EDIT: WAIT, they brought back support for older versions of iWork files! Now I can cut my basement iMac out of my workflow when bringing forward old docs! Partially. Unless they’re ClarisWorks documents.
Just a related anecdote: I already had to deal with this problem - having some very complex Keynote files in the '06 format when I moved to a Yosemite Mac that I at first felt were lost and gone forever (along with hundreds of hours of work).
The kludgy solution I found searching for help was finding and buying iWork '09 (on eBay) and importing the '06 files (which worked better than I had hoped if not perfectly), and then opening the 2013 version and importing the converted '09 files (again, introducing a few more artifacts, but I had working versions of the presentations).
....Along with some of the animus towards Apple's policies being expressed here. However, I guess the direct import being brought back implies I was far from the only one and that this particular squeaky wheel got a little grease....
....so hoping some of the others noted here do as well....
No mail merge in Pages 2015. Pages 09 mail merge still works with El Cap. can even do drag-n-drop from a Contacts group or vCard group.
I doubt mail merge will return to Pages any time soon as it requires inter-app conversations which is usually blocked by the sandboxing on iOS and a near impossibility with HTML/Javascript limits.
My wish is that Apple would think of the iWork suite as a Lite (free) web-based solution, plus a mid-range iOS solution, and a fuller featured (mail merge, link blocks, etc) version for OS X where each builds upon the other and each document created in one can be 'viewed' by Web/iOS/OS X with limited editing of that document each to their own flavor. Such as: A Pages document is begun on an iPad using the iOS version and saved to iCloud where a link is shared to a Windows collaborator using the web version of Pages for tracking/editing/markup. The 'returned/edited/ document is now viewed on an iPhone while traveling on a train from office to home where the person original creating the document now uses handoff to further edit the document on his OS X computer running the full version of Pages, allowing the edits to auto-flow into revised text blocks after which a Contact Group is drag-n-dropped onto the ready-to-go Pages document for mail merge and printing. Alternatively the document could be saved as a PDF to Mail before merging, thus allowing a mass mailing to a Contacts group using Bcc or some special mailing app.
Differentiation of product for Web, iOS, OS X with features optimized or deleted for each particular platform based on capabilities.
Anyone know if they brought back mail merge to Pages?
No mail merge = no upgrade for me.
Kinda reminds me of that political statement a few years back - you know, the pig and lipstick thing.
people do special things can say its a pig, but as just a normal home user, i havent ever run into the problem of linked textboxes or mail mergers or whatever...it's nice to just have a simple, inexpensive tool to do general document creation and now be able to access it from the cloud. i didnt need all the crap Word did and i dont miss it.
Nothing to do with living in the past. And nothing to do with perfect software. For some, linked textboxes are more than nice to have. And it was supported in the past. Care to explain what to do other than either loose that feature or give up on pages resp. Keeping the old version?
look if it was a useful feature for you, i hope you get it back as they incorporate more back into the cross-platform version. but dont make the mistake of saying that it should continue to exist just because it was supported in the past. so were floppy disks. if theres one company that will clear out the old to make way for the new, it's apple.
And why they’re bringing back support for older files after removing it isn’t confusing, it’s why they removed support in the first place.
because prioritization. writing code is hard. writing cross-platform code is harder. but waiting until its 100% "done" isnt a good strategy...no, instead you prioritize to what most of your users use most of the time, and go from there.
look if it was a useful feature for you, i hope you get it back as they incorporate more back into the cross-platform version. but dont make the mistake of saying that it should continue to exist just because it was supported in the past. so were floppy disks. if theres one company that will clear out the old to make way for the new, it's apple.
Thanks, I'm still keeping a bit of hope.
The issues are two.
1. If it's gone one can deal with this. Gone with a "maybe it will be back someday" is worse. Because it keeps you in limbo. So - is it gone for good? Yes? No? Maybe? Some clarifying statements would be appreciated from Aople's side.
