I could see Apple coming out with a "plus" bundle of some sort. Thus
$79 buys you Pages/Keynote 2
$79 buys you Cell/MacDB
So for $149 you can buy all 4 in the future and have a full suite.
While I think you are correct that they will add the other two apps, I believe they will be combined as a package.
Keynote was by itself $99. Add Pages it is now $79. I don't think the trend is downward but it is promising in the fact they are being aggressive with the pricing.
Seems to me Jobs is showing some urgency in making things happen now that he seemed strongly against just a short time ago. Maybe overcoming his illness has given him a new focus to see as many use the Mac as quickly as possible and to strongly challenge the big players like Adobe and MS.
Does Apple want people to pay extra for iWork? (implying iWork is a more professional app than Appleworks, which Keynote is but how good is pages?)
Or does Apple want to give people an app with spreadsheet and graphics?
It does imply a light version... perhaps the light version will be preloaded with Mac OS 10.4? (like TextEdit, or Notepad/WordPad). Hmmm
I just think this shows that Apple is now trying to get more value (investor money) for their software.
.Mac. iLife. iWork. etc.
Combine that with OS X and you have a very strong annual update process underway for a consistent flow of money.
By being aggressive with their software pricing, (iLife is a very valuable bundle even at the new $79 price point.) the products are just low enough that you feel you must have them. And by throwing them in with new hardware for free, you get the urge to buy the hardware just so you can get the software for free.
Appleworks is only around because iWork is still in its infancy. They will definitely add to it and put Appleworks to pasture. I can also see them at some point including it as a bundle with a new mac when that is done to get you to buy a new machine.
Pages is clearly very low end and doesn't even have all the feature of AppleWork's word processor. It is basically a pretty looking notepad.
I'm not worried about the features. Look at where iPhoto and iMovie have ended up.
Pages is a very good start and Keynote was fine, even as it was.
But it is a job only 2/3 done. Which forces them to keep bundling AppleWorks with new Macs and keep iWork a paid suite, which is contrary to the whole iApp idea in the first place.
You know, I don't think they are really worried about MS cancelling Office. A couple of reasons:
1. MS makes some good coin from office:mac
2. I don't think Pages will really eat into Office sales. Low-end users...this really is for AW users who really have a hard time justifying paying $$$ for Office for the little amount of word processing they do.
I disagree. The rollout has all the elements of a political decision. The suite is hobbled by the lack of a spreadsheet and Gates was clearly informed in advance (hence his comments at CES.)
But the pressure clearly runs both ways. PowerPoint was improved after Keynote debuted, and now Entourage is getting better Exchange support - which is something MS has been reluctant to do in the past.
Since the next version of Office will be out by mid-year, I can't see Cells being added to iWork for another eight months, maybe till next MWSF.
Which leaves me to decide whether to buy MS Office just for a decent spreadsheet, or purchase Mariner or Mesa for use with iWork.
Or I could just stick with AppleWorks for another year...
If I save a keynote presentation to a thumbdrive and open it on the windows powerpoint unit connected to a projector, will I have all of the cool effects? If no, when will we get a thumb drive storeable, no-install-needed keynote veiwer for windows units with QT...or a veiwer built into QT (ala QT imageviewer for windows)?
If I save a keynote presentation to a thumbdrive and open it on the windows powerpoint unit connected to a projector, will I have all of the cool effects? If no, when will we get a thumb drive storeable, no-install-needed keynote veiwer for windows units with QT...or a veiwer built into QT (ala QT imageviewer for windows)?
Hi there,
I work in a PeeCee office (we've got like 3 Macs and 1,000 PCs) and I have to do presentations and proposals on a regular basis. I often end up working on them at night at my house on my iMac G5. I used to just automatically use Office to ensure cross-platform compatability, but I recently tried Keynote 1.1 to make a presentation and then export it to PowerPoint.
I don't really have much to complain about, it did save the file as a PowerPoint file and I could play the file on all my PCs at work. However, I noticed two problems with it.
