Should I buy iWork and a magic trackpad to go with my new iMac?

iWork, yes. Trackpad, only if you like it. I prefer the Magic Mouse.

I think you should give NeoOffice a look first.

As for the Magic Trackpad, I fail to see what is so “magic” about it but some people like it, so I can only say that it’s a matter of personal preference and I, for one, would not presume to tell you what you do or don’t like.

I just returned my Magic Trackpad. Hated it.

There are alternatives to iWork, such as Google Docs, TeXShop with LaTeX, Sequel Pro with MySQL, etc, but nothing beats the usability and design of the iWork apps for most applications.

If I had to choose between the Magic Trackpad and the Magic Mouse, I would take the mouse. Though it might not last as long as the trackpad, I couldn’t imagine using a trackpad for 100% of my computer work. (I use a Logitech wireless mouse with a Macbook.)

As for NeoOffice as @jerv mentioned, I think OpenOffice has it beat for the free office suite category.

I wouldn’t bother with the track pad. The money would be better spent on a decent mouse.

iWork is good I just wish they let you only buy one separate app out of the bundled three since I only use Pages for school and nothing else.

The magic trackpad is okay. Lots of people love it and lots hate it but it just depends on you. Many say it let’s them do things faster by learning the magic trackpad gestures, basic computing is much faster with it. Simple things like pinch to zoom, three finger swipe, two finger rotate, .. etc makes lots of people happy. I’m fine with my mouse though. But it does show where computers are headed. Things are becoming more and more touch these days.

@Vortico I was under the impression that NeoOffice was a version of OO that was optimized for OS X.

NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org both have terrible performance on Mac. I don’t recommend them.

I use TextEdit for my basic word-processing needs (most people don’t realize that shift-cmd-w toggles a page view mode) and iWork’s Pages for more advanced formatting.

Keynote is wonderful—far superior to PowerPoint. I haven’t used Numbers much—Google Spreadsheets suits me fine.

@lapilofu, my husband and I have used both, successfully, on our Macs. We advocate open office for any user. NeoOffice is tuned for the Mac specifically, and it also is one we recommend.

I would get iWork. Right now Amazon has iWork 09 for thirty bucks. That is 50 less than Apple. That saving alone comes pretty close to paying for the trackpad.

@jerv The NeoOffice site says it takes “the features in Oracle’s OpenOffice office suite and [adds] improvements”. So sort of.

But I agree with @lapilofu. The simplicity of TextEdit beats Neo/OpenOffice’s bloated functionality. If, however, you decide to get iWork, go with @johnpowell‘s idea. Here’s the link to Amazon to save you the search. :)

Thank you all!

When I bought my new Macbook Pro, I also got iWork to go with it because in my mind, you just cannot beat the design and user-friendly interface of iWork, especially with Keynote as it will make your presentations absolutely STUNNING.

As for the Magic Trackpad, my suggestion to you is to go to an Apple Store if you live near one and try the trackpad for yourself. If you like it, then get it. If you don’t like it, then just get a Magic Mouse.

@amazonstorm I still fail to see what it offers. I watched some of the video and it seems to me that iWorks is more of a graphics program than a true office suite. Then again, that may be because I work more with numbers and data than any attempt to make them pretty.
As for the “user-friendly interface”, well, from what I saw on the Apple site, it is no friendlier than recent versions of OpenOffice. Maybe “shinier” equals “friendlier” even if they function identically and are equally complicated?

@jerv The amount of pleasure one derives from using an interface is an aspect of good interface design.

(And perhaps OOo has made great strides in the past year, but when I used it a year ago on my 2008 aluminum MacBook it was sluggish. iWork has always been snappy for me.)

@lapilofu I agree that sluggish sucks. That isn’t much of an issue for me though, since I have a pretty fast PC that can make things that bog an older (2008) MacBook happen in the blink of an eye.

You have also just explained why I have issues with OS X and iOS. I find them both too limited to be pleasurable; I am a control freak who values simplicity but not at the expense of power or flexibility.

I see nothing in iWorks that seems simpler, friendlier, or more powerful than freeware solutions.

@jerv To me where iWork really shines is Keynote. That’s when those “shinner” graphics and images become useful. Presenters and designers know that data visualization and design is very important. It’s been proven that a good design and “pretty pictures” do indeed help people understand things better. And if your a big tech geek like yourselves your statements such as “I fail to see what you silly people do” doesn’t help. Most people aren’t like you and it’s perfectly fine if they click better with pretty pictures and shinnier graphics. It’s easier for many people to pick up.

The reason I find Keynote to be just great is it’s beautiful animations, graphics, and data visualization will really catch the audiences eye. Keynote just seems miles ahead of PowerPoint in my opinion. I’d buy iWork for that app alone, as for pages and number it really depends on you. In many cases Word and Excel can be better at certain tasks but for something where being visual is crucial to your presentation an app like Keynote is great.

