shapes. Customize the standard shapes in a variety of ways.

Give a presentation without being there using the new built-in recording tool.

Keynote imports presentations created in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (Office Open XML) as well as earlier versions.

Powerful graphic tools.
Keynote '08 offers a wide selection of easy-to-use tools that let you include rich graphics in your presentations--even if you don't have a graphics department helping you.

Precise alignment tools.
Place text, photos, and other objects precisely where you'd like them to appear using vertical and horizontal rulers. Turn on alignment guides and Keynote offers dynamic feedback, letting you align an object with the center or edge of an existing object.

Easy access to photos and more.
You already have some great media assets to include in your presentation. Using the built-in Media Browser, you can browse and preview the photos in your iPhoto or Aperture libraries, the movies in your Movies folder, and the music in your iTunes library, and add them to your presentation.

Great adjustment tools.
Built-in imaging tools let you adjust photos till they're picture perfect. Without leaving Keynote '08, you can resize and rotate photos, add a reflection or a shadow, and even remove backgrounds with the new Instant Alpha.

Get into shapes.
Create images you need on the spot using predrawn shapes. Customize the standard shapes in a variety of ways. Or grab a pen and draw BŽzier curves and other shapes with perfectly smooth edges. You can even use shapes for photo masking.

Put your ideas in motion.
Get used to the unwavering attention of your audience. Keynote '08 lets you capture their interest with cinema-quality animations and effects that are sophisticated yet easy to create.

Show-stopping transitions.
As you move from one slide to the next, keep their eyes riveted to the screen using more than 25 transitions, including Confetti, Blur, and swap. You can control duration, delay, direction, and other transition effects.

Text that sizzles.
Once you have their attention, keep it with amazing text and object animations. Make words drop like confetti. Build your slide one bullet, table row, or chart series at a time. Or have it all appear at once, entering stage left or bursting suddenly into flame.

Spectacular animations built smart.
With Keynote, you don't have to be a graphic designer to create eye-popping animations. Thanks to Smart Builds, you can add compelling animations in seconds. Simply drag photos into the drop zone and define Action parameters, including direction, angle, and perspective.

Going from A to B.
Keynote helps you tackle advanced animations--like defining an animation path and setting the timing of the animation as an object moves from point to point or along a smooth BŽzier curve. Want to change its opacity as it moves? That's easy, too.

Flexible delivery options.
Whether you plan to give your presentation in person or have your audience view it on a kiosk or an iPod, Keynote '08 provides you with a variety of ways to deliver presentations to audiences of any size.

Built-in voiceover recording.
Give a presentation without being there. Using the new built-in recording tool, Keynote captures your audio voiceover and timing as you step through builds or move from one slide to the next.

Save presentations as interactive slideshows that allow viewer participation. By embedding hyperlinks in next and previous buttons, you can let a viewer move effortlessly through a presentation.

Present with total confidence.
If you present to a live audience, you can do so with total confidence thanks to Presenter Display. While your presentation appears on the main display for your audience, you can see the current and next slides, your slide notes, a clock, and a timer on a second display.

New delivery options.
To reach a wide audience, export your Keynote presentation directly to YouTube, send it to iTunes, or post it on your website with iWeb. Or use GarageBand to include your slides in a video podcast.

Easy to share.
Keynote '08 lets you import PowerPoint and AppleWorks presentations and share your presentations with others, by exporting them as PowerPoint presentations or a variety of other formats.

Open to possibilities.
Versatile in so many ways, Keynote imports presentations created in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (Office Open XML) as well as earlier versions. It also imports AppleWorks presentation documents.

Keynote is open to a wide variety of media types, including JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD, EPS, PDF, AIFF, MP3, AAC, MOV, and others.

Thoughts to share.
Once you've completed your presentation, you can share it with colleagues who use Windows by exporting your presentation in .ppt format for use in Microsoft PowerPoint. You can also export it as a QuickTime movie, a Flash movie, or as a PDF, HTML, or image file.

Introducing Numbers, the familiar yet revolutionary new spreadsheet application.

Numbers. Spreadsheets the Mac way.

New in Numbers '08.
Introducing Numbers '08, the spreadsheet you've been waiting for--and already know how to use. Innovative, powerful, and intuitive, Numbers '08 lets you do everything from setting up your family budget to completing a lab report to creating detailed financial documents.