#1) If I edited it on the PC, things were wonky. It didn't look the same as in Keynote so editing was much more difficult. What I mean by that, is text was showing up aligned to the left instead of being centred etc. etc. Odd things like that. So if you create in Keynote and plan on exporting to PowerPoint, I would say be sure you don't have to edit it or else you're in for a minor headache.
and #2) Transitions. Unfortunately, if you make a presentation with awesome cube transitions and then export it to PowerPoint you will lose those transitions. However, Keynote is smart enough to change your transitions over to some of the ones offered in PowerPoint. The last presenation I made had the cube transition extensively used throughout and when I opened it on the PC in PowerPoint it had changed all the cube transitions to dissolve.
But if you really want to keep the Keynote transitions and view the presentation on a PC, just export it to QuickTime (or if you have Keynote 2, export it to Flash) but keep in mind exporting it to these formats means you have to go back to your Mac to edit the original Keynote file should you want to change something.
I ordered iWork '05 as soon as I could load the Canadian Apple Store and I chose the $14 expedited shipping method and it says I should have it by the 28th of January so I can't wait to see how Keynote has gotten better through first-hand use!
If I save a keynote presentation to a thumbdrive and open it on the windows powerpoint unit connected to a projector, will I have all of the cool effects? If no, when will we get a thumb drive storeable, no-install-needed keynote veiwer for windows units with QT...or a veiwer built into QT (ala QT imageviewer for windows)?
I would definietly be interested to see how the export to flash works in Keynote 2. I'd be surprised if it had all of the pretty available in Keynote, but probably more than in powerpoint.
I like the idea of a small, cross-platform keynote viewer. I imagine it would export to a quicktime file bundled up with a bunch of plaintext cues, so that all of the transitions are rendered in nice-looking video, but only happen when you click. this would capitalize on the fact that most computers, mac or windows, have quicktime installed, and for something like a cube transition or bouncing text, MP4 would be a good format with a small file size.
They've had five years to work on this update. They kill the Spreadsheet and Database portions and charge the same amount? With no upgrade path for Keynote users? What are they smoking over there?
I'll bet that a fair number of those five years were spent:
1) realizing that the AW codebase really was at the end of its life, and there was no point trying to drag it kicking and screaming into the future;
2) getting OS X up to the point where it could be a solid enough foundation for a replacement;
3) once OS X was mature enough, starting work on the replacement.
There is a huge gulf between native OS 9 development and native OS X development. In OS 9, the app essentially does everything. In OS X, the app does as little as possible, and the system does almost everything. The advantage is that when the system is mature, app development is ridiculously easy. The disadvantage is that it's hard to get system frameworks bulletproof enough to be usable by any application.
Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, "just doing text" is not an easy problem anymore. Not if you want to do it well.
I imagine that the spreadsheet analog, if it's not stealthily included in Pages' table/graph code, will eventually appear. That will have to be optimized carefully, though, which probably means more system work (I know that they've been working on the performance of the relevant frameworks for a while) and some application design work, too. If they're trying to reimagine the app (i.e., instead of continuing the paper spreadsheet metaphor, what if we look at what people use them for and build a new interface around that?) it might take even longer. Nothing requires the spreadsheet and the database to be different apps, either. There's a very broad equivalence between the two, and there are more than a few people who use Excel as a database.
I do believe that Cells will appear in due time, but I'm saddened by the fact that I'll likely have to wait another year until MWSF '06.
I agree that the course being taken is a re-imagining of the whole spreadsheet metaphor. And yes, they'll likely combine the spreadsheet and database functions into one app.
The wild card here is Filemaker Pro. I'm a longtime user, and I appreciate the buzzword compliance of version 7. But the program doesn't take advantage of the OS X niceties because of the Windows version, and the app isn't being deployed even with OS X server in mind. To be honest, it looks somewhat disconnected from the rest of Apple's priorities.
Apple's software strategy has followed the "good, better, best" convention. with products in the iApp, Express, and Pro categories. I don't know how Apple's going to implement that in the database field.
Maybe Filemaker Pro functionality should just be appropriated by OS X frameworks entirely.
