The poor text display was my number 1 complaint about AppleWorks and interfered greatly with my writing.
I'm sure I'll jump to iWork once the bugs in Pages are worked out and the spreadsheet is introduced, but for now, AppleWorks has become an environment in which I can get real work done without griping about how outdated it is.
Makes me wonder why Unsanity didn't promote this more years ago.
For one thing, Silk doesn't change the typography. It doesn't enable any rendering, kerning, or font-based changes. It's just smoke and mirrors, and really, it's a cheap hack. It sticks anti-aliasing at the end of the QuickDraw render chain, and that's all. It can't alter the kerning to take best advantage of the anti-aliasing for the output device, for example. A Quartz/ATSUI text system can.
If Apple had done this, and tried foisting it off as a 7.0, you'd be bitching to high heaven.
Did you just link Appleworks with high end output device?
Did you just link Appleworks with high end output device?
Not unless you consider my HP DeskJet3820 to be 'high-end'.
Every output device has it's own profile, from screen to print. Ever hear of a PPD? That's it. QuickDraw doesn't have the faintest clue what to do with them unless you go through the proper hoops programmatically. Most developers don't bother, it's not worth it. Cocoa/Quartz/ATSUI? For free.
My point was that just making it look slick and shiny on the surface is easy. Silk does that, if that's all you really want. Making it look slick and shiny all the way through, robustly, without requiring the developer to work hard at it, is more difficult. Converting from the old code to the new system is *highly* non-trivial. (If it was easy, we never would have been stuck with Carbon.)
Your claim that Silk showed how 'easy' it would have been for Apple to produce an updated AW7 is hollow.
Not unless you consider my HP DeskJet3820 to be 'high-end'.
Every output device has it's own profile, from screen to print. Ever hear of a PPD? That's it. QuickDraw doesn't have the faintest clue what to do with them unless you go through the proper hoops programmatically. Most developers don't bother, it's not worth it. Cocoa/Quartz/ATSUI? For free.
My point was that just making it look slick and shiny on the surface is easy. Silk does that, if that's all you really want. Making it look slick and shiny all the way through, robustly, without requiring the developer to work hard at it, is more difficult. Converting from the old code to the new system is *highly* non-trivial. (If it was easy, we never would have been stuck with Carbon.)
Your claim that Silk showed how 'easy' it would have been for Apple to produce an updated AW7 is hollow.
I guess I've never noticed Appleworks kerning issues because I only print from Postscript printers. I don't see font spacing issues from the prints I make on my machine. Perhaps there would be if I were going to something higher, but my printer is 1200 dpi. I'm open to hearing what you think is wrong though.
But also didn't Apple still sell a whole hell of a lot of Macs to deal with printing of all sort during OS 9 and before as well? But some printer profiles are still even having issues with Pages and yet that doesn't make the app itself good or bad. I've read forum reports about Pages still having trouble with HP printers. Perhaps HP is the problem.
I also didn't claim that an Appleworks 7 update had to be all shiny and new all the way through. Last I checked certain older apps still had some legacy code and were still updated regularly as well, and still had an enthusiastic following. I don't see anyone tossing Photoshop yet for example even though it won't address more than 2 gigs. Appleworks has lots of people who enjoy using it. It doesn't make my 733 mhz machine come to a crawl at all.
I get this sort of whipsawing back and forth in your expectations sometimes regard these apps. You, at times, talk about using the best app for the purpose. So in your view, Pages deficits are okay because you don't want a half solution to say, a draw program. First and foremost though, that is against the definition of a consumer works program. People do not want to go pick up several $100+ programs just to do their day to day business. I do not need Filemaker pro just to do a mail-merge. I want to spent $99 and have a set of tools that handle 95% of my needs 95% of the time. Sure iMovie cannot do what Final Cut does, but then it is part of iLife for cents on the dollar of what Final Cut costs.
The return side of that is that you seem to condemn Appleworks because it has non-professional output in comparison to OS X or at a minimum does not use and would not easily use OS X system services to achieve the results it could and should. Perhaps Silk is a hack but it is something that would have worked until the Apple can devise something new all the way through. Also I didn't hear users of Appleworks complaining about the print output. They complained about the screen display. Silk fixes that well enough to enable use again. Even if it is a kludge compared to what could be achieved, I prefer to use what has been achieved as opposed to what does not yet exist. I mean does Pages really feel like an app that has seen several years of development to you? It doesn't to me.
[B]I guess I've never noticed Appleworks kerning issues because I only print from Postscript printers. I don't see font spacing issues from the prints I make on my machine. Perhaps there would be if I were going to something higher, but my printer is 1200 dpi. I'm open to hearing what you think is wrong though.
And, that was the left turn to lalaland.
trumpt, you implied that Silk (a cheap hack) showed how easy it would have been for Apple to produce an 'updated' AW7. I stated that it's just smoke and mirrors. You then tied this somehow to 'high-end printers'. How, I'll never know, but you did. This entire printing issue is a dead end, a red herring, and I'm not going to get pulled into an irrelevant side issue.
Point being made, refute or agree: If Apple had done the Silk hack and charged you for it, you'd be screaming bloody murder "We waited years for *THIS*?!" And you'd be right. Silk makes it look nice on screen, sure. If that's *all* you really wanted in an AW7 upgrade, then great.
That's all.
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I get this sort of whipsawing back and forth in your expectations sometimes regard these apps.
And I feel the same sort of seesawing in your expectations regarding AW. On the one hand, you wanted an updated AW7 to be this absolute kick-ass killer app, since they'd had years to work on it, but on the other hand you'd be happy with some vague handwaving that anti-aliases fonts on screen? I don't believe the latter for a minute. Notice that this is precisely in line with the point outlined above.
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You, at times, talk about using the best app for the purpose. So in your view, Pages deficits are okay because you don't want a half solution to say, a draw program. First and foremost though, that is against the definition of a consumer works program.
Pages is not a 'works' program. End of story. It is a consumer layout/WP app. It may have some of the same market intent as a Works app, but it is not an all-in-one song-and-dance app. It does one thing. In that light, the lack of a do-all be-all draw program inside it and Keynote isn't a deficit, it's by design, and it's one I agree with. The era of monolithic apps that attempt to do a thousand things, none particularly well, needs to die as fast as possible.
Apple needs to provide the core functionality of the apps, and do so at a high level of quality, then provide hooks for others to create the specialty tools that niches need. (I still see mail merge as a niche, for instance, since most consumers aren't going to need it, and pros are going to have a different solution.) They do this exceedingly well.
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People do not want to go pick up several $100+ programs just to do their day to day business.
Nor do they want to spend several hundred on an app with all the widgets, only to find that it can't really do it's main purpose.
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I do not need Filemaker pro just to do a mail-merge.
Which is why Address Book + that nice free script mentioned earlier in this thread should would dandy for you.
