The new iWork ‘08 release sure is a step forward compared to iWork ‘06. While Keynote was perfect, Pages was lacking any true wordprocessor capabilities and the lack of any spreadsheet application made it feel unbalanced compared to Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.
Luckily iWork ‘08 brings us more functionality, and best of all, Apple released an iWork ‘08 free trial download which allows you to try out the new features for 30 days.
The biggest noticeable change perhaps is the addition of a spreadsheet application called Numbers. While it lacks advanced features that Excel has, it’s easier to work with and does things the famous Mac way.
Besides the addition of Numbers, Pages now has a word processing mode which makes it more usable for those who just want to type letters or papers. It also has a feature called ‘Change Tracking’ which comes in handy when you are working on a document with multiple collaborators.
Last but not least Keynote got some new stuff. While those changes aren’t as earth shattering as the addition of Numbers or the word processing mode from Pages, it does help out in the animation department with the ‘Action Builds’ (kind of like tweening in Flash) and ‘Smart Builds’ feature.
One thing worth mentioning is that Word, Powerpoint and Excel documents can be opened in iWork ‘08, including the new Open XML format of Microsoft Office 2007. Exporting to those formats is also possible.
For more information on the new iWork ‘08, check out the iWork ‘08 page at Apple.com or try the 30 day free trial.