I came back this afternoon from MWSF were I played with Keynote 2 and Pages quite a bit.
First, Pages is exactly what i was hoping for. I've often complained about the poor support by MS office appps for PDF. Pages handles PDF graphics just as well as keynote, which means that you can move stuff between apps in OSX without any problems. Since I'm stuck, from time to time, making figures from screen shots of old OS9 apps, this was very important to me.
The only thing I asked about that Pages didn't have was smooth integration with AddressBook, as in mailing lists etc. Your left to copy-paste.
I think Pages will likely replace Word for me, even if I can't use Endnote (reference manager app) directly within the app (not that it works well with Word either, #$%& Endnote).
Ohh, I guess the editing functions I sometimes use with Word are also out of the question.
On to Keynote: I think if you like 1 you'll love 2. Much more control of object and now text actions. Presenter mode is great with preview of the next slide, a space for notes and clock+Timer. It also has some cool kiosk functionality to create interactive (hyperlinked) presentations. I doubt I'll use that, but I can easily see iMac kiosks sitting around running keynote.
PS, They still plan to ship Appleworks. Steve said it "They are building a replacement." They know PAges and Keynote won't do it. Both apps still have very anemic charting functionality-no error bars (there goes a good portion of the scientific community). It is clear that a spreadsheat, charting drawing app is needed. Maybe Tiger is needed, or maybe they just need more time.
Themes function like in Keynote. You can make your own, alter the ones they give you, delete the templates within the theme that you don't use etc. Expect the cottage industry that has evolved selling Keynote themes to come up with more themes for Pages as well.
I'd be very curious to know how much code sharing there is between the two apps... think about it... Pages is essentially Keynote + TextEdit fields - presentation ability. The widgets, compositing, layout helpers (grids), minimalist drawing tools, photo masks... it's all the same. The UI is tweaked to be geared to two tasks, but the underlying guts are likely to be nearly identical as far as I can tell.
I'll be poking around in the frameworks as soon as I get mine. Considering how much previously private framework code has been provided later for dev use (Core* for example, were all used in Apple's professional apps pre-Tiger), I'll be interested in getting a peek at the charting widget, etc. They may pop up in public dev kits later for others to use, you know?
I was actually hoping that some of its tools, like the guides and rulers, would be folded into regular cocoa frameworks so third parties could take advantage of them. \
I was actually hoping that some of its tools, like the guides and rulers, would be folded into regular cocoa frameworks so third parties could take advantage of them. \
This is a great way for Apple to proof them first, and to see which what, if anything, they need to fix or add. They'll want to get all of that out of the way before they've frozen the features into a public API.
The libraries that became Core Image and Core Video shipped in Motion before Apple solidified them into frameworks.
As far as Pages lacking all the features of AW, I have already heard of two that it lacks: Word count, and a scripting dictionary. The former is a deal breaker for my mom, or for anyone who writes for magazines or newspapers. In other words, its omission is forgivable for a 1.0 release, but it's definitely something they should add eventually, whether as an application-specific menu item (as in AppleWorks) or preferably in a framework, or as a service.
The omission of any sort of scripting dictionary is... well, Apple is unfortunately inconsistent about supporting AppleScript, but it still annoys me when they fail to support one of their own technologies, while telling developers how easy and how important it is for them to support it.
This is a great way for Apple to proof them first, and to see which what, if anything, they need to fix or add. They'll want to get all of that out of the way before they've frozen the features into a public API.
As far as Pages lacking all the features of AW, I have already heard of two that it lacks: Word count, and a scripting dictionary.
Aw, that sucks.
OTOH, a scripting dictionary for a new type of app is HARD... in some ways, harder than leveraging out your code into public frameworks, since you're exposing more of the nitty gritty internal model. Perhaps we can hope for this in the future, along with new frameworks?
Comments
Originally posted by hmurchison
I could see Apple coming out with a "plus" bundle of some sort. Thus
$79 buys you Pages/Keynote 2
$79 buys you Cell/MacDB
So for $149 you can buy all 4 in the future and have a full suite.
