Review by Photoguy

I really like using this program. I used to work on Windows with Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007, and […], but this program, however different, was intuitive enough for me to get right to work. (I’ve also used Office 2008 for Mac more recently, but I don’t like it as much.)nnEverything looks elegant, effects (like slide transitions in Keynote) are totally cool (way better than in Office), it’s really easy to use, it has really good performance, it’s actually fun to use, and I’m always finding new cool things to do with it. Like control Keynote with the Apple remote or make a flash website out of a Keynote presentation (and yes, there are similar features in Office, but Office doesn’t perform well enough and it’s not fun enough to experiment in). You can even make 3D graphs that look like real materials or draw vector graphics almost as well as in Inkscape or Illustrator. And the list goes on and on, it’s really nice to use.

Office compatibility is just ‘okay’. It works, but when you import a Word document, for example, you’re going to have to manually fix things like picture location or page boarders. Using Keynote to open a PowerPoint won’t import transition sounds. But I noticed that even Office 2008 won’t look the same as documents viewed in Office 2003. PowerPoint files are best viewed in Office 2008, but Pages opens .doc files BETTER than Office 2008, I noticed. Excel compatibility is fine.

I can’t go though everything I like about the program in one review, but you can download the trial from Apple so there you go. I would highly recommend trying iWork 08.