Others say...

"Great intro to Keynote"
After completing the chapters on Keynote I really felt like I had accomplished something, that I could use the software to it's full potential.

After completing the chapters on Pages, it seemed I knew enough to get started and could probably find my way around well enough...I guess.

However the chapters covering Numbers seemed lacking -- dreadfully so. This book placed too much emphasis on how cool it is to embed media in a spreadsheet and not enough emphasis on using Numbers for more realistic spreadsheet-specific tasks; in fact, I couldn't help wondering whether the Numbers projects on the DVD would have been better suited for Keynote or Pages.

Would a typical Windows user choose to use Excel to plan an event? Why, when they could use Word or Access instead? Both Keynote and Pages can handle simple tables and charts. If that is all Numbers can do, why do we need it, other than for it's ability to open Excel files? And there you have it - that is exactly what this book failed to show. The good news is that the Numbers User Guide on the iWork '08 installation disk goes much more in depth on using Numbers more realistically as a *spreadsheet* program.

P.S. I agree with comments by others that this book takes a very elementary approach, but that is what I expected, so I didn't mind. I found the pace tolerable.

"Quite good as far as it goes."
This book is pretty good for basic information about iWork 08. I followed the various examples and picked up some useful tips and techniques. What would be good is if the Apple Training Series had a follow on book that went into more depth. Word, Excel, and Power point have many in depth books and manuals, so far iWork hasn't caught up.

"Good book, but lacking in Numbers section"
I would have given this book 5 stars if the info for the Numbers section was as in depth as it was for Keynote and Pages. Also if the CD had a .PDF of the book along with the lessons that would have been a BIH plus.


"Detailed tutorial for absolute beginners"
This is good tutorial on these three programs, with extremely detailed step-by-step instructions. It assumes essentially no prior knowledge of the programs or even of Macintosh software.

Each chapter works through building a complete document, and the book covers most kinds of work that people would typically need. It makes heavy use of the existing templates that come with the programs, which again is probably good for beginners but less useful for professionals or advanced amateurs who want their own formats.

The book sticks closely to the script in going step-by-step through the examples, with few digressions or explanations of why things work this way. It has a lengthy index which seems well-done and would probably be adequate to look up any particular technique you needed. There's a puzzling reference (p. 239) to a mail merge feature--puzzling because the continuing absence of mail merge in iWorks is one of the biggest gripes users have about it. The mail merge mentioned here is just an intelligent drag and drop that puts the lines of the address in the right place when you drag and drop from the address book. You can only do one at a time, though; it's not a true batch mail merge.

The book has a very heavy emphasis on Keynote, the presentation (slideshow) software, with over half of the book devoted to this topic. Pages (word processor and page layout) gets about one-quarter of book, and Numbers (spreadsheets) and an integrated example get the remaining one-quarter. There are two additional chapters on the included DVD-ROM dealing with linked text in documents, camera RAW image files, and multimedia. The DVD-ROM includes all the needed files for the examples as well as the finished documents for comparison.

I wonder about the emphasis on Keynote. I'm skeptical that the absolute beginner that this book is aimed at would do very many slideshows; they would be much more likely to start with page layout.

Very Good Feature: several pages explaining how to get your computer hooked up to a projector. This is a subject that always stumps people and has caused many delays in getting presentations started.

Bottom line: good for beginners, still useful but very slow paced if you already understand slideshows, page layout, or spreadsheets and just want to get smart about iWork.

"Very good guide"
Don't believe the negative reviews. This is a revised edition of the earlier book, and delivers on its promises to get you started and fluent in iWork. Highly recommended.