While I think you are correct that they will add the other two apps, I believe they will be combined as a package.
Keynote was by itself $99. Add Pages it is now $79. I don't think the trend is downward but it is promising in the fact they are being aggressive with the pricing.
Seems to me Jobs is showing some urgency in making things happen now that he seemed strongly against just a short time ago. Maybe overcoming his illness has given him a new focus to see as many use the Mac as quickly as possible and to strongly challenge the big players like Adobe and MS.
I am all for it.
Originally posted by GregAlexander
Does Apple want people to pay extra for iWork? (implying iWork is a more professional app than Appleworks, which Keynote is but how good is pages?)
Or does Apple want to give people an app with spreadsheet and graphics?
It does imply a light version... perhaps the light version will be preloaded with Mac OS 10.4? (like TextEdit, or Notepad/WordPad). Hmmm
I just think this shows that Apple is now trying to get more value (investor money) for their software.
.Mac. iLife. iWork. etc.
Combine that with OS X and you have a very strong annual update process underway for a consistent flow of money.
By being aggressive with their software pricing, (iLife is a very valuable bundle even at the new $79 price point.) the products are just low enough that you feel you must have them. And by throwing them in with new hardware for free, you get the urge to buy the hardware just so you can get the software for free.
Appleworks is only around because iWork is still in its infancy. They will definitely add to it and put Appleworks to pasture. I can also see them at some point including it as a bundle with a new mac when that is done to get you to buy a new machine.
Originally posted by riversky
Pages is clearly very low end and doesn't even have all the feature of AppleWork's word processor. It is basically a pretty looking notepad.
I'm not worried about the features. Look at where iPhoto and iMovie have ended up.
Pages is a very good start and Keynote was fine, even as it was.
But it is a job only 2/3 done. Which forces them to keep bundling AppleWorks with new Macs and keep iWork a paid suite, which is contrary to the whole iApp idea in the first place.
Originally posted by riversky
Pages is clearly very low end and doesn't even have all the feature of AppleWork's word processor. It is basically a pretty looking notepad.
What are you basing that on? (edit: Your comment regd less features than Appleworks word processor?)
Thanks
Originally posted by riversky
Pages is clearly very low end and doesn't even have all the feature of AppleWork's word processor. It is basically a pretty looking notepad.
Hmm... That's odd. Seemed like a rather powerful application. Maybe you're confused by the simple interface?
A thousand widgets on toolbars does not an interface make.
If Pages is anything like Keynote, it will have a very simple interface that contains a massive amount of well thought out power.
I can do more in Keynote, layout-wise, than I ever could in PowerPoint or Word, and do it precisely, cleanly, and above all, *faster*.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Same FUD was tossed about when Keynote debuted.
A thousand widgets on toolbars does not an interface make.
If Pages is anything like Keynote, it will have a very simple interface that contains a massive amount of well thought out power.
I can do more in Keynote, layout-wise, than I ever could in PowerPoint or Word, and do it precisely, cleanly, and above all, *faster*.
Yeah, that threw me off at first. But your right. Its just so... jarring, in a good way.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
You know, I don't think they are really worried about MS cancelling Office. A couple of reasons:
1. MS makes some good coin from office:mac
2. I don't think Pages will really eat into Office sales. Low-end users...this really is for AW users who really have a hard time justifying paying $$$ for Office for the little amount of word processing they do.
I disagree. The rollout has all the elements of a political decision. The suite is hobbled by the lack of a spreadsheet and Gates was clearly informed in advance (hence his comments at CES.)
But the pressure clearly runs both ways. PowerPoint was improved after Keynote debuted, and now Entourage is getting better Exchange support - which is something MS has been reluctant to do in the past.
Since the next version of Office will be out by mid-year, I can't see Cells being added to iWork for another eight months, maybe till next MWSF.
Which leaves me to decide whether to buy MS Office just for a decent spreadsheet, or purchase Mariner or Mesa for use with iWork.
Or I could just stick with AppleWorks for another year...