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I want to spent $99 and have a set of tools that handle 95% of my needs 95% of the time. Sure iMovie cannot do what Final Cut does, but then it is part of iLife for cents on the dollar of what Final Cut costs.
Pages, as 1/2 of iWork: $39.50
Word: $200?
And yet I'll take Pages any day over Word for the types of documents I need to do layout for. For serious technical work, I'll take TeXShop over Word any day... and it's free.
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The return side of that is that you seem to condemn Appleworks because it has non-professional output in comparison to OS X or at a minimum does not use and would not easily use OS X system services to achieve the results it could and should.
No, I condemn your opinion that Silk somehow demonstrates that Apple could have 'easily' upgraded AW. Utterly irrational. That's like seeing someone slap a new coat of paint on an old rickety house, and then blasting the previous owners for not doing a complete rebuild inside because "Look how easy it was for them to make it look better! Only took a weekend!" Or do you really not see that?
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Perhaps Silk is a hack but it is something that would have worked until the Apple can devise something new all the way through. Also I didn't hear users of Appleworks complaining about the print output. They complained about the screen display. Silk fixes that well enough to enable use again.
Well for god's sake, if that's all it would have ever taken to make you happy with AW, I would have suggested it months ago. I didn't realize your expectations were that low though.
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Even if it is a kludge compared to what could be achieved, I prefer to use what has been achieved as opposed to what does not yet exist.
Well of course. The same arguments were made about MacOS X 10.0, 10.1, and still to this day. "Well it doesn't have GizmoABC that I can get on OS9, so I'm not moving, no matter what you say!" "But here are three replacements for GizmoABC on OS X..." "Nuh-uh! Don't care! If it's not exactly GizmoABC, then I don't want it!" "But it's the same functionality, and your computer will be more stable, with so many new..." "Don't care! Is it EXACTLY GizmoABC? No? Then I'm not moving."
I get the feeling that is being rehashed here, with GizmoABC replaced with mail merge... and frankly, there's no argument to be made in that case. No amount of rational discourse will convince the person with such an entrenched view.
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I mean does Pages really feel like an app that has seen several years of development to you? It doesn't to me.
Pages feels like a 1.0. Keynote 1.0 had similar issues. So did Safari 1.0. So does every app ever shipped. And what evidence do you have of 'several years' of development? Seriously. You state that like it is fact, yet it is just an assumption on your part, isn't it?
Kickaha, I have a question for you that falls in line with the current discussion on this thread, perhaps you can shed some light on the matter for me.
It's been said before that Tiger will be a huge database that allows Spotlight to do its thing efficiently. That being said, would it be unlikely that Apple would improve the functionality of it's Address Book application to provide the mail merge option in Pages, which we all know is just a 1.0 release and will obviously be gaining more features as time moves on?
It seems to me that if the database already exists due to the way 10.4 works, that the functionality asked for by a select few would be something Apple could conceivably include.
That said, if Address Book integration could be implimented in some mail merge capacity, or as a tab in the Inspector like we have access to pictures in iPhoto, etc. then what other features are likely to be included when Tiger is released? Certainly Apple has ideas for further features beyond that of the 1.0 release, any guesses as to what that functionality may be?
Ok, Trumpt and Kick need to step back and remember that I'm the AppleWorks nut on these boards. I've only been waiting for a new version for six years.
And you're both right.
Kick, I know it's a cheap hack, with all the flaws you've detailed so well.
But Jobs let this program suffer for half a decade with no real updates.
It wouldn't have taken anything from them to add this "cheap hack" and make AppleWorks a bit less shabby.
Trumpt, This is a bit of sleight of hand, and is all eye candy built on no real foundation. It wouldn't have been worthy of a 7.0 upgrade.
AppleWorks 6.3, however, is another matter entirely. Given that iWork is still not ready for prime time in SOHO and Education environments - and won't be for at least a year - I think they should still do it.
trumpt, you implied that Silk (a cheap hack) showed how easy it would have been for Apple to produce an 'updated' AW7. I stated that it's just smoke and mirrors. You then tied this somehow to 'high-end printers'. How, I'll never know, but you did. This entire printing issue is a dead end, a red herring, and I'm not going to get pulled into an irrelevant side issue.
Look, I'm not trying to sidetrack you. I've just never seen Appleworks have an issue with consumer level printing. I've people complain that it doesn't have high end features, but it isn't that type program. Sorry if my historical "baggage" associated with this bleeds into my discussion with you. I'm not trying to distract from the matter or even claim that Silk alone was enough to justify an upgrade. However the point is that Firefox, Word from what I understand still use the same hack we are discussing with Appleworks and they have had further development done on them as well. Doesn't Word and Firefox/Mozilla still use the Quickdraw imaging model? Both are still widely used and considered up to date. Sure they don't fully take advantage of all system services available but I would rather use an app than wait for an operating system update or pray that someone puts together some solution using services.
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Point being made, refute or agree: If Apple had done the Silk hack and charged you for it, you'd be screaming bloody murder "We waited years for *THIS*?!" And you'd be right. Silk makes it look nice on screen, sure. If that's *all* you really wanted in an AW7 upgrade, then great.
That's all.
I didn't claim that this was the ONLY improvement Apple needed to make. The point is that even as a carbon app, improvements could have been made and it could still run acceptably on OS X. This has been the case with Word and Mozilla. If no Mozilla version had been released until it removed all carbon code, we would still be waiting for example.
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And I feel the same sort of seesawing in your expectations regarding AW. On the one hand, you wanted an updated AW7 to be this absolute kick-ass killer app, since they'd had years to work on it, but on the other hand you'd be happy with some vague handwaving that anti-aliases fonts on screen? I don't believe the latter for a minute. Notice that this is precisely in line with the point outlined above.
Appleworks 7 could have simply made some improvements to each of the modules. I haven't claimed it had to be the end all killer app. Spell as you type, a few spreadsheet improvements (like maybe tabs for multiple sheets), some more prefab draw objects, load of templates, anything is better than the years of stagnation. Apple for example is just now getting Quicktime up to date as true OS X code. Yet no one would suggest that incrimental improvement in that service didn't yield good results and help keep Apple in a good position until a full solution is available.
I mean think what you are endorsing right now. A business has to sell a solution. You are suggesting that what Apple has done with Pages/Keynote is okay because, well there are third party hacks that can help address the shortcomings. That isn't a solution. Office from Microsoft is a solution. People will spend money on it even though it doesn't tie into every service yet. Firefox/Mozilla will be used even though they aren't fully native X apps yet.
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Pages is not a 'works' program. End of story. It is a consumer layout/WP app. It may have some of the same market intent as a Works app, but it is not an all-in-one song-and-dance app. It does one thing. In that light, the lack of a do-all be-all draw program inside it and Keynote isn't a deficit, it's by design, and it's one I agree with. The era of monolithic apps that attempt to do a thousand things, none particularly well, needs to die as fast as possible.
I see Pages as the Printshop of word processors. People love how Printshop allows you to create posters, banners and so forth with little real ability. You mostly use templates.
