Why does Apple bother with its own suite? Because Microsoft Office is a horrible collection of applications that just get uglier with time. Apple is redefining the results that a casual user can get from productivity applications. Keynote, Pages and now Numbers, with their slick templates, effects, integration with iLife, etc. make my kids' homework and my wife's newsletters and presentations stand out from the crowd of ugly MS Office junk.

To give users a choice. Many prefer Apple's way to software and UI design. Other simply avoid MS products out of spite. But more to the point... with MS gradually yanking products for the Mac, the day may come when they drop MS Office and Apple needs to have a product ready and in-place.

I have tried numbers and i can say that would it be possible i would use it from this day and throw out excel right now.However it does not show maturity in the way it handles exporting excel sheets and that sadly is why i must keep excel until more of the people using excel starts demanding a good application instead of a application full of stuff you can do but you need to be a science professor to get it to play ball. Keep in mind this was numbers version 1.0 and is very easy to get to play ball while working with it and the results is plain great but ii is sad that excel cant handle so great spreadsheets..., so i say, let the fight begin!

I think iWork and Office serve similar functions but different segments of the market. I don't think anyone could reasonably expect iWork to take massive share away from Office, but it does offer users a choice.

For years I've used Appleworks for typing up short letters and for keeping my finances in a spreadsheet. I'm glad I can finally upgrade to iWork and Numbers. I already spend enough money on Adobe and other software; I'm not going ~$400 (or whatever it is) and have a massive bloated software suite on my harddrive just to take care of that handful of tasks. At $79, iWork is a relative bargain.

Heck, iWork could be successful without even affecting Microsoft's revenue, if all it does is offer an affordable alternative to all those folks who either refuse to pay for Office, or just use a pirated copy anyway.

I'm no MS shill, but iWork is MASSIVE. Even compared to MS Office.

Has logic simply vanished from the brains of net posters?

"Microsoft appears to be backing away from a lucrative market just at the time when Apple's success is soaring, according to Arik Hesseldahl."

"On top of that, with Microsoft's total domination of Office on the Mac, one has to wonder why Apple bothers with its own suite."

So here's a key software category, in which Microsoft owns 97% of the market, yet Microsoft appears to be backing away from that market. And you actually ask yourself why Apple sees fit to develop their own solution so that they're not dependent on Microsoft for a viable solution in that market category? Do they just not teach you kids to think anymore? Seriously, c'mon.

This is exactly the same as when Adobe was making noises about making Mac Photoshop a second-class citizen or dropping it altogether. So Apple said "Fine" and created Aperture. Suddenly, Mac Photoshop became important again to Adobe. I doubt MS will be swayed by iWork if their mind is made up, but this mitigates the impact to Apple should that happen, and gives Apple the ability to control their own destiny moving forward.

If you're going to put your own opinions in a piece you write, try to do a little thinking, mkay?

the logic of the original posting is very poor. By creating a high quality competitor to the Office Suite, Apple can free itself from any reliance on MS product. Microsoft has dominance because of a lack of an integrated suite of products. At a point when Apple market share is finally taking off this seems like a smart move. Given recent trends, I wouldn't be flabbergasted to see them release more software for the windows platform - an excellent way to get people started using apple products.
I think Apple should move the Filemaker Pro application into the mainstream as an official apple product, and integrate Numbers to it seamlessly, that would be interesting.

i also agree with montresor.. then add the fact that apple believes that they can do it better. take keynote, for example.. it tops powerpoint hands down. it makes sense to take the same approach to office applications that they do to the rest of their products-- high production values with reasonable ease and reasonable cost.

the other thing that nobody really considers now that apple has gone mainstream is that they don't just do it for the money. while that's still a primary goal, they also like to innovate and make things easier for the every day user, and they really take pride in what they do. this was reaffirmed when steve was talking about how the new imovie got its start.

Where on earth did you hear MS earned a billion dollars a year on the Mac platform? And how did you get 1.8% for iWork? Can you give some credible sources for these nutty assertions?

I ordered it as soon as it was available and received it early Wednesday morning. So far, I've only used the new Pages to write a business plan draft. Numbers should get a workout tomorrow as I prepare a hockey stick graph to go with my plan.

