iWork 06 vs. appleworks 6

It depends entirely on what you want to do. For many of us, we use a combination of AppleWorks & iWork. iWork '08 is the current version. You can download the iWork '08 trial & try it for yourself for 30 days. There is no downloadable trial for iWork '06, you would have to have one of the demo DVDs to install its trial.

iWork '08 has a spreadsheet application, Numbers.

There are also major changes to Pages with the addition of toolbars & a page layout mode in addition to the word processing mode. There really isn't anything the page layout mode can do that the word processing mode can't. Think of the page layout mode like AppleWorks draw & word processing like AppleWorks word processing. However, you cannot open AppleWorks draw documents & you can't have objects cross a page boundary.

My personal expectation is that there will be a new version of iWork introduced at Macworld San Francisco in January, but that's only my guess.

Peggy-

What I like about the layout mode is that it gets rid of the text layer and allow you to create blank pages without dealing with sections. Also, when doing layout I like it to be more object-oriented. Layout mode makes all text boxes floating by default, allowing you to create them quickly.

Right now, all that is missing is a database app. Pages is miles ahead of Appleworks in every other area. I still use Appleworks for all my database needs and to make labels, although Pages gives it a run for the money if you have a good template of the Avery label.

iWork '08 was the best money I spent all year. There is not a single lousy app in the package. Numbers, despite being new on the block, is a fantastic little app. Spreadsheets are actually fun to play with! Apple has attempted the "Think different" with this little app.

I played with Bento and it still didn't have what I needed for a database. Its label creation was non-existent and it did not allow as much customization as Appleworks databases. I have Appleworks databases for everything from contacts to business cards to scheduling of ministers. In particular my schedules have all sorts of pop up lists, multiple layouts for the same data and are easy as dirt to modify. I have not found anything better.

Kurt

I think the page layout mode is similar to AppleWorks' draw mode. Unfortunately, it doesn't open those AppleWorks draw documents & each page is a single entity so objects can't cross page boundaries like in AppleWorks.

Still, there isn't anything that can't be done in word processing that can't be done in page layout & a lot that can that can't be done in page layout. I think the page layout mode was added in Pages 3 because we saw so many users with problems understanding the text layer. Personally, I never had a problem. I still use word processing for most tasks, mainly because that's all Pages 1 & 2 had & I'm used to it.

For complex layout the text layer just got in the way for me. I came to Pages after using Pagemaker and Ragtime and the awful Publisher. I prefer the object-oriented aspect of the layout app. It is to iWork's creators credit that they gave us two ways to work. I am comfortable, and really like the word processor mode but prefer the other for layout.

Applework's other problems are color, transparency and font rendering. I cannot get colors to print true, they always come out different than I expected and transparency is completely missing. These are two "biggies" that make me use Appleworks less and less.

Font rendering is also very poor. While it is possible to improve the look of paragraphs, Pages does a lot more automatically. Pages character, paragraph and line sliders are the best in any program I have used.

I can't wait for the next version of this suite.

Kurt