Pages

Is it sad that I am pretty excited about iWork ‘05 — in particular Pages, the new word processor that Apple released? Obviously this is an area that has been dominated by Microsoft for years, but Apple has shown with Safari, Mail and several other programs that quality makes a difference and they have the balls to challenge the status quo. The website makes it sound pretty impressive and I am glad that I will be getting my student discounts for a while longer. I have never had the chance to use Keynote, but I have seen it in action and it is very fine presentation software. And considering I was already thinking about upgrading my Office Suite and the only two programs I use in it are Word and Powerpoint, iWork may have arrived at the perfect time.

I also have a suspicion that there could be a spreadsheet type program emerge with iWork at some point, but I don’t need one as I can do most everything with a combination of text editors and MySQL with a bit of scripting here and there. I’ll be certain to let you know all about it when I get my hands on it.

Jan 17. 8:30 Last night I heard that PCPC will have iWork for $49 starting in early Feb. — I put my name down for a copy. I’m excited.