I think the lack of true draw function is a deficit. Appleworks wasn't a monolithic app. It is smaller and faster than Pages, Word or a host of other programs. No one is asking for Adobe Creative Suite or anything like that. However by the same notion, we shouldn't have to wait for an operating system to provide a service before an app can have that feature either. That model is very Microsoftish. We all know that Pages has great text tools because of the OS. We also know that Pages has no decent draw tools because of the OS. That isn't a comforting model.
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Apple needs to provide the core functionality of the apps, and do so at a high level of quality, then provide hooks for others to create the specialty tools that niches need. (I still see mail merge as a niche, for instance, since most consumers aren't going to need it, and pros are going to have a different solution.) They do this exceedingly well.
I agree. But what Apple is doing here is providing the core functionality via the OS. Then using a little development to put a wrapper on those services and call it an app. They then leave holes that you hope others might plug via hacks or even more small and obscure third party solutions that are not really full apps, but rather third party services. (Nisus Thesaurus for example)
That isn't am model most people can market well or convince others to easily use.
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Nor do they want to spend several hundred on an app with all the widgets, only to find that it can't really do it's main purpose.
Correct.
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Which is why Address Book + that nice free script mentioned earlier in this thread should would dandy for you.
This solution, while it works is obscure and contrary to the ease of use Apple uses to market their solutions.
Pages+find some scripts=usability. Perhaps but that isn't a solution the general public is going to want to purchase and it doesn't build support and momentum.
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Pages, as 1/2 of iWork: $39.50
Word: $200?
And yet I'll take Pages any day over Word for the types of documents I need to do layout for. For serious technical work, I'll take TeXShop over Word any day... and it's free.
That financial figure might change considerably if the only way to get some increased features in Pages is to also purchase OS updates at $129 a pop. Apple has done this with Safari and to me, it is a troubling trend.
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No, I condemn your opinion that Silk somehow demonstrates that Apple could have 'easily' upgraded AW. Utterly irrational. That's like seeing someone slap a new coat of paint on an old rickety house, and then blasting the previous owners for not doing a complete rebuild inside because "Look how easy it was for them to make it look better! Only took a weekend!" Or do you really not see that?
Likewise you can do plenty to a home without demo'ing it and starting all over. You can remodel an existing house and get more use out of it. I didn't suggest just a can of paint. Just that they could remodel AND have something to live in while they build their mansion on the hill.
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Well for god's sake, if that's all it would have ever taken to make you happy with AW, I would have suggested it months ago. I didn't realize your expectations were that low though.
No, it just makes a solution that was slowly becoming harder to use tolerable again until Apple moves the new solution further along and hopefully plugs the holes. Buying some shocks for your car doesn't make it new, but it makes the ride nicer until the new car can be bought.
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Well of course. The same arguments were made about MacOS X 10.0, 10.1, and still to this day. "Well it doesn't have GizmoABC that I can get on OS9, so I'm not moving, no matter what you say!" "But here are three replacements for GizmoABC on OS X..." "Nuh-uh! Don't care! If it's not exactly GizmoABC, then I don't want it!" "But it's the same functionality, and your computer will be more stable, with so many new..." "Don't care! Is it EXACTLY GizmoABC? No? Then I'm not moving."
I get the feeling that is being rehashed here, with GizmoABC replaced with mail merge... and frankly, there's no argument to be made in that case. No amount of rational discourse will convince the person with such an entrenched view.
I'm not sitting on OS 9, talking about the good ol'days of Hypercard or some such nonsense so knock it off. I've obviously already tried Pages, Word Appleworks and even NeoOffice. I've not stuck my head in the mud refusing to accept the world changing.
The flip side of that is that I can also see better development be it from the past, from a third party, or from something that is not a system framework or service. The fact that this is so should not discount or exclude it. Appleworks having a thesaurus, selection word count, mail-merge, draw and database tools does not make it monolithic. Likewise Pages gaining them from a $129 operating system update does not excuse their absense now, nor discount the true cost of acquiring them later.
For example we mentioned mail-merge and I'll harp on it just because it annoys you. Talk about using a tool in an odd way. Suppose I want to create a list for merge fields with a paper I am printing. To use the address book for what could be a couple of simple fields is just cumbersome. Of course I can create custom address books that limit who I have to view for this mail-merge, but that still isn't addressing the matter. Small flat form databases are good for all sorts of uses. It could be a cd collection with labels, a class list of students, or whatever. Claiming that address book can solve all of this isn't true because in Word or Appleworks I can create a small flat form database file for merge rather easily. I can also use it for a Christmas Card list and not have to stare at those addresses all year and so forth.
In my view using a monolithic operating system and a service available in it, to deal with something that would only be a feature in an app is just as backwards as expecting one app to be everything to everyone.
Kickaha, I have a question for you that falls in line with the current discussion on this thread, perhaps you can shed some light on the matter for me.
It's been said before that Tiger will be a huge database that allows Spotlight to do its thing efficiently. That being said, would it be unlikely that Apple would improve the functionality of it's Address Book application to provide the mail merge option in Pages, which we all know is just a 1.0 release and will obviously be gaining more features as time moves on?
BING BING BING Give the man a kewpie doll, folks. That's precisely what I've been saying elsewhere (and I could swear above, but...). Mail merge is fundamentally a database action. Right now there is no core database that is suitable for such a task... but in Tiger, there will be, and it will be ubiquitous. Right now, even if someone wanted to use MySQL or SQLite, the Address Book data would have to be imported into it, resulting in two copies. Messy. With CoreData, every app has one unified way of sharing data easily. Should be fun.
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It seems to me that if the database already exists due to the way 10.4 works, that the functionality asked for by a select few would be something Apple could conceivably include.
Absolutely.
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That said, if Address Book integration could be implimented in some mail merge capacity, or as a tab in the Inspector like we have access to pictures in iPhoto, etc. then what other features are likely to be included when Tiger is released? Certainly Apple has ideas for further features beyond that of the 1.0 release, any guesses as to what that functionality may be?
Where to start? How about a tool that takes the latest documents created by any user on the system regarding company X, and organizes text (summarized) and photo into a linear storyboard as a snapshot of your company's interaction with that client in a nutshell? Just a thought off the top of my head. Spotlight + AppleScript + Text Services + Keynote + a small amount of work by a 3rd party developer to tie them together.
Okay, deep breaths, deep breaths... ommmm.... and gosh darnit, people like me.
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Originally posted by trumptman
[B]Look, I'm not trying to sidetrack you. I've just never seen Appleworks have an issue with consumer level printing. I've people complain that it doesn't have high end features, but it isn't that type program.
On that we agree completely... but neither is Pages a unified Works-style solution. It is a *piece* of that solution, but the whole bundle isn't here yet.
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However the point is that Firefox, Word from what I understand still use the same hack we are discussing with Appleworks and they have had further development done on them as well. Doesn't Word and Firefox/Mozilla still use the Quickdraw imaging model?