Intelligent tables.
Turning the tables on other spreadsheet programs, Numbers '08 offers a fundamentally better way to organize data and manage lists. And it goes a step further by establishing an entirely new paradigm with its innovative and intelligent tables.

Easy table setup.
Because each Numbers table has its own grid of rows and columns, you can format each table independently to solve specific needs. Adding, moving, and adjusting row and column size has no effect on other tables. And making those adjustments is easy. Grow your table by grabbing a table corner and pulling it to the right for more columns or down for more rows.

On each table's address tabs, you'll find pull-down menus containing frequently used tools for adding, deleting, hiding, or sorting rows and columns in the row and column reference tabs. A handy Format Bar offers one-click data formatting.

Highly flexible.
Traditional spreadsheets lock you into a rigid matrix of rows and columns. Numbers lets you create multiple resizable tables on a flexible canvas. Each table is a fully functional spreadsheet that can consist of hundreds of cells or just a few. Add a header or a footer row for summary calculations with a single click.

Navigate quickly and easily.
Because Numbers lists every sheet, table, and chart as an outline in the Sheets pane, it's easy to swiftly navigate through your document.

An impressive collection of more than 35 Apple-designed themes means you can create a cinema-quality presentation in minutes.

Create images you need on the spot using predrawn shapes. Customize the standard shapes in a variety of ways.

Give a presentation without being there using the new built-in recording tool.

Numbers imports spreadsheets created in Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (Office Open XML) as well as earlier versions.

Analyzing data intuitively.
From entering formulas to filtering data sets to creating "what if" scenarios, Numbers '08 offers new ways to interact with and analyze the data in your spreadsheets.

Highly calculating.
Numbers comes with more than 150 ready-to-use functions. Adding one is as simple as dropping it into a cell. And when you create tables with header rows and columns, Numbers uses the data you enter in header cells to create cell names like "2007 Gross Sales" instead of "L26."

What if?
Numbers offers a variety of novel data input methods, allowing you to format cells as sliders or steppers. These offer a great option for "what if" scenarios, letting you quickly change variables and immediately see the results.

Add data from Address Book.
Why enter data contact by contact? Working seamlessly with Address Book, Numbers lets you drag a list of contacts from Address Book into a table. In minutes, you're working with data rather than entering it.

Predictable sorting and filtering.
Easily organize and analyze lists of data. With Numbers, you can sort complete rows in a table by column, or filter rows based on the numerical, text, or date values in their cells.

Impressive results fast.
With its flexible templates and a powerful set of easy-to-use tools, Numbers '08 lets you build exceptional spreadsheets--impressive to look at and simple to understand--in minutes.

Apple-designed templates.
You can be crunching numbers quickly if you start with one of the Apple-designed templates that come with Numbers. Templates include preconfigured tables and charts with built-in formulas and sample data.

Control the way your spreadsheet looks.
Numbers lets you arrange tables, charts, text, and graphics anywhere on its free-form canvas. Design the perfect spreadsheet using alignment guides, rulers, masking, and other tools.

Add a slide of iLife.
Turn your spreadsheets into persuasive documents. Use the built-in Media Browser to browse and preview your photos, movies, and music. Then drag the files you want into your spreadsheet.

Stylish tables, impressive charts.
Each Numbers spreadsheet comes with a list of predesigned styles that make it easy to create beautifully formatted tables. You can add 2D and 3D charts with a single click, customizing them with more than 20 sets of chart textures.

Print without surprises.
When it's time to print a spreadsheet, use the interactive print view to scale and arrange your document to print exactly as you like.

Widely compatible.
Numbers '08 gets along famously with Microsoft Excel, letting you import Excel spreadsheets and export Numbers '08 documents for Excel users.

Numbers excels at Excel.
Numbers handily imports spreadsheets created in earlier Excel formats, as well as Excel 2007 documents created in new Office Open XML formats.

If you have AppleWorks documents, you can give them a brand-new home in Numbers. They import quickly so you can take advantage of all the flexibility and power of Numbers '08.

Parlez-vous "OFX"?
Truly multilingual, Numbers imports documents in many common file formats. That includes text documents saved in Comma Separated Values (CSV), tab-delimited files. And you can even drop onto your Numbers table Address Book cards, and Open Financial Exchange format files.