2. I'm not sure I agree with your comparison. The floppy drive is tech. And I'm all for innovation and getting rid of old redundant tech. The linked textboxes are not tech in the same sense. They are a direct tool for productivity. Not indirect such as a medium for storage. So by killing this feature they impact the creativity flow and paradigm of layouting. That's IMO very different from supporting old tech. At least , provide a substitute or migration path. I'm not an expert with photo or video. But it appears at least they offered a migration path to Lightroom, and the transition from the old final cut to the new one did impact the workflow but not the features themselves, if I understood correctly. Let's not make this iWork thing bigger than it is. I feel just slightly annoyed that I'm hanging there, missing this excellent feature and don't know if it will be back.
Thanks, I'm still keeping a bit of hope.
The issues are two.
1. If it's gone one can deal with this. Gone with a "maybe it will be back someday" is worse. Because it keeps you in limbo. So - is it gone for good? Yes? No? Maybe? Some clarifying statements would be appreciated from Aople's side.
2. I'm not sure I agree with your comparison. The floppy drive is tech. And I'm all for innovation and getting rid of old redundant tech. The linked textboxes are not tech in the same sense. They are a direct tool for productivity. Not indirect such as a medium for storage. So by killing this feature they impact the creativity flow and paradigm of layouting. That's IMO very different from supporting old tech. At least , provide a substitute or migration path. I'm not an expert with photo or video. But it appears at least they offered a migration path to Lightroom, and the transition from the old final cut to the new one did impact the workflow but not the features themselves, if I understood correctly. Let's not make this iWork thing bigger than it is. I feel just slightly annoyed that I'm hanging there, missing this excellent feature and don't know if it will be back.
I recommend you raise your issues directly with Apple instead of complaining here. Complaining here will just ensure you remain frustrated and unheard. I was having a very unusual problem with GarageBand on my iPad, contacted Apple through an online feedback form and was delighted to have a series of helpful conversations with one of the software engineers at Apple and it solved my not-unique problem.
Who knows, you may actually get your issue addressed if you talk to the people who can do something about it.
Ok, I'll bite! Dear William, if you had to create content with a Mac to earn your living, perhaps you'd notice the precipitous decline in the quality, compatibility and functionality of Apple's iWork and other apps. Since this phenomenon is evidence of erosion in Apple's once supberb content creation space, it signifies a dropping of the ball, which creates unnecessary market share exposure. That exposure is central to topics here at AI. Apple must do content creation better than eveyone else, or at least as well as they do content consumption. Lay off the Kool Aid a bit. Or, as Steve might quote, "He not busy being born, is busy dying."
I recommend you raise your issues directly with Apple instead of complaining here. Complaining here will just ensure you remain frustrated and unheard. I was having a very unusual problem with GarageBand on my iPad, contacted Apple through an online feedback form and was delighted to have a series of helpful conversations with one of the software engineers at Apple and it solved my not-unique problem.
Who knows, you may actually get your issue addressed if you talk to the people who can do something about it.
Sigh. I die send Feedback to Apple. And my last post was more in order to point out that IMO thee is a difference between a feature and tech (simplified).
Other than that, maybe complaining doesn't help. But sometimes it feels so good
So an ePub template for Pages... but no meaningful updates to iBooks Author for YEARS.
What do you mean? They updated iBooks Author not so long ago one feature of which was the ability to make iPhone compatible EPUBs which is a meaningful update in my book.
Ok, I'll bite! Dear William, if you had to create content with a Mac to earn your living, perhaps you'd notice the precipitous decline in the quality, compatibility and functionality of Apple's iWork and other apps. Since this phenomenon is evidence of erosion in Apple's once supberb content creation space, it signifies a dropping of the ball, which creates unnecessary market share exposure. That exposure is central to topics here at AI. Apple must do content creation better than eveyone else, or at least as well as they do content consumption. Lay off the Kool Aid a bit. Or, as Steve might quote, "He not busy being born, is busy dying."
Maybe the problem is that you're doing it wrong. Maybe the problem is that you're trying to do things the way Word and Excel does things when Pages and Numbers are different ways of doing things.
There are things I can do in Pages that Word can only dream of doing. For example create a table in a Word document and then add the columns up. It's doable but nothing like what's achievable in Pages. Now for the kick in the nuts to Word. Create another table in that Word document and add the values from the other table. It can't be done, at least it can't be done without macros.
I can create better content in Pages, more meaningful content in Pages than I ever could in Word because I don't have to muck around with macros etc and yet Pages still gives me that option through AppleScript if I need it.