Not to my knowledge, no. Word was using a hybrid QD/Quartz model in v.X, but IIRC Office2004 is almost entirely Quartz now. Remember the big boost to Excel's charting? Firefox and Mozilla have never been QD to the best of my knowledge.
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I didn't claim that this was the ONLY improvement Apple needed to make. The point is that even as a carbon app, improvements could have been made and it could still run acceptably on OS X. This has been the case with Word and Mozilla. If no Mozilla version had been released until it removed all carbon code, we would still be waiting for example.
Ah, I'm beginning to see perhaps part of the issue here.
Carbon code can call Quartz just dandy. I wasn't saying that moving from Carbon to Cocoa was necessary, but moving from QuickDraw to Quartz even within the Carbon frameworks is a HUGE undertaking. Entirely different event models, runtimes, heck, even the coordinate systems are different. Silk is a front-end-only hack. Yes, it works, but it's not at all an example of how easy it would be to update AW, which was your assertion as I understood it.
Carbonizing an OS9 app isn't that hard, really. Moving from QuickDraw to Quartz is a rather large deal, and in fact, as a developer I'd strongly consider moving from Carbon to Cocoa at the same time. AW6 is Carbonized, but it's the lightest level of Carbonization. A surface char, if you will. Updating it further would be a waste of resources, really, since any significant upgrades would require rather massive retooling to gain access to any new OS technologies. *Minor* things, sure. Bug fixes and the like.
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Appleworks 7 could have simply made some improvements to each of the modules. I haven't claimed it had to be the end all killer app. Spell as you type, a few spreadsheet improvements (like maybe tabs for multiple sheets), some more prefab draw objects, load of templates, anything is better than the years of stagnation.
Well, spell as you type would have to be done from scratch... it's part of the Cocoa frameworks, not Carbon. SS tabs should be doable (but again, dead code base), more draw objs and templates would be simple enough in theory... but of course every man-hour spent on AW is a man-hour not spent on getting the new suite ready. \ We're in a transition here, no doubt about it, and birthing is painful.
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Apple for example is just now getting Quicktime up to date as true OS X code. Yet no one would suggest that incrimental improvement in that service didn't yield good results and help keep Apple in a good position until a full solution is available.
QT was made to be modular from the get go, so the new codecs and such were external development. The core of QT, however, hasn't changed appreciably since OS9. \ Thankfullly that is indeed changing, but the progress you've seen in QT to date on OS X has almost completely been plug-ins. QT itself hasn't evolved for squat. It just happened to be a codebase written just cleanly enough to limp on for the intervening years.
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I mean think what you are endorsing right now. A business has to sell a solution. You are suggesting that what Apple has done with Pages/Keynote is okay because, well there are third party hacks that can help address the shortcomings. That isn't a solution. Office from Microsoft is a solution. People will spend money on it even though it doesn't tie into every service yet. Firefox/Mozilla will be used even though they aren't fully native X apps yet.
Define 'solution'. No, I'm serious. Let me give you my definition: a solution is a set of tools that gets your necessary tasks completed with a minimum of trouble. Word isn't a solution for me because it can't seem to tackle *my* necessary tasks without a lot of pain. Office, ditto. Too. Much. Pain. Finding a script out there with a few minutes of work is too much pain? Google once, use many, minimize pain. Let me gather the set of tools that do my tasks best, and I'll be more productive in the long run. Force feed a set of tools down my throat that do the tasks half-assed, and I'll be struggling for a long time.
Pages is *one* tool.
I guess we just have severely different ways of approaching time optimization.
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I see Pages as the Printshop of word processors. People love how Printshop allows you to create posters, banners and so forth with little real ability. You mostly use templates.
Pages taps into an amazing amount of power and functionality that AW wasn't ever going to get without a complete rewrite. I really don't get this Printshop comparison. Is it because of the templates? Heck, delete them from your hard drive then, and use Pages as a creation tool. You'll find out precisely how much power there is in there. Printshop has a reputation as a toy app, deservedly so. If that's what you're attempting to allude to, you're wildly off base, IMO.
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I think the lack of true draw function is a deficit. Appleworks wasn't a monolithic app.
Monolithic does not refer to size, it refers to design. It is an approach that says "We will provide for you every tool you could possibly imagine. Well, that *we* can possibly imagine. You don't ever need to go outside our boundaries, so there's no need to have robust integration with other programs, or import or export other data types. We will do all you ever need. If you need something else, well, tough." ie, Office apps. AppleWorks too.
iWork is taking a different approach: "We can't provide every tool *you* can imagine, you'll have needs we can't think of, or can't provide a solution for right now. So we're going to concentrate on *one* task here, and provide ways for you (or most likely others) to create those solutions we can't foresee. We'll let you use the tools that best fit your workflow, and bring the product into our app. Likewise, we'll try and make sure that we can convert our product to what you might need elsewhere."
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It is smaller and faster than Pages, Word or a host of other programs. No one is asking for Adobe Creative Suite or anything like that. However by the same notion, we shouldn't have to wait for an operating system to provide a service before an app can have that feature either. That model is very Microsoftish. We all know that Pages has great text tools because of the OS. We also know that Pages has decent draw tools because of the OS. That isn't a comforting model.
*boggle*
There are plenty of excellent art creation tools out there, raster and vector, that rely on zero graphics services other than display to screen. GraphicsConverter, OmniGraffle, heck even Gimp. And those are just the ones under $30, or free. Have more needs? Move up to the level you need.
Again, you're expecting Apple to provide the functionality at some level, such as the OS, or the app. I say both are short-sighted, look up at the plethora of excellent apps out there, and choose one that fits your needs and budget. iWork will accomodate. Monolithic apps (and yes, I include AW due to its design), won't.
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I agree. But what Apple is doing here is providing the core functionality via the OS. Then using a little development to put a wrapper on those services and call it an app. They then leave holes that you hope others might plug via hacks or even more small and obscure third party solutions that are not really full apps, but rather third party services. (Nisus Thesaurus for example)
At what level would you like them to not provide functionality? You're missing one critical point: ANY developer can use that little amount of development and create apps like this. This is just the start.
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That isn't a model most people can market well or convince others to easily use.
I think it's time for user education, to be honest. Once you show someone how easily the iWork apps integrate with their other workflow apps, it's a quick sell in my experience. People are so used to being dictated to by the monolithic Office mentality, that stepping outside the bounds of the current app is foreign to them. That needs to change.
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This solution, while it works is obscure and contrary to the ease of use Apple uses to market their solutions.
Pages+find some scripts=usability. Perhaps but that isn't a solution the general public is going to want to purchase and it doesn't build support and momentum.
Spin, baby. "Does it have mail merge? I need mail merge." "No, but this free script integrates it directly with the Address Book that you use for everything else too, so you only have to enter it once." "Oh, that's slick." "You can also find scripts for integrating with Mail, the Finder, what ever you have that you use regularly."