Sharing your spreadsheets.
Since you can export spreadsheets created in Numbers in the Excel .xls format. Excel users on either a Mac or Windows PC can open your exported Numbers documents.

You can also export your documents in PDF or CSV format. If you'd like to publish your spreadsheets on the Internet, send them to iWeb as a PDF or Numbers document.


Customer Reviews:   Read 110 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars Just what I needed!   August 16, 2007
Bart-Man202 (Colorado Springs, CO)
135 out of 137 found this review helpful

Earlier this year I bought my first Mac. I was using Office 2004 with it and eagerly awaited it's predecessor, only to discover the release date had been pushed back. I'm not a rigid office suite user, just a casual one but I do work with word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations and wanted something that will also allow me to get creative. I got my hands on a copy of iWork 05 which only had Pages and Keynote 2. I played around with it but I felt it wasn't up to speed with Office. Then I got the trial version of iWork 06 and felt it was somewhat of an improvement but still too basic. I decided to take a chance with iWork 08 and I'm so glad I did. Pages now has a word processor mode similar to Word but more simple. Something it should have had from the beginning. Keynote, now in its 4th incarnation has some awesome new animation and graphic tools that blow Powerpoint right out of the water. And I can now make spreadsheets...with graphics! For email, I just use the Mail client that comes with Tiger and voila! An entire office suite at about $200 less than the standard version of Office. So for the casual desktop publisher, or publisher on the go, this is the best deal. The price is right, and it won't eat up all your system resources.


5 out of 5 stars Great Product at a Great Price   August 24, 2007
Ken (Granite Bay, California)
41 out of 42 found this review helpful

This is a great office suite at a great price compared to MS Office for the Mac. Keynote is a presentation program like PowerPoint but is a much better product. The templates which are included are beautiful and rich and can incorporate drawings, photographs, documents and tables by simply dragging or inserting them. The program also has a wonderful feature that automatically allows you to find exactly where to place such items if you want them to be, for example, perfectly centered. And of course you can open Power Point files with it and you can, if you want, save your own presentations in PPT format to share with Windows people. The spreadsheet is also terrific. It is easy to have multiple tables on the same worksheet, and has some very attractive templates ready to use. It also has some neat features which permit you to "slide" or "step" values up or down within limits you define. I prepared a retirement planning spreadsheet yesterday which permits me to consider variable yield and withdrawal rates. If you insert a chart in your spreadsheet linked to this data, it will automatically redraw your chart. It's just great. Mossberg's column criticized it for having fewer built in formulas than Excel. In fact, Numbers, which is the spreadsheet program, contains 150 built in formulas, including the ususal ones for finance, statistics, etc. If there are fewer formulas, I don't know how important they might be to you--but it has everything I need. Finally, Pages is the word processing component of the program. It looks a bit lighter than Word, but it turns out that that is only because it doesn't have the hundreds of toolbars and buttons that Word clutters up the screen with. But in my experience it does everything Word does, only in a much more attractive way. iWork does not come with a built in calendar, email, or contacts program, but that is because Macs all come with those included so you don't need another add on.

iWork will open any Office document and you can then save it as an iWork document or (if you insist or need to share) you can save it in the Microsoft format (.doc, .xls., .ppt extensions.)

All in all, a much better and cheaper mouse trap.



5 out of 5 stars Perfect If You're Looking For ...   August 19, 2007
KC (Northern CA)
34 out of 37 found this review helpful

iWork consists of three apps, PAGES, NUMBERS & KEYNOTE.

PAGES: While being billed as a word processor, it really is a mini page layout app that has word processing features. It has dozens of classy, elegant templates from business letters to flyers to brochures. If you want to create a newsletter, other than the typing, a few clicks will bring in your photos and you are set to go. Comparing the stark ugly templates in MS Office and the fact they are weird & wonky to use is NOTHING like your new experience with PAGES. MS Office templates are is changing a tire by the freeway in the rain while PAGES is driving in a convertible on a sunny autumn day.

And to carry the pleasure & pain analogy further, KEYNOTE is flat out the best presentation software while Powerpoint is a visit to the dentist - necessary but hardly anyone looks forward to it. The only problem is that most people are stuck using Powerpoint without a choice but if you have a choice, KEYNOTE isn't just day and night but while Word is a fine app, just not very exciting, Word templates are like changing a tire in the rain ... Powerpoint is changing a tire in the rain while a thousand ball peen hammers work you over as you do it. KEYNOTE is sitting at a cafe drinking a cappucino. And on top of that, it's so classy and elegant that you can't really mess it up ... no pink and bright green templates.

