2013-02-21

2013.02 History: Productivity Suites

At the February meeting, I did a presentation on Apple's combination word processor and page-layout program, Pages. At the time I mentioned that it was part of a productivity suite called iWork, and indeed so it was when I acquired it a couple of years ago. But, with the advent of the App Store, Apple has unbundled the 3 components of iWork and is now selling them separately (only). Conversely, prime competitor Microsoft makes it damn near impossible to buy any of their equivalents as stand-alone programs; they really really really want you to spring for the entire Office for Mac 2011 productivity suite.

Here's a comparison (click to enlarge):



PS: The above chart was produced using Pages.