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That financial figure might change considerably if the only way to get some increased features in Pages is to also purchase OS updates at $129 a pop. Apple has done this with Safari and to me, it is a troubling trend.
Get used to it, is all I can say. The alternative is to have them stop OS development. As new features are added to the OS, would you rather have them *not* integrated with the apps? Ah, you want them to port those technologies back to 10.x-1 and support them there as a part of the app, not the OS. Two words: support nightmare. Two more words: very costly.
New major developer features are rolled out in major OS updates, because they are so pervasive that the testing has to be utterly meticulous. You can't throw together a mishmash of technologies from various generations of the OS and expect them to work.
We're not talking about minor bumps to QT codecs here, we're talking about fundamental core pieces of the OS that affect every app on it. This is called 'hard'. Then, once those pieces are in place, it only makes sense to want to have the applications take advantage of them, no? Well... if you want the new functionality, then you have to move to the OS version that gives them to you. TANSTAAFL.
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Likewise you can do plenty to a home without demo'ing it and starting all over. You can remodel an existing house and get more use out of it. I didn't suggest just a can of paint. Just that they could remodel AND have something to live in while they build their mansion on the hill.
While true, the realities of the QuickDraw -> Quartz move are closer to the complete gutting than the mild remodel.
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No, it just makes a solution that was slowly becoming harder to use tolerable again until Apple moves the new solution further along and hopefully plugs the holes. Buying some shocks for your car doesn't make it new, but it makes the ride nicer until the new car can be bought.
And I still don't think that slapping Silk-esque tech in front of QuickDraw would be an honest thing to do to the customers. Silk exists. It solves it. Go use it. Problem solved, and you didn't even have to pay for an upgrade.
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I'm not sitting on OS 9, talking about the good ol'days of Hypercard or some such nonsense so knock it off. I've obviously already tried Pages, Word Appleworks and even NeoOffice. I've not stuck my head in the mud refusing to accept the world changing.
The flip side of that is that I can also see better development be it from the past, from a third party, or from something that is not a system framework or service. The fact that this is so should not discount or exclude it. Appleworks having a thesaurus, selection word count, mail-merge, draw and database tools does not make it monolithic.
Actually, those combined with the lack of easy integration with other apps, do yea and verily meet the very definition of monolithic.
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Likewise Pages gaining them from a $129 operating system update does not excuse their absense now, nor discount the true cost of acquiring them later.
Alright, I'm just going to have to give up then, if you don't see how untenable your position is here. You're asking Apple to: write a custom one-off DB integration that will be obsolete in a few months, port CoreData to 10.3 *just* for Pages when it would be a testing quagmire, or write an integration with Address Book that will also be obsolete in a few months. Hmm. None seem particularly reasonable or rational, not when they already provided all the necessary tools for a single individual to write a basic mail merge script in less than 48 hours after Pages came out. And yes, I know you're going to run with that and say "See! See how easy it is! They should have done it!" No, they shouldn't be in the school of quick hacks when solid solutions can be had in a matter of weeks. That's just silly.
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For example we mentioned mail-merge and I'll harp on it just because it annoys you.
lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala!
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Talk about using a tool in an odd way.
Yes, I've always thought that mail merge in a word processor was a damned strange beast. Oh wait, that's not what you meant...
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Suppose I want to create a list for merge fields with a paper I am printing. To use the address book for what could be a couple of simple fields is just cumbersome.
Eh? Pop up AB, make new book, use search field, drag to new book, done. Made once, never have to do again. Smart Books (oh no! an OS upgrade for new functionality that requires new OS services!) will make these even easier.
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Of course I can create custom address books that limit who I have to view for this mail-merge, but that still isn't addressing the matter. Small flat form databases are good for all sorts of uses. It could be a cd collection with labels, a class list of students, or whatever. Claiming that address book can solve all of this isn't true because in Word or Appleworks I can create a small flat form database file for merge rather easily. I can also use it for a Christmas Card list and not have to stare at those addresses all year and so forth.
Ah, ah, ah, you're showing precisely why a monolithic app is a nasty beast. You went from mail merge to small flat form database without apparently realizing it. Which is it you want? If you really want a database solution, with Pages integrating with it for mail merge, then say so. That's a very different beast than an amorphous 'mail merge', or even from the current solution of hooking into Address Book. A full DB app would be *stupid* to undertake with a completely new DB aware data storage system around the corner. It would be an utter waste of time IMO.
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In my view using a monolithic operating system and a service available in it, to deal with something that would only be a feature in an app is just as backwards as expecting one app to be everything to everyone.
OSs are by definition almost entirely monolithic because they control the entire local environment. There are well developed paths for data import/export (http, imap, mime), but for the most part, the OS is what you get. Apple is in a unique position of developing the core technologies *and* the apps that use them. As such, they can produce some tech in an app, then migrate it to the OS when it matures (CoreVideo/Image from Motion), but many times the tech isn't amenable to working on older versions of the OS, or the workload to getting it working would simply be overly costly and cumbersome.
Consider it this way: if MS produced an Office 'shell', a wrapper suite of technologies that allowed 3rd parties to play in their sandbox, and produce high quality tools quickly that add new functionality as needed, and you could pick and choose which tools you needed and went out and purchased, instead of being stuck with a pre-defined set of tools, you'd think that was pretty neat, right? That's the OS. That's what Apple is doing. They provide the shell (MacOS X) and a plethora of great technologies, and some really quite good starting points (Pages, iPhoto, iTunes, etc)... then let folks craft things from there. They know they can't be everything to everyone, so they don't try to even get stuck in that game. It's a losing proposition from the getgo.
What you see as a deficit in the lack of robust drawing tools in Keynote and Pages, I see as one less point where I'm forced to use a tool that I don't want. I have OmniGraffle, I have access to Photoshop when I need it, and instead I can concentrate on producing a presentation or document without other cruft getting in the way. If I find that OG doesn't meet my needs anymore, I can go find another tool that does. If I was locked into Apple Drawing Tool For Pages, and found that it really wasn't what I needed, I'd be stuck.
Maybe we should just agree to disagree on this, because you're simply never going to convince me that the unified app (Office, AW, etc) is a better approach, nor that Apple should have been spending resources on shoring up a dead end code base in AW, nor that Apple could have 'easily' converted AW to a more modern API system. None of those make sense.
For those of us that already own iWork, we know what features came with this release. Keynote didn't really receive updates aside from patches that fixed problems between the initial version and this one. Will Pages suffer the same fate? Or will additional functionality be introduced sometime this year in a good update?
I strongly disagree on your assessment of Keynote 2 compared to Keynote 1.
The presenter view alone made it worth the upgrade in my opinion, and many smaller nice items were added. The core app didn't need much mucking about with, I think future upgrades will be incremental adoption of new OS services.
I expect we'll something similar with Pages, but I do hope that they simplify the layout/content workflow a bit. Right now it's... kludgy.