Originally posted by a_greer
If I save a keynote presentation to a thumbdrive and open it on the windows powerpoint unit connected to a projector, will I have all of the cool effects? If no, when will we get a thumb drive storeable, no-install-needed keynote veiwer for windows units with QT...or a veiwer built into QT (ala QT imageviewer for windows)?
Hi there,
I work in a PeeCee office (we've got like 3 Macs and 1,000 PCs) and I have to do presentations and proposals on a regular basis. I often end up working on them at night at my house on my iMac G5. I used to just automatically use Office to ensure cross-platform compatability, but I recently tried Keynote 1.1 to make a presentation and then export it to PowerPoint.
I don't really have much to complain about, it did save the file as a PowerPoint file and I could play the file on all my PCs at work. However, I noticed two problems with it.
#1) If I edited it on the PC, things were wonky. It didn't look the same as in Keynote so editing was much more difficult. What I mean by that, is text was showing up aligned to the left instead of being centred etc. etc. Odd things like that. So if you create in Keynote and plan on exporting to PowerPoint, I would say be sure you don't have to edit it or else you're in for a minor headache.
and #2) Transitions. Unfortunately, if you make a presentation with awesome cube transitions and then export it to PowerPoint you will lose those transitions. However, Keynote is smart enough to change your transitions over to some of the ones offered in PowerPoint. The last presenation I made had the cube transition extensively used throughout and when I opened it on the PC in PowerPoint it had changed all the cube transitions to dissolve.
But if you really want to keep the Keynote transitions and view the presentation on a PC, just export it to QuickTime (or if you have Keynote 2, export it to Flash) but keep in mind exporting it to these formats means you have to go back to your Mac to edit the original Keynote file should you want to change something.
I ordered iWork '05 as soon as I could load the Canadian Apple Store and I chose the $14 expedited shipping method and it says I should have it by the 28th of January so I can't wait to see how Keynote has gotten better through first-hand use!
-Ybot
Originally posted by a_greer
If I save a keynote presentation to a thumbdrive and open it on the windows powerpoint unit connected to a projector, will I have all of the cool effects? If no, when will we get a thumb drive storeable, no-install-needed keynote veiwer for windows units with QT...or a veiwer built into QT (ala QT imageviewer for windows)?
I would definietly be interested to see how the export to flash works in Keynote 2. I'd be surprised if it had all of the pretty available in Keynote, but probably more than in powerpoint.
I like the idea of a small, cross-platform keynote viewer. I imagine it would export to a quicktime file bundled up with a bunch of plaintext cues, so that all of the transitions are rendered in nice-looking video, but only happen when you click. this would capitalize on the fact that most computers, mac or windows, have quicktime installed, and for something like a cube transition or bouncing text, MP4 would be a good format with a small file size.
Originally posted by Frank777
Amen to that.
They've had five years to work on this update. They kill the Spreadsheet and Database portions and charge the same amount? With no upgrade path for Keynote users? What are they smoking over there?
I'll bet that a fair number of those five years were spent:
1) realizing that the AW codebase really was at the end of its life, and there was no point trying to drag it kicking and screaming into the future;
2) getting OS X up to the point where it could be a solid enough foundation for a replacement;
3) once OS X was mature enough, starting work on the replacement.
There is a huge gulf between native OS 9 development and native OS X development. In OS 9, the app essentially does everything. In OS X, the app does as little as possible, and the system does almost everything. The advantage is that when the system is mature, app development is ridiculously easy. The disadvantage is that it's hard to get system frameworks bulletproof enough to be usable by any application.
Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, "just doing text" is not an easy problem anymore. Not if you want to do it well.
I imagine that the spreadsheet analog, if it's not stealthily included in Pages' table/graph code, will eventually appear. That will have to be optimized carefully, though, which probably means more system work (I know that they've been working on the performance of the relevant frameworks for a while) and some application design work, too. If they're trying to reimagine the app (i.e., instead of continuing the paper spreadsheet metaphor, what if we look at what people use them for and build a new interface around that?) it might take even longer. Nothing requires the spreadsheet and the database to be different apps, either. There's a very broad equivalence between the two, and there are more than a few people who use Excel as a database.