I'm not saying Pages is perfect but it's not as low powered as you make it out to be. In fact it's most powerful ability is to do things ever so simply.
Ok, I'll bite! Dear William, if you had to create content with a Mac to earn your living, perhaps you'd notice the precipitous decline in the quality, compatibility and functionality of Apple's iWork and other apps. Since this phenomenon is evidence of erosion in Apple's once supberb content creation space, it signifies a dropping of the ball, which creates unnecessary market share exposure. That exposure is central to topics here at AI. Apple must do content creation better than eveyone else, or at least as well as they do content consumption. Lay off the Kool Aid a bit. Or, as Steve might quote, "He not busy being born, is busy dying."
Wow, no need to resort to patronisation and condescension, is there really? "Dear William" and "Lay off the Kool Aid"? Sigh.
Here's my thoughts on the subject: companies the world over have been duped by Microsoft into thinking that the MS Office Suite of products is required for everyone who has a computer, both home and office users. Only recently have people started waking up to the fact that elegantly simple applications like those in the iWork suite provide all the functionality and more that the vast majority of people who require any word processing, spreadsheet manipulation or presentation creation will ever need.
For advanced functionality requirements, there are options out there, there are even free options (OpenOffice or LibreOffice), but it smacks of entitlement when people insist Apple *must* provide advanced functionality in their free suite of products that only a few people ever need or use.
THAT WASN’T ALREADY POSSIBLE?! My stars, they just keep proving my point, don’t they?
Someone clearly has NEVER paid attention to iBooks Author have they. It's always up until the previous release been iPad only content. From day one. It's because it now exports to EPUB whereas before it exported to an iBook format which was only iPad because the content worked better on iPad than it ever could on an iPhone at least until the iPhone 6 Plus came out last year.
Comments
EDIT: WAIT, they brought back support for older versions of iWork files! Now I can cut my basement iMac out of my workflow when bringing forward old docs! Partially. Unless they’re ClarisWorks documents.
Just a related anecdote: I already had to deal with this problem - having some very complex Keynote files in the '06 format when I moved to a Yosemite Mac that I at first felt were lost and gone forever (along with hundreds of hours of work).
The kludgy solution I found searching for help was finding and buying iWork '09 (on eBay) and importing the '06 files (which worked better than I had hoped if not perfectly), and then opening the 2013 version and importing the converted '09 files (again, introducing a few more artifacts, but I had working versions of the presentations).
....Along with some of the animus towards Apple's policies being expressed here. However, I guess the direct import being brought back implies I was far from the only one and that this particular squeaky wheel got a little grease....
....so hoping some of the others noted here do as well....
I doubt Numbers will ever get pivot tables as Numbers is a 'lite' spreadsheet app.
You want pivot tables? Get Excel.
No mail merge in Pages 2015. Pages 09 mail merge still works with El Cap. can even do drag-n-drop from a Contacts group or vCard group.
I doubt mail merge will return to Pages any time soon as it requires inter-app conversations which is usually blocked by the sandboxing on iOS and a near impossibility with HTML/Javascript limits.
My wish is that Apple would think of the iWork suite as a Lite (free) web-based solution, plus a mid-range iOS solution, and a fuller featured (mail merge, link blocks, etc) version for OS X where each builds upon the other and each document created in one can be 'viewed' by Web/iOS/OS X with limited editing of that document each to their own flavor. Such as: A Pages document is begun on an iPad using the iOS version and saved to iCloud where a link is shared to a Windows collaborator using the web version of Pages for tracking/editing/markup. The 'returned/edited/ document is now viewed on an iPhone while traveling on a train from office to home where the person original creating the document now uses handoff to further edit the document on his OS X computer running the full version of Pages, allowing the edits to auto-flow into revised text blocks after which a Contact Group is drag-n-dropped onto the ready-to-go Pages document for mail merge and printing. Alternatively the document could be saved as a PDF to Mail before merging, thus allowing a mass mailing to a Contacts group using Bcc or some special mailing app.
Differentiation of product for Web, iOS, OS X with features optimized or deleted for each particular platform based on capabilities.