Kickaha, you ought to know me better than that by now. Yes, I screwed up writing that last post. I am not the type to not give credit where credit is due, and Keynote 2 is a HUGE improvement over Keynote one. Let me try a new way of explaining what I was thinking.
Between the release of Keynote 1 and Keynote 2, there weren't many updates, and those updates were focused on bug fixes and the like. I wanted to know if anyone knew if Pages would suffer a similar fate and not recieve any new functionality (new features) until 2006? While Pages is really cool, and a great starting point for someone that isn't needing all of Office's excesses, there are still some features many people feel ought to be included in this release. We all excuse Apple saying," Well it's only a 1.0 release so we have to give them time to get it right.", and for the most part, we're justified in that. But I'd sure like to see a significant speed increase in Pages and some new features before next year. While you folks using PM's and the like my not see any lag with Pages, I use a 1.25 GHz PB with 1GB RAM, and let me tell you, I can't use the word "zippy" to describe Pages, not that I can even use the word to describe my PB, which I think is significantly underwhelming when it comes to performance, but that's another thread.
Any chance that the Pages team will give us new features and added functionality rather than just the occasional bug fix before 2006?
D'OH! My bad, sorry, I just reread your initial post, and you're right, you were talking about the X.y updates. Sorry about that. :}
See, because now I *do* agree with you that Pages needs speed, I'm in the exact same hardware boat you are, and you're right, it's not exactly a speed demon. KN2 feels quite a bit faster than KN1, but that may just be my imagination. This follows with the 'make it work, then make it fast' mantra that Apple's been going with. Here's hoping Pages can get some speed injections before 2.0, but I can't say I'm going to hold my breath. \
One might wonder just how many people are allocated to the iWork software development over at Apple and whether or not any whips are cracking, or if they wander in whenever they feel like it because, hey, who needs to worry about updates until 2006?
Speed is very much an issue. I decided to test my copy on my G4 400 (yes I know it's under spec) and it is excruciating. Even if you take out all the frames except for a standard document text field, it's slow. If I were using it on that system, I'd have to do most of the text in TextEdit, and then lay it out in Pages and format it. However, the copying of character and paragraph styles just rocks! I think it's much better implemented than TextEdit's.
Funny, that's how I've started using it... write raw text in TextEdit, then format in Pages. I'm just more familiar with TE's system right now, I think, and haven't really gotten 'da groove' on how to just do basic text creation in Pages. It's just different enough to cause me the occasional moment of wtf?
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The poor text display was my number 1 complaint about AppleWorks and interfered greatly with my writing.
I'm sure I'll jump to iWork once the bugs in Pages are worked out and the spreadsheet is introduced, but for now, AppleWorks has become an environment in which I can get real work done without griping about how outdated it is.
Makes me wonder why Unsanity didn't promote this more years ago.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Well... not really.
For one thing, Silk doesn't change the typography. It doesn't enable any rendering, kerning, or font-based changes. It's just smoke and mirrors, and really, it's a cheap hack. It sticks anti-aliasing at the end of the QuickDraw render chain, and that's all. It can't alter the kerning to take best advantage of the anti-aliasing for the output device, for example. A Quartz/ATSUI text system can.
If Apple had done this, and tried foisting it off as a 7.0, you'd be bitching to high heaven.
Did you just link Appleworks with high end output device?
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
Did you just link Appleworks with high end output device?
Not unless you consider my HP DeskJet3820 to be 'high-end'.
Every output device has it's own profile, from screen to print. Ever hear of a PPD? That's it. QuickDraw doesn't have the faintest clue what to do with them unless you go through the proper hoops programmatically. Most developers don't bother, it's not worth it. Cocoa/Quartz/ATSUI? For free.
My point was that just making it look slick and shiny on the surface is easy. Silk does that, if that's all you really want. Making it look slick and shiny all the way through, robustly, without requiring the developer to work hard at it, is more difficult. Converting from the old code to the new system is *highly* non-trivial. (If it was easy, we never would have been stuck with Carbon.)
Your claim that Silk showed how 'easy' it would have been for Apple to produce an updated AW7 is hollow.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Not unless you consider my HP DeskJet3820 to be 'high-end'.
Every output device has it's own profile, from screen to print. Ever hear of a PPD? That's it. QuickDraw doesn't have the faintest clue what to do with them unless you go through the proper hoops programmatically. Most developers don't bother, it's not worth it. Cocoa/Quartz/ATSUI? For free.
My point was that just making it look slick and shiny on the surface is easy. Silk does that, if that's all you really want. Making it look slick and shiny all the way through, robustly, without requiring the developer to work hard at it, is more difficult. Converting from the old code to the new system is *highly* non-trivial. (If it was easy, we never would have been stuck with Carbon.)
Your claim that Silk showed how 'easy' it would have been for Apple to produce an updated AW7 is hollow.
I guess I've never noticed Appleworks kerning issues because I only print from Postscript printers. I don't see font spacing issues from the prints I make on my machine. Perhaps there would be if I were going to something higher, but my printer is 1200 dpi. I'm open to hearing what you think is wrong though.
But also didn't Apple still sell a whole hell of a lot of Macs to deal with printing of all sort during OS 9 and before as well? But some printer profiles are still even having issues with Pages and yet that doesn't make the app itself good or bad. I've read forum reports about Pages still having trouble with HP printers. Perhaps HP is the problem.
I also didn't claim that an Appleworks 7 update had to be all shiny and new all the way through. Last I checked certain older apps still had some legacy code and were still updated regularly as well, and still had an enthusiastic following. I don't see anyone tossing Photoshop yet for example even though it won't address more than 2 gigs. Appleworks has lots of people who enjoy using it. It doesn't make my 733 mhz machine come to a crawl at all.
I get this sort of whipsawing back and forth in your expectations sometimes regard these apps. You, at times, talk about using the best app for the purpose. So in your view, Pages deficits are okay because you don't want a half solution to say, a draw program. First and foremost though, that is against the definition of a consumer works program. People do not want to go pick up several $100+ programs just to do their day to day business. I do not need Filemaker pro just to do a mail-merge. I want to spent $99 and have a set of tools that handle 95% of my needs 95% of the time. Sure iMovie cannot do what Final Cut does, but then it is part of iLife for cents on the dollar of what Final Cut costs.
The return side of that is that you seem to condemn Appleworks because it has non-professional output in comparison to OS X or at a minimum does not use and would not easily use OS X system services to achieve the results it could and should. Perhaps Silk is a hack but it is something that would have worked until the Apple can devise something new all the way through. Also I didn't hear users of Appleworks complaining about the print output. They complained about the screen display. Silk fixes that well enough to enable use again. Even if it is a kludge compared to what could be achieved, I prefer to use what has been achieved as opposed to what does not yet exist. I mean does Pages really feel like an app that has seen several years of development to you? It doesn't to me.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
[B]I guess I've never noticed Appleworks kerning issues because I only print from Postscript printers. I don't see font spacing issues from the prints I make on my machine. Perhaps there would be if I were going to something higher, but my printer is 1200 dpi. I'm open to hearing what you think is wrong though.
