It was almost as if my last post on Microsoft Office was a prayer that has been immediately answered!

Now, I understand that this won't be exciting to about 85% of the world's computer owners (because that is the rough percentage of Windows only users), but just last week, Apple announced iWork '08.  This would be their first attempt to compete head-to-head with Microsoft Office.

iWork '06, which was the previous version, consisted of two programs: Pages (word processor) and Keynote (presentation program).  These were good programs, and on a Mac, I have found myself gravitating toward them in everyday use.  I had, in fact, completely dumped PowerPoint in favor of Keynote about 5 months ago.  Conspicuously missing, however, was a spreadsheet program.  Excel, of course, is really Microsoft's killer application in the Office suite of applications.  There is no one out there that has been able to truly match it's functionality, though it's intuitiveness has at times been suspect.

iWork '08 now includes a spreadsheet program called Numbers.  I was able to get my hands on the new software early this week, and so far I can say it looks good.  Importing and exporting Microsoft Office formats is seamless,  and any loss during the export is reported to you via simple statements.  So far, the only importing losses I have to report are along the lines of fonts and unusual page formatting elements.

I know that this only pertains to Macintosh users, but I am excited mainly because I currently live in a Macintosh world at the Norris School District.  For the volume of software that we would need to buy at the district, the cost would be about one-third the cost of Microsoft Office!  Now, the challenge will become selling the idea and training....

Stay tuned!