The MS Office Sales numbers and market share numbers for Office and iWork are in the Business Week article, cited by Arik Hesseldahl. I always link to the source of the information.

iWorks 08 continues to give Mac users a viable option to Office. I use Pages daily in an almost completely PC environment, and while I sometimes have to use TextEdit open Microsoft docs, esp. Excel charts, I have managed quite well. But I could not do a good job producing "data" that dataheads could understand on charts and graphs.
All that begins to really change with iWorks 08 and "Numbers". Yes it is only a 1.0 version, and has a long way to go for "serious" users. But in just looking at and trying out the 30 free trial version, I was hooked, and Apple will get my $79 while I am stateside later this month (I know I can get it online... but other than etickets to fly, I still like to pay for something and then actually get something physically in hand in return).
iWorks 08 represents the continuance of Apple in trying to give its OSX users something "different". Bravo Apple.

"Office Market Share
Should Microsoft be worried? Certainly not yet. I checked with Chris Swenson, an analyst with NPD Group, a market research firm that tracks retail software sales. What effect if any, has there been on sales of Office for the Mac in reaction to Google, Zoho, and ThinkFree? "None. Zero. Zip," he said. Microsoft Office for the Mac enjoys a market share in the neighborhood of 91%, while its nearest competitor is Apple's iWork, which comes in at 9%."

9% is still low, but not as low as 1.8%.

You lot are just Apple apologists. Remember just because it came from Apple it doesnt mean that is great. Sometimes Apple fanboys just have to take off their blinkers and take real objective look at what Apple is doing.

Im a fan of Apple by the way, im on my third Mac and countless iPods... and ive been testing Numbers. Im sorry to inform you folks but Numbers doesn't hold a candle to Excel.

To me Numbers feels like a beta product and is lacking a lot of functionality. After I could not open a simple 55kb Excel spreadsheet I uninstalled Numbers. Numbers just kept telling me that "The document can’t be imported because it’s too large." Its 55KB!!. Using copy/paste nicely copies the content of the spreadsheet but not the formulas. Useless!

My advice to to check it out in a year or so when it's fully baked.

cheers

Jason

The biggest threat to face Microsoft office is OpenOffice (Neo Office on the mac, but the OpenOffice guys have the first Alpha build out and Sun Just put 2 engineers on it full time).

Governments are starting to use these open formates because one company doesn't control the formate ... there for making it a more stable long term storage formate for the long term. I think the biggest threat to Microsoft is the open source movement in general.

Actually iWork is about 200 MB smaller and had added a third program. The programs them selves are not that big. It's the resource files that make up the themes that they come with.

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Anonymous wrote:
The biggest threat to face Microsoft office is OpenOffice (Neo Office on the mac, but the OpenOffice guys have the first Alpha build out and Sun Just put 2 engineers on it full time).

Governments are starting to use these open formates because one company doesn't control the formate ... there for making it a more stable long term storage formate for the long term. I think the biggest threat to Microsoft is the open source movement in general.

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Guest wrote:
The biggest threat to face Microsoft office is OpenOffice (Neo Office on the mac, but the OpenOffice guys have the first Alpha build out and Sun Just put 2 engineers on it full time).

Governments are starting to use these open formates because one company doesn't control the formate ... there for making it a more stable long term storage formate for the long term. I think the biggest threat to Microsoft is the open source movement in general.

It seems that there is no equivalent to "Special Paste" in iWorks Numbers, which means you can't link a cell from one worksheet to another and have the data automatically update as the original worksheet changes. Any idea on a work-around?

See Marc Orchant's ZDNet blog iWork ‘08 - no Office killer ’cause it’s not supposed to be and MacWorld's reviews of Pages and Numbers.

well first of all you have to consider the fact that microsoft owns a large part of apple now. second, without a competitor microsoft would just basically dominate the "officce software industry"; there must competition present. since they own part of apple they have the capacity to probably tell apple that they need to come up with an offioce software that would compete with their own microsoft office.
this is basically all about economics, there must be competition in order for one to come up with new ideas to make improvements.
that is why there are all sorts of computer brands like sony vio and compaq presario. sure, every thing would be okay if sony would be the only computer manufacturer present, but be very boring for the sony people if were no competition.

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Anonymous wrote:
well first of all you have to consider the fact that microsoft owns a large part of apple now.

my first part of my response was wrong. but the whole point is all about how economics work, and that is exactly what is happening between iWorks and MS office

I fully agree that competition is good for all sides here. It will hopefully keep both sides on their toes.