And, that was the left turn to lalaland.
trumpt, you implied that Silk (a cheap hack) showed how easy it would have been for Apple to produce an 'updated' AW7. I stated that it's just smoke and mirrors. You then tied this somehow to 'high-end printers'. How, I'll never know, but you did. This entire printing issue is a dead end, a red herring, and I'm not going to get pulled into an irrelevant side issue.
Point being made, refute or agree: If Apple had done the Silk hack and charged you for it, you'd be screaming bloody murder "We waited years for *THIS*?!" And you'd be right. Silk makes it look nice on screen, sure. If that's *all* you really wanted in an AW7 upgrade, then great.
That's all.
I get this sort of whipsawing back and forth in your expectations sometimes regard these apps.
And I feel the same sort of seesawing in your expectations regarding AW. On the one hand, you wanted an updated AW7 to be this absolute kick-ass killer app, since they'd had years to work on it, but on the other hand you'd be happy with some vague handwaving that anti-aliases fonts on screen? I don't believe the latter for a minute. Notice that this is precisely in line with the point outlined above.
You, at times, talk about using the best app for the purpose. So in your view, Pages deficits are okay because you don't want a half solution to say, a draw program. First and foremost though, that is against the definition of a consumer works program.
Pages is not a 'works' program. End of story. It is a consumer layout/WP app. It may have some of the same market intent as a Works app, but it is not an all-in-one song-and-dance app. It does one thing. In that light, the lack of a do-all be-all draw program inside it and Keynote isn't a deficit, it's by design, and it's one I agree with. The era of monolithic apps that attempt to do a thousand things, none particularly well, needs to die as fast as possible.
Apple needs to provide the core functionality of the apps, and do so at a high level of quality, then provide hooks for others to create the specialty tools that niches need. (I still see mail merge as a niche, for instance, since most consumers aren't going to need it, and pros are going to have a different solution.) They do this exceedingly well.
People do not want to go pick up several $100+ programs just to do their day to day business.
Nor do they want to spend several hundred on an app with all the widgets, only to find that it can't really do it's main purpose.
I do not need Filemaker pro just to do a mail-merge.
Which is why Address Book + that nice free script mentioned earlier in this thread should would dandy for you.
I want to spent $99 and have a set of tools that handle 95% of my needs 95% of the time. Sure iMovie cannot do what Final Cut does, but then it is part of iLife for cents on the dollar of what Final Cut costs.
Pages, as 1/2 of iWork: $39.50
Word: $200?
And yet I'll take Pages any day over Word for the types of documents I need to do layout for. For serious technical work, I'll take TeXShop over Word any day... and it's free.
The return side of that is that you seem to condemn Appleworks because it has non-professional output in comparison to OS X or at a minimum does not use and would not easily use OS X system services to achieve the results it could and should.
No, I condemn your opinion that Silk somehow demonstrates that Apple could have 'easily' upgraded AW. Utterly irrational. That's like seeing someone slap a new coat of paint on an old rickety house, and then blasting the previous owners for not doing a complete rebuild inside because "Look how easy it was for them to make it look better! Only took a weekend!" Or do you really not see that?
Perhaps Silk is a hack but it is something that would have worked until the Apple can devise something new all the way through. Also I didn't hear users of Appleworks complaining about the print output. They complained about the screen display. Silk fixes that well enough to enable use again.
Well for god's sake, if that's all it would have ever taken to make you happy with AW, I would have suggested it months ago. I didn't realize your expectations were that low though.
Even if it is a kludge compared to what could be achieved, I prefer to use what has been achieved as opposed to what does not yet exist.
Well of course. The same arguments were made about MacOS X 10.0, 10.1, and still to this day. "Well it doesn't have GizmoABC that I can get on OS9, so I'm not moving, no matter what you say!" "But here are three replacements for GizmoABC on OS X..." "Nuh-uh! Don't care! If it's not exactly GizmoABC, then I don't want it!" "But it's the same functionality, and your computer will be more stable, with so many new..." "Don't care! Is it EXACTLY GizmoABC? No? Then I'm not moving."
I get the feeling that is being rehashed here, with GizmoABC replaced with mail merge... and frankly, there's no argument to be made in that case. No amount of rational discourse will convince the person with such an entrenched view.
I mean does Pages really feel like an app that has seen several years of development to you? It doesn't to me.
Pages feels like a 1.0. Keynote 1.0 had similar issues. So did Safari 1.0. So does every app ever shipped. And what evidence do you have of 'several years' of development? Seriously. You state that like it is fact, yet it is just an assumption on your part, isn't it?
It's been said before that Tiger will be a huge database that allows Spotlight to do its thing efficiently. That being said, would it be unlikely that Apple would improve the functionality of it's Address Book application to provide the mail merge option in Pages, which we all know is just a 1.0 release and will obviously be gaining more features as time moves on?
It seems to me that if the database already exists due to the way 10.4 works, that the functionality asked for by a select few would be something Apple could conceivably include.
That said, if Address Book integration could be implimented in some mail merge capacity, or as a tab in the Inspector like we have access to pictures in iPhoto, etc. then what other features are likely to be included when Tiger is released? Certainly Apple has ideas for further features beyond that of the 1.0 release, any guesses as to what that functionality may be?
And you're both right.
Kick, I know it's a cheap hack, with all the flaws you've detailed so well.
But Jobs let this program suffer for half a decade with no real updates.
It wouldn't have taken anything from them to add this "cheap hack" and make AppleWorks a bit less shabby.
Trumpt, This is a bit of sleight of hand, and is all eye candy built on no real foundation. It wouldn't have been worthy of a 7.0 upgrade.
AppleWorks 6.3, however, is another matter entirely. Given that iWork is still not ready for prime time in SOHO and Education environments - and won't be for at least a year - I think they should still do it.
Originally posted by Kickaha
And, that was the left turn to lalaland.
trumpt, you implied that Silk (a cheap hack) showed how easy it would have been for Apple to produce an 'updated' AW7. I stated that it's just smoke and mirrors. You then tied this somehow to 'high-end printers'. How, I'll never know, but you did. This entire printing issue is a dead end, a red herring, and I'm not going to get pulled into an irrelevant side issue.
Look, I'm not trying to sidetrack you. I've just never seen Appleworks have an issue with consumer level printing. I've people complain that it doesn't have high end features, but it isn't that type program. Sorry if my historical "baggage" associated with this bleeds into my discussion with you. I'm not trying to distract from the matter or even claim that Silk alone was enough to justify an upgrade. However the point is that Firefox, Word from what I understand still use the same hack we are discussing with Appleworks and they have had further development done on them as well. Doesn't Word and Firefox/Mozilla still use the Quickdraw imaging model? Both are still widely used and considered up to date. Sure they don't fully take advantage of all system services available but I would rather use an app than wait for an operating system update or pray that someone puts together some solution using services.
