MacNN reported that :
Apple has raised educational pricing on the iLife and iWork suites with the introduction of the ‘08 versions. Previously priced at $49 each, the titles are now priced at $71 each — only $8 off the normal prices of $79 each.
I qualify for the academic pricing and took advantage of it. I didn’t know what the previous academic pricing was until MacNN mentioned it.
(Aside: There appears to be no discount for the Apple’s new keyboard. Also, no word on a refund for those of us who bought one of those hideous Mighty Mouse things, which is the worst piece of crap Apple ever produced — it simply will not right-click reliably. Note to Steve: give us a damn second mouse button already.)
It took me all of 0.005 seconds to order it. Why? As much as I had hoped that these two suites would get rolled into OS X 10.5, they are a complete steal. If Pages works anywhere near as well as it sounds, I’ll be using Office:Mac a whole lot less. And that’s fine with me. Will I upgrade to Office 2008 when the time comes? Probably, because again I qualify for academic pricing, but maybe not.
Here’s the thing: for about the same price as the academic price of Microsoft Office for Mac ($150), you can also get iWeb, iMovie, iPhoto, (i)GarageBand, iDVD, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers — even if you don’t qualify for academic pricing ($142 for Academic, $158 for non-Academic).
That’s a steal at full price. They’re giving me $8 off the full price for the academic version, which is a nice head nod to the academic world, but come on… $142 for those 8 apps is $17.75 each, or $19.75 for non-Academic. There’s a lot of crappy shareware out there that does one little thing but sells for $20.
More To Come?
was a really interesting article at Macworld. They look back at 10 years ago — Aug 7, 1997 was when Jobs announed the deal with Microsoft which may have saved Apple at the time.
Indeed, what a difference a decade makes. On that anniversary, includes his translation of what the new version of Keynote (Better than Powerpoint? No question), Pages with Word-compatible change tracking (the most frequently mentioned feature by people who “have to have Microsoft Word”) and Numbers — “the spreadsheet for the rest of us”. John’s thoughts are summarized with Cheney-esque precision:
Translation: Microsoft, go f*ck yourselves. This is the “bring it on” release of iWork.
As pretty much everyone in the Mac World (not the magazine) knows, Office 2008 for Mac has been delayed until January of 2008. This was met with a few responses, ranging from gnashing of teeth to “Office 2004 runs fine in Rosetta” to “Who needs Word when we have LaTex?” but I think Sir Macalope nailed it in his column today entitled wherein he wrote;
Suddenly that Office delay looks like more of an opportunity than a threat, doesn’t it?
Indeed.
I don’t know that Jobs knew Microsoft was going to announce the delay when he planned to release the iWork update today. I do know that he was originally planning to release OS 10.5 by now, and with it (one presumes) the iWork/iLife updates. When they pushed the 10.5 launch back to October, I suspect they immediately started planning to release iWork/iLife separately.
The fact that Office for Mac is delayed is probably just deliciously rich icing on top.
Going back to the recent Macworld article cited above, they also wrote:
Lately, however, Microsoft has fallen behind on the Mac platform. IE for Mac was killed in 2003 and isn’t even available for download anymore. Office 2008, the first Intel-native version of the software suite, was just pushed back again, this time until the new year. Also, Microsoft opted to buy and kill Virtual PC for the Mac rather than port it to Intel — giving up the virtualization monopoly on the Mac Platform to Parallels and VMware. Microsoft also stopped developing Windows Media Player for Mac — instead pointing Mac Users to the Flip4Mac plug-in for QuickTime. With Steve Ballmer taking over the helm at Microsoft, things are likely to become even less cordial. In fact, with Office Live moving to the Web and Windows Virtual Machines becoming so powerful and stable, it is hard to imagine a scenario where Office 2010 would be released to the Mac platform.
Depending on who you ask, Safari may have been what led Microsoft to kill IE:Mac… or Apple wanted to free itself from one chain to Microsoft (one which started back in 1997) and was proactive in developing a web browser as insurance.
Depending on who you ask, VirtualPC was destined to die as soon as Microsoft bought it… or was killed off by the likes of Parallels and VMWare.
Windows Media sucks. I have no idea why anyone uses it, but I presume someone in the food chain was paid off. Being able to play it back is great.
As for Office… well, when Office:Mac dies, people will either say that Microsoft killed it because Apple made their own office suite, or they’ll say that Apple knew Microsoft would kill Office:Mac, therefore they wanted to proactively protect themselves and their customers.
Jobs is smart enough to realize that as much as he needed Microsoft 10 years ago, he doesn’t want to rely on them forever, not 10 years from now, nor in 2010, and not even in 2008.
Today’s announcement was all about making the big break.
If Apple was a teenager he would have just driven off in the car that his parents didn’t want him to buy.