Comments on: Apple’s iWork.com Disappoints – Not a Google Docs Competitor

By: AppBeacon

AppBeacon — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:38:18 +0000

Oops. Got tied up in responding to @randywehrs. I forgot to make my main point. I’m not impressed at all with this new iWork SaaS or collaboration setup. I’m even less impressed with Apple tying this into Google Docs.

“this is an encouraging sign of a new willingness within Apple to participate in the Open Web ecosystem” Hardly. It’s a discouraging sign of a continuing willingness within Apple to participate in the Google Web ecosystem. Showing support for Zoho, Live, etc would have been an encouraging sign. Instead we get yet another tie to Google. It’s like a shotgun wedding waiting to happen. They are so supportive of each other, you have to wonder when the merger is going to take place.

By: AppBeacon

AppBeacon — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:31:49 +0000

@randywehrs Zoho’s suite destroys Google’s suite. Zoho has the closest feel to desktop software of any competitor. It really is that good. Google Docs is clunky and poorly integrated with Google Apps for Your Domain.

With the exception of Gmail, I rely solely on Zoho. Zoho also has an email system (newly released). I haven’t tried it and am too invested in Gmail to make the switch.

You can even try out Zoho with your Google credentials. Give them a shot. You won’t likely go back to Google Docs.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:47:44 +0000

N.b.: “complemented”, not “complimented”.

By: randywehrs

randywehrs — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:14:41 +0000

Judging by what I just read, here and elsewhere about iWorks is that it will be a while before anyone is able to realistically compete with Google Docs. If you haven't tried it yet, I recommend that you do, and you'll see what I mean. It looks like iWorks might have more fancy bells and whistles, but for all practical purposes, it isn't worth it to me.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:35:15 +0000

Stop promoting all this close-source non free applications please. It’s nonsese. IWorks, yeah right, thanks for the tip, but Google Docs is free.

By: mattymcg

mattymcg — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:07:41 +0000

Their willingness is over 10 years old.

Too bad about iTunes and the iPhone … hardly open systems!

By: Jeff Taylor

Jeff Taylor — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:00:50 +0000

“an encouraging sign of a new willingness within Apple to participate in the Open Web ecosystem, rather than maintaining building a collection of closed services and file formats that only work with Apple products.”

Their willingness is over 10 years old.

Today Apple’s operating system is Unix-certified, their productivity apps store their session data as XML, with iTunes they transitioned from QuickTime file format to the standardized version of same with ISO MPEG-4 over the past 10 years. WebKit used to be the Mac’s built-in Web rendering, but now it is also the built-in renderer in iPod, iPhone, Google products, Adobe products, and KDE Linux … HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are hardly closed file formats. Even Apple’s website includes only standardized technologies — there is no Flash, no Windows Media, not even Java. It may be the most “Web 2.0″ site in the Fortune 500 as a matter of fact.

By: Kevin Yank

Kevin Yank — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:02:03 +0000

As announced during the keynote, iWork.com actually includes integration with Google Docs. You can send a document from iWork.com to Google Docs for editing. Along with new support for Flickr and Facebook in iPhoto ’09, this is an encouraging sign of a new willingness within Apple to participate in the Open Web ecosystem, rather than maintaining building a collection of closed services and file formats that only work with Apple products.

By: javayahtzee

javayahtzee — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:18:47 +0000

Sounds like a pretty exciting more for Apple.

Must say though, it’d better be pretty good if they plan to compete with Google Docs. Companies and schools might jump on board quickly but unless there’s a definite advantage (beyond eye candy) to the iWork services, seems like most individuals would probably stick with the free stuff.

I could easily be wrong though, may also depend on how much they charge.