NUMBERS on the surafce does not seem particularly exciting - after all, it's a spreadsheet app. It is a mini Excel, but that's not necessarily a knock if you don't need the 1,000 features of Excel & ESPECIALLY the major flaw of Excel is that its charting while plentiful are fairly unattractive looking. In NUMBERS, you can create great looking charts, place a photo underneath in about two clicks. You can also move cells as objects around just by dragging them around - again, like PAGES - elegant & classy looking are really just a few clicks away. Unlike PAGES though, you do not get that many templates - the ones included are all nice or downright gorgeous though. THERE IS NO WAY you can match the design and presentation aspects of NUMBERS in Excel and I've been using EXCEL since version 1.0. For power users, macro writers and DB front end, and major number crunchers - Excel still is the main choice but if your needs are more towards standalone spreadsheet but in particular - number oriented presentations and making checklists, NUMBERS is great. NUMBERS also requires a little learning curve (a few weeks) since it offers all of Excel's most popular features but requires a little time to learn where they are in NUMBERS. Again, like PAGES, NUMBERS is a presentation & layout app disguised as a spreadsheet.

MS Office is great for corporations, a thousand features - lots of macros and customization for the IT department. It's a fine functional app (well, other than Powerpoint) - iWork is really a subset of that - the features that a small business, a club, an organization, church group or a consultant who does presentation pitches wants that looks good, runs fast and is easy to use ... that's iWork.

But if you want to create flyers, newsletters and have access to dozens of classy & elegant templates ... and you want the best presentation app around - iWork at @$75 is a great deal.



5 out of 5 stars Numbers 08 - Spreadsheets for the Rest of Us by Bakari Chavanu   September 18, 2007
Tim E Robertson (Battle Creek, Mi United States)
37 out of 43 found this review helpful

After spending some time with iMovie '08 and writing a series of articles on it, I thought I'd use this week to explore Apple's Numbers '08, the newest addition to Apple's iWork '08 suite of office applications.

Now, I must admit upfront that I have little or no prior experience with spreadsheet applications. My basic numbers calculations have been done in programs like Quicken and the analog pen and paper method. I think in the past I may have opened up Excel or tried to use Apple's AppleWorks spreadsheet program, but not only did the programs look boring, but I had no idea where to begin in using these applications.

Leave it to Apple, however, to create yet another useful production program for the rest of us. That is, a program which is intuitive, practical, and stylish. Numbers '08 is another fine program that can help you transform the analog fashion of pen and paper calculations and create functions that can help you become more efficient with various projects involving money, data gathering and calculations.

Already I see a number of projects that I can create or improve upon using Numbers '08. For example, for the last couple of years I've been keeping a simple photography equipment inventory list in my business binder. When I make a new $[...]+ purchase I make note of it in my list. But with Numbers '08, I can streamline that data and keep a running balance on how much I've spent on equipment. Likewise, I can use the same technique for creating a better marketing plan, an equipment needs budget, a business growth plan, a couple of simple to-do check lists for long terms projects, and a few custom invoices for freelance work I do. In fact, I've already re-designed my wedding client contract using Numbers '08 so that I can use it on my laptop and fill it in right after the close of a sale. This type spread sheet method is more accurate and less time consuming than the paper format.

The templates that come installed with Numbers '08 provide a list of other possibilities that include various financial budgets plans, a home improvement plan, an event planner, grade book, and a science research report.



As with Apple's Pages and Keynote, Numbers '08 is also a graphic design application. It contains tools for adding various font styles, shapes, photos, and other media. In other words, you have the ability to tell a visual story with your facts, figures, and data.

If you have no prior experience with spread sheet creation or if you want to learn the features of Numbers '08, Apple has produced an excellent set of tutorial videos to get you up and running. The 286-page Numbers User Guide is also another useful source for getting started and learning the program.

The most challenging part for those of us new to spreadsheet development is understanding how formulas work in a table setup so that calculations can be made. Numbers '08 comes installed with over 150 formulas that will perform most all the calculations that we'll ever need. But the basic mathematical functions that you learned in high school should be enough to get your started. Basically, a formula simply provides the sum of selected cells in a table. Again, the Apple tutorial or User Guide and the installed templates will show you some really easy steps for basic functions. From there, you can study and create formula functions to fit your individual needs.