@rawrgrr For an end product, definitely. After all, presentations are all about “shiny” and pretty. And as for Keynote being better than Powerpoint, many things are so that is a pretty low bar.

But for the process leading up to the final product, the part I am talking about here, I still fail to see how iWorks is better. Maybe I’ve just seen too much over the years, but the only new thing I’ve seen there is Apple’s patented, copyrighted, and trademarked slick marketing. I don’t even see much practical difference in the UI; it seems no simpler.

Ah well, I guess I will always remain a bit confused about this. It seems to me like mostly marketing hype and placebo effect, but c’est la vie.

@jerv If you go through an awesome process to achieve a shitty end product, wasn’t that not such an awesome process after all?

But even forgoing the end-product. Let’s assume the end-product doesn’t matter. (What?) What you’re saying is that iWork doesn’t provide a different experience than Word or OOo. I’d argue it does, but it’s not really something I can prove.

I personally find iWork much less buggy, faster, and more conceptually clear than either Word or OOo, so I’d say it does provide a superior experience beyond the shiny. Watching videos of it—like most experiences in life—doesn’t really do the actual experience justice. In the case of Pages and Keynote, it’s certainly not a revolutionary new model of word-processing or presentations—so I can see why you weren’t blown away by that. But it’s the attention to the small details of user-interaction and the aesthetic (and not just aesthetic—readability—of the final product) which really make iWork shine.

It seems like none of us are likely to be convinced either way, however.

@lapilofu I am confident that @rawrgrr will back me up on this; I am a hard one to please.

If you find iWork to be better for you then more power to you, My experience with most Apple® brand software (and other brands trying to emulate them) that is “more conceptually clear” has been pretty horrid so far though, so you may be right about iWork providing a different experience… and different is not always a good thing. The “faster” part takes care of itself on my hardware, and I have yet to run into a bug with OO, so again, our experiences differ. I’ve probably crashed my iPod more times today than @rawrgrr has crashed his iPhone since purchase as well.

My point is that reaching for your wallet and shelling out for something blessed by Saint Jobs isn’t always the best answer, at least not for everyone. And Microsoft is rarely the right answer for anyone. Explore options, try different stuff out, and stick with what works for you, even if it doesn’t have a shiny logo on the box… or doesn’t come in a box at all.

@jerv So I should get better hardware to run a word-processor? Word-processors haven’t changed much since ‘96 or so. Seems kinda dumb that a computer as new as ‘08 should have any trouble running one. I’m pretty sure that’s a problem with the code, not the hardware—especially considering that iWork, which you believe “functions identically”—has no trouble running snappily.

I don’t think anyone is claiming users should use iWork because it’s shiny and bears an Apple logo—and it’s pretty offensive for you to imply that we are. We’re telling people to use it because it’s genuinely better for most users. I don’t use Numbers (as I said before, Google Spreadsheets covers it for me) so I can’t really say whether or not that’s any good. But I use Pages and I use Keynote. And for a long time I used Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. And they drove me up the wall with how crashy they were, how inconsistent they were with the rest of the system, and how ugly the documents they produced were. And then I used the OOo suite. And it drove me even more up the wall with how slow and ugly it was. Not to mention its poor typography and lousy support for typographic features

For the longest time I used Adobe InDesign to format my word-processing documents. Talk about overkill. But the truth was that it was easier for me to use a professional-level design program than it was to write a document in either Word or OOo.

Finally I switched to Pages and Keynote—and they’re a pleasure to use every time I use them and I only very rarely run into things I can’t do easily. I recommend them on that basis. Not because they’re shiny or bear the Apple logo. If there were a better alternative, I’d recommend that. And I might add that they’re not only better than MS Office, but they’re cheaper. So you’re actually “shelling out” less than most users for the blessed touch of “saint Jobs.” They’re not cheaper than OOo, but I found it unusable. I’m sure a more patient person than I would find it usable, but no doubt irritating.

I don’t, for instance, recommend Apple headphones. They’re good quality, but you can get comparable for cheaper. Nor do I recommend iWeb, or even the rest of the iLife suite (except maybe maybe iPhoto, if you really don’t need much more than to organize your photographs). I don’t blindly go around recommending Apple products. I recommend what’s best for the job based on what I’ve tried.

In this case, I’ve tried all the alternatives. I didn’t say iWork provides a “different” experience. I said it provides a “superior” experience. I stand by that. If you’re using a Mac, none of the alternatives are better.

(Unless you’re a creative writer—in which case you should use Scrivener.)

@jerv I understand where you’re coming from and I agree with part of what you’re saying but I can’t see it your way right now.