I do believe that Cells will appear in due time, but I'm saddened by the fact that I'll likely have to wait another year until MWSF '06.
I agree that the course being taken is a re-imagining of the whole spreadsheet metaphor. And yes, they'll likely combine the spreadsheet and database functions into one app.
The wild card here is Filemaker Pro. I'm a longtime user, and I appreciate the buzzword compliance of version 7. But the program doesn't take advantage of the OS X niceties because of the Windows version, and the app isn't being deployed even with OS X server in mind. To be honest, it looks somewhat disconnected from the rest of Apple's priorities.
Apple's software strategy has followed the "good, better, best" convention. with products in the iApp, Express, and Pro categories. I don't know how Apple's going to implement that in the database field.
Maybe Filemaker Pro functionality should just be appropriated by OS X frameworks entirely.
First, Pages is exactly what i was hoping for. I've often complained about the poor support by MS office appps for PDF. Pages handles PDF graphics just as well as keynote, which means that you can move stuff between apps in OSX without any problems. Since I'm stuck, from time to time, making figures from screen shots of old OS9 apps, this was very important to me.
The only thing I asked about that Pages didn't have was smooth integration with AddressBook, as in mailing lists etc. Your left to copy-paste.
I think Pages will likely replace Word for me, even if I can't use Endnote (reference manager app) directly within the app (not that it works well with Word either, #$%& Endnote).
Ohh, I guess the editing functions I sometimes use with Word are also out of the question.
On to Keynote: I think if you like 1 you'll love 2. Much more control of object and now text actions. Presenter mode is great with preview of the next slide, a space for notes and clock+Timer. It also has some cool kiosk functionality to create interactive (hyperlinked) presentations. I doubt I'll use that, but I can easily see iMac kiosks sitting around running keynote.
PS, They still plan to ship Appleworks. Steve said it "They are building a replacement." They know PAges and Keynote won't do it. Both apps still have very anemic charting functionality-no error bars (there goes a good portion of the scientific community). It is clear that a spreadsheat, charting drawing app is needed. Maybe Tiger is needed, or maybe they just need more time.
how easy is it to roll your own templates/themes?
Originally posted by othello
for anyone that has played with pages...
how easy is it to roll your own templates/themes?
Themes function like in Keynote. You can make your own, alter the ones they give you, delete the templates within the theme that you don't use etc. Expect the cottage industry that has evolved selling Keynote themes to come up with more themes for Pages as well.
I'll be poking around in the frameworks as soon as I get mine.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
I was actually hoping that some of its tools, like the guides and rulers, would be folded into regular cocoa frameworks so third parties could take advantage of them.
This is a great way for Apple to proof them first, and to see which what, if anything, they need to fix or add. They'll want to get all of that out of the way before they've frozen the features into a public API.
The libraries that became Core Image and Core Video shipped in Motion before Apple solidified them into frameworks.
As far as Pages lacking all the features of AW, I have already heard of two that it lacks: Word count, and a scripting dictionary. The former is a deal breaker for my mom, or for anyone who writes for magazines or newspapers. In other words, its omission is forgivable for a 1.0 release, but it's definitely something they should add eventually, whether as an application-specific menu item (as in AppleWorks) or preferably in a framework, or as a service.
The omission of any sort of scripting dictionary is... well, Apple is unfortunately inconsistent about supporting AppleScript, but it still annoys me when they fail to support one of their own technologies, while telling developers how easy and how important it is for them to support it.
Originally posted by Amorph
This is a great way for Apple to proof them first, and to see which what, if anything, they need to fix or add. They'll want to get all of that out of the way before they've frozen the features into a public API.
As far as Pages lacking all the features of AW, I have already heard of two that it lacks: Word count, and a scripting dictionary.
Aw, that sucks.
OTOH, a scripting dictionary for a new type of app is HARD... in some ways, harder than leveraging out your code into public frameworks, since you're exposing more of the nitty gritty internal model. Perhaps we can hope for this in the future, along with new frameworks?