Already a third-party website called Numbers Templates has been created to share templates, tips, and tricks for using the Numbers '08 spreadsheet program.

Though I can't compare Numbers '08 with the industry standard program like Excel, Apple's program I think will fit the needs of most home and small business users. No doubt, future versions will include even more advance functions, but as with Apple's other fine programs, Numbers '08 has the simplicity and style that we've all come to expect.

Original posted at [...]



5 out of 5 stars iWork '08 is worth it's weight in gold   December 17, 2007
Eric D. Knapp (New Hampshire, USA)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

I've reviewed iWork in the past, and have always thought it was well worth the $79 asking price. However, with iWork '08, these applications have become MUCH more valuable to me.

Some context: I am a marketing executive by day, and an independent writer by night. During working hours, I use Pages to create whitepapers, sell sheets, and other items that we used to have to outsource to a designer for a few $K each. Pages makes documents look so professional, we've been able to take most of this work in house. In fact - I do it myself, and it takes less of my day to do it myself than it would take for me to manage the outsourced help. ages is just easy to use, and creates fantastic looking documents.

I use Keynote when I give presentations myself, but use Powerpoint normally (because no one else has Keynote, and I don't want to have to keep converting files). Keynote opens powerpoints fine, so I can watch/present a presentation without having to have Parallels open. It exports well to powerpoint, too, so I can work in Keynote exclusively if I want to: for example, when working on a plane and tryin to conserve battery life by NOT running windows side-by-side with OS X.

Similarly, spreadsheets open fine - but I'm a marketing guy, so I may not be the best judge of number-stuff.

For my alter-ego as a wannabe writer, I use iWork even more. I wrote, edited, designed and produced by newest novel (Cluck: Murder Most Fowl) entirely using Pages '08. For anyone who has written a book, this means not only writing 100,000+ words, but it also means re-write upon re-write. I tracked nearly thrity minor drafts of my manuscript through the life of the project. Some points about Pages:

1. It handled the large files easily. Scrolling through 300+ pages was fluid on a MacBook Pro. Even when the illustrations were put in place (27 individual 400dpi images) the file remained easy to manipulate.
2. The spelling & grammar checks work better than expected. Of course, you can't rely on these, but they are a necessary aide when dealing with massive amounts of text. The 'proofread' function was markedly better than MS Word's grammar check, although I missed an "ignore this rule" button.
3. Searching for certain words seemed to miss results on occasion, especially when the text was formatted specially or the search term contained punctuation (I submitted this as a bug to Apple, and it will likely be resolved in a future revision)
4. Pages was able to create a print-ready .pdf easily without requiring any extra software. The high-resolution of the images was preserved (I worried about this, since the app handled them so easily in-line I figured maybe they' been downsampled), ad all formatting remained intact.
5. Sepaking of formatting: I was able to design the interior block of Cluck: Murder Most Fowl with absolute precision, and I was also able to adjust the design along the way with little effort.

The bottom line is that Pages '08 is even better at producing quality, professional-looking and print-ready documents than the original Pages. Cluck is "searchable inside" (or will be, soon) so you can see for yourself how Pages can produce results.

Keynote
I also use Keynote for personal uses other than corporate presentations. Interestingly enough, Keynote '08 has been critical to me in the development of promotional videos for my book. Now, I'm no move director, but with Keynote I can:

* animate objects along a path
* chose from a variety of quality transitions
* imbed movie files (AVI files from my Flip Video Camcorder: 60-Minutes (Black) )
* add text (again, with great font handling)
* control the timing of everything
* export to .mov videos

I was able to create some great-looking (well, I am an amateur, but I think they look great) videos, with hardly ay effort (and about 30 minutes, tops). If you want to see for yourself, you can find them on YouTube is you search around for "cluck" and/or "book promo".

Overall, I would recommend iWork '08 to anyone who needs professional results but isn't professionally trained ad/or who lacks the serious $$$ required to purchase more "professional" tools. The applications are easy to use, well-integrated with the "Mac experience", and produce amazing results. All for small change.

In the business world, iWork has what it takes to bring smaller projects in-house, which could save huge amounts of budget money AND save time.

I would give this ten stars if I could.


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