To me it seems a bit nutty to recommend a piece of freeware that requires a hardware upgrade to run decently on a regular personal computer (which would end up costing more). I can understand your frustration of always hearing from Mac users that “Apple is the answer” but don’t just recommend something different because you want to separate yourself from everyone else (if that makes sense). If there is a better alternative I will recommend it, I havnt used Open Office that much but from what I’ve heard I’d recommend Google Docs instead which is also free (I use it a lot for school too). Not only is it a good stable piece of freeware but it syncs up everything in the cloud through your gmail account!

You also need to stop looking at us like sheep because like @lapilofu said it is quite offensive.

Now take away the pretty pictures, the shinny icons, the beautiful typography and layouts and you have a very stable fast easy to use piece of software.

Sure iWork may not be necessary for someone who only needs a basic word processor but it’s a darn good office suite. There is absolutely no problem with recommending alternatives but to say we’re crazy for wanting to pay for iWork then to recommend an unstable buggy (and not to mention ugly) piece of freeware that requires a faster computer to run right (just so you can say you’re the sane one that hasnt fallen for Saint Jobs evil spell) doesn’t sit well with me. iWork isnt for everyone, but its great, and so are many other alternatives but not only is iWork cheaper than many comparable alternatives, it also does a hell of a job for me, and I’m sure there are many other users that would agree.

@lapilofu I do more spreadsheet-type work. For straight-up word processing, I find Jarte to be sufficient. In fact, I believe that using any office suite for basic word processing is overkill.
Oh, and kudos to you for actually trying the alternatives before finding the best fit for you :)

@rawrgrr As long as you can see where I am coming from, that is fine. I do not expect agreement, merely the opportunity to present a differing opinion.

As for the hardware upgrade, I think there has been a miscommunication here, so let me rephrase. OO never acted sluggish even when running on a netbook that has far less power than any Mac/Macbook in the last five years, let alone my old P4 which is also less powerful than any recent Mac but still far more powerful than my old netbook. And if it were sluggish on either of those systems then it wouldn’t be on my current system, but if my netbook ran it with the response times normally associated with an iPod Touch, then hardware requirements are unnecessary.

I agree that once you take out the eye-candy, it is stable and gets the job done, though I still feel that “easy to use” is subjective, and from what I’ve seen, iWorks is no simpler to use than other software I’ve seen.

Like I said, I have yet to run into a bug in OO, and I’ve already spoken out about the hardware end of it. Maybe there are things that got broken when OO was ported over, but I feel that NeoOffice (based on OpenOffice, but tailored more for OS X than a straight-up OO port) may be better for Macs anyways so it’s kind of moot.

As for the sheep thing, bear in mind that you two are a cut above a lot of people I see and hear. I try to keep my cynicism at bay, but as you can see, I don’t always succeed. If you knew me IRL, you would see that I actually behave myself better here than in meatspace, if for no reason other than speaking doesn’t offer the time to reflect and edit that typing does.

Sorry for the late reply.

@jerv Sorry about that then. I’ve just been hearing for multiple people that it acts sluggish on Macs.

I’m trying to think of a good analogy to better explain this a bit tired right now, got no sleep. Let’s take simple math. Surely today you or me would probably find 2nd grade math might be just as easy to learn as 1st grade math but 2nd grade math is surely more complicated (slightly). I hope you understand what i’m getting at. Sure other OS’ might be “just as easy” for you to learn as the Mac OS or even iOS but that still doesn’t mean it’s not simpler, easier to use, or less complicated. I’m sure the Mac OS or iOS wasn’t hard for many to master but it is still ultimately less complicated. Less steps are required to acomplish the same tasks… etc

And thanks for those kind words ;)

@rawrgrr Well, the PC version of Safari hangs and crashes on me like there is no tomorrow, and on the rare occasions that I can keep it running, it is rather sluggish compared to Chrome (another Webkit browser) or even the iPod version of Safari running on far inferior hardware (a Core i3 with 6GB RAM trumps a 532MHz ARM11 with 128MB) so I guess it all balances out.

It depends on the tasks, but we’ve already had a coupe go-rounds on that so lets leave it at “your mileage may vary”.

Those words were mostly for @lapilofu since I thought you already knew that I respected you, but I guess there is no harm in clearing up any doubts and reminding you that you are one of the few people to make that relatively short list :D

@jerv I don’t think I’d ever recommend Safari for PCs. It wasn’t really made for PCs but Safari continues to be the fastest browser for the Mac. :)

@rawrgrr… thus proving that not all sofwtware can make the leap between Mac and PC. I find that odd since modern Macs are Intel machines running a UNIX-oid OS, but I guess there are a lot of strange things in/from Cupertino. I still don’t know exactly what to make of the new touchscreen Nano.

@jerv To be honest, I don’t like it. The smaller screen, the lack of a camera, the inability to play videos anymore, and the feeling in your hands seems to be a bit uncomfortable (I used to have the old clip-on shuffle, assuming it feels like that).

Still, it’s good to see they’re trying to move everything to touch screens! Next step, computers ;).