Review: iWork’05: The Missing Manual
Overall rating: 4/5
Jim Elferdink’s iWork’05, a new entry in the Missing Manual series, is a gentle introduction to Apple’s productivity suite. My faith in this series was shaken a bit by the AppleScript book, but this book renewed it. The writing style is clear, and it steers away (mostly) from unnecessary humor. You can–and I did–read the entire book, which is unusual in this genre. And reading it this way is very much worthwhile, because the book covers several tips and tricks that are not obvious when simply bringing up the application.
I missed the chance to learn the Windows environment, so now I find myself completely out of place with Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. The truth is I just don’t know how to use these tools effectively. I didn’t learn at first, because my primary working environment was Solaris, later Linux. And I’m unlikely to ever learn, because my primary working environment today is MacOS X.
That’s not to say that I can’t use Word or Excel–just that I can’t do anything really cool with them. Even simple formatting tasks, like writing a letter, are pretty much beyond me in Word, and anything other than a simple table with a few formulas is more than I can do with Excel. When Apple came out with their productivity suite, I was determined not to make the same mistake, so I started using it and playing with it. An early result of my experience with Pages, Apple’s entry into the word processing field, is last year’s family Christmas newsletter (PDF, 7Megs). The only reason I was able to do something that beautiful was that I started with one of Apple’s gorgeous templates. The only problem with that is that it leaves me at Apple’s mercy. If I don’t like one of their templates, I’m done. That’s pretty much a summary of my status with Keynote, Apple’s presentation software. I’ve done several presentations with it, but they are all based on Apple’s original templates, and I’m completely out of my realm when it comes to anything unusual.
One way to judge the quality of a manual is to see how much you can learn after reading it. In my case, I can say that I learned a lot from this book. I understand how the templates are built, so now the only thing keeping me from designing a template as good as Apple’s is my lack of visual skill. But that’s OK. The point is that if I need to implement an idea, e.g., for a brochure, I can actually do it now, even if it involves tricky formatting or strong visual elements. On the Keynote side, I learned how to make more effective presentations, including using (and optimizing) the presenter’s display, and dealing with tables, graphs, and transitions. I even solved an important problem: How to add mathematics (with LaTeX) to my presentations, which is important for me, since most of my presentations involve some sort of mathematics.
So if you’re like me, interested in Pages and Keynote, but unable to do much with either of them, grab a copy of this book right now. Soon you, too, will be able to use Pages and Keynote to their full potential. Now, if only Apple would do a spreadsheet.