Oh well. Such is to dream!
people do special things can say its a pig, but as just a normal home user, i havent ever run into the problem of linked textboxes or mail mergers or whatever...it's nice to just have a simple, inexpensive tool to do general document creation and now be able to access it from the cloud. i didnt need all the crap Word did and i dont miss it.
look if it was a useful feature for you, i hope you get it back as they incorporate more back into the cross-platform version. but dont make the mistake of saying that it should continue to exist just because it was supported in the past. so were floppy disks. if theres one company that will clear out the old to make way for the new, it's apple.
because prioritization. writing code is hard. writing cross-platform code is harder. but waiting until its 100% "done" isnt a good strategy...no, instead you prioritize to what most of your users use most of the time, and go from there.
Thanks, I'm still keeping a bit of hope.
The issues are two.
1. If it's gone one can deal with this. Gone with a "maybe it will be back someday" is worse. Because it keeps you in limbo. So - is it gone for good? Yes? No? Maybe? Some clarifying statements would be appreciated from Aople's side.
2. I'm not sure I agree with your comparison. The floppy drive is tech. And I'm all for innovation and getting rid of old redundant tech. The linked textboxes are not tech in the same sense. They are a direct tool for productivity. Not indirect such as a medium for storage. So by killing this feature they impact the creativity flow and paradigm of layouting. That's IMO very different from supporting old tech. At least , provide a substitute or migration path. I'm not an expert with photo or video. But it appears at least they offered a migration path to Lightroom, and the transition from the old final cut to the new one did impact the workflow but not the features themselves, if I understood correctly. Let's not make this iWork thing bigger than it is. I feel just slightly annoyed that I'm hanging there, missing this excellent feature and don't know if it will be back.
All Apple content creation software, with the possibe exception of Logic, sucks huge and progressively. It's incomprehensible.
[rolls eyes]
Feel better?
I recommend you raise your issues directly with Apple instead of complaining here. Complaining here will just ensure you remain frustrated and unheard. I was having a very unusual problem with GarageBand on my iPad, contacted Apple through an online feedback form and was delighted to have a series of helpful conversations with one of the software engineers at Apple and it solved my not-unique problem.
Who knows, you may actually get your issue addressed if you talk to the people who can do something about it.
Sigh. I die send Feedback to Apple. And my last post was more in order to point out that IMO thee is a difference between a feature and tech (simplified).
Other than that, maybe complaining doesn't help. But sometimes it feels so good
There are things I can do in Pages that Word can only dream of doing. For example create a table in a Word document and then add the columns up. It's doable but nothing like what's achievable in Pages. Now for the kick in the nuts to Word. Create another table in that Word document and add the values from the other table. It can't be done, at least it can't be done without macros.
I can create better content in Pages, more meaningful content in Pages than I ever could in Word because I don't have to muck around with macros etc and yet Pages still gives me that option through AppleScript if I need it.
I'm not saying Pages is perfect but it's not as low powered as you make it out to be. In fact it's most powerful ability is to do things ever so simply.
Ok, I'll bite! Dear William, if you had to create content with a Mac to earn your living, perhaps you'd notice the precipitous decline in the quality, compatibility and functionality of Apple's iWork and other apps. Since this phenomenon is evidence of erosion in Apple's once supberb content creation space, it signifies a dropping of the ball, which creates unnecessary market share exposure. That exposure is central to topics here at AI. Apple must do content creation better than eveyone else, or at least as well as they do content consumption. Lay off the Kool Aid a bit. Or, as Steve might quote, "He not busy being born, is busy dying."
Wow, no need to resort to patronisation and condescension, is there really? "Dear William" and "Lay off the Kool Aid"? Sigh.
Here's my thoughts on the subject: companies the world over have been duped by Microsoft into thinking that the MS Office Suite of products is required for everyone who has a computer, both home and office users. Only recently have people started waking up to the fact that elegantly simple applications like those in the iWork suite provide all the functionality and more that the vast majority of people who require any word processing, spreadsheet manipulation or presentation creation will ever need.
For advanced functionality requirements, there are options out there, there are even free options (OpenOffice or LibreOffice), but it smacks of entitlement when people insist Apple *must* provide advanced functionality in their free suite of products that only a few people ever need or use.
One of two.
THAT WASN’T ALREADY POSSIBLE?! My stars, they just keep proving my point, don’t they?
No. Keynote is at 6.6, Pages at 5.6, and Numbers at 3.6.