Point being made, refute or agree: If Apple had done the Silk hack and charged you for it, you'd be screaming bloody murder "We waited years for *THIS*?!" And you'd be right. Silk makes it look nice on screen, sure. If that's *all* you really wanted in an AW7 upgrade, then great.
That's all.
I didn't claim that this was the ONLY improvement Apple needed to make. The point is that even as a carbon app, improvements could have been made and it could still run acceptably on OS X. This has been the case with Word and Mozilla. If no Mozilla version had been released until it removed all carbon code, we would still be waiting for example.
And I feel the same sort of seesawing in your expectations regarding AW. On the one hand, you wanted an updated AW7 to be this absolute kick-ass killer app, since they'd had years to work on it, but on the other hand you'd be happy with some vague handwaving that anti-aliases fonts on screen? I don't believe the latter for a minute. Notice that this is precisely in line with the point outlined above.
Appleworks 7 could have simply made some improvements to each of the modules. I haven't claimed it had to be the end all killer app. Spell as you type, a few spreadsheet improvements (like maybe tabs for multiple sheets), some more prefab draw objects, load of templates, anything is better than the years of stagnation. Apple for example is just now getting Quicktime up to date as true OS X code. Yet no one would suggest that incrimental improvement in that service didn't yield good results and help keep Apple in a good position until a full solution is available.
I mean think what you are endorsing right now. A business has to sell a solution. You are suggesting that what Apple has done with Pages/Keynote is okay because, well there are third party hacks that can help address the shortcomings. That isn't a solution. Office from Microsoft is a solution. People will spend money on it even though it doesn't tie into every service yet. Firefox/Mozilla will be used even though they aren't fully native X apps yet.
Pages is not a 'works' program. End of story. It is a consumer layout/WP app. It may have some of the same market intent as a Works app, but it is not an all-in-one song-and-dance app. It does one thing. In that light, the lack of a do-all be-all draw program inside it and Keynote isn't a deficit, it's by design, and it's one I agree with. The era of monolithic apps that attempt to do a thousand things, none particularly well, needs to die as fast as possible.
I see Pages as the Printshop of word processors. People love how Printshop allows you to create posters, banners and so forth with little real ability. You mostly use templates.
I think the lack of true draw function is a deficit. Appleworks wasn't a monolithic app. It is smaller and faster than Pages, Word or a host of other programs. No one is asking for Adobe Creative Suite or anything like that. However by the same notion, we shouldn't have to wait for an operating system to provide a service before an app can have that feature either. That model is very Microsoftish. We all know that Pages has great text tools because of the OS. We also know that Pages has no decent draw tools because of the OS. That isn't a comforting model.
Apple needs to provide the core functionality of the apps, and do so at a high level of quality, then provide hooks for others to create the specialty tools that niches need. (I still see mail merge as a niche, for instance, since most consumers aren't going to need it, and pros are going to have a different solution.) They do this exceedingly well.
I agree. But what Apple is doing here is providing the core functionality via the OS. Then using a little development to put a wrapper on those services and call it an app. They then leave holes that you hope others might plug via hacks or even more small and obscure third party solutions that are not really full apps, but rather third party services. (Nisus Thesaurus for example)
That isn't am model most people can market well or convince others to easily use.
Nor do they want to spend several hundred on an app with all the widgets, only to find that it can't really do it's main purpose.
Correct.
Which is why Address Book + that nice free script mentioned earlier in this thread should would dandy for you.
This solution, while it works is obscure and contrary to the ease of use Apple uses to market their solutions.
Pages+find some scripts=usability. Perhaps but that isn't a solution the general public is going to want to purchase and it doesn't build support and momentum.
Pages, as 1/2 of iWork: $39.50
Word: $200?
And yet I'll take Pages any day over Word for the types of documents I need to do layout for. For serious technical work, I'll take TeXShop over Word any day... and it's free.
That financial figure might change considerably if the only way to get some increased features in Pages is to also purchase OS updates at $129 a pop. Apple has done this with Safari and to me, it is a troubling trend.
No, I condemn your opinion that Silk somehow demonstrates that Apple could have 'easily' upgraded AW. Utterly irrational. That's like seeing someone slap a new coat of paint on an old rickety house, and then blasting the previous owners for not doing a complete rebuild inside because "Look how easy it was for them to make it look better! Only took a weekend!" Or do you really not see that?
Likewise you can do plenty to a home without demo'ing it and starting all over. You can remodel an existing house and get more use out of it. I didn't suggest just a can of paint. Just that they could remodel AND have something to live in while they build their mansion on the hill.
Well for god's sake, if that's all it would have ever taken to make you happy with AW, I would have suggested it months ago. I didn't realize your expectations were that low though.
No, it just makes a solution that was slowly becoming harder to use tolerable again until Apple moves the new solution further along and hopefully plugs the holes. Buying some shocks for your car doesn't make it new, but it makes the ride nicer until the new car can be bought.
Well of course. The same arguments were made about MacOS X 10.0, 10.1, and still to this day. "Well it doesn't have GizmoABC that I can get on OS9, so I'm not moving, no matter what you say!" "But here are three replacements for GizmoABC on OS X..." "Nuh-uh! Don't care! If it's not exactly GizmoABC, then I don't want it!" "But it's the same functionality, and your computer will be more stable, with so many new..." "Don't care! Is it EXACTLY GizmoABC? No? Then I'm not moving."
I get the feeling that is being rehashed here, with GizmoABC replaced with mail merge... and frankly, there's no argument to be made in that case. No amount of rational discourse will convince the person with such an entrenched view.
I'm not sitting on OS 9, talking about the good ol'days of Hypercard or some such nonsense so knock it off. I've obviously already tried Pages, Word Appleworks and even NeoOffice. I've not stuck my head in the mud refusing to accept the world changing.
The flip side of that is that I can also see better development be it from the past, from a third party, or from something that is not a system framework or service. The fact that this is so should not discount or exclude it. Appleworks having a thesaurus, selection word count, mail-merge, draw and database tools does not make it monolithic. Likewise Pages gaining them from a $129 operating system update does not excuse their absense now, nor discount the true cost of acquiring them later.
For example we mentioned mail-merge and I'll harp on it just because it annoys you.
In my view using a monolithic operating system and a service available in it, to deal with something that would only be a feature in an app is just as backwards as expecting one app to be everything to everyone.
Originally posted by Brian Green
Kickaha, I have a question for you that falls in line with the current discussion on this thread, perhaps you can shed some light on the matter for me.
It's been said before that Tiger will be a huge database that allows Spotlight to do its thing efficiently. That being said, would it be unlikely that Apple would improve the functionality of it's Address Book application to provide the mail merge option in Pages, which we all know is just a 1.0 release and will obviously be gaining more features as time moves on?
BING BING BING Give the man a kewpie doll, folks.
It seems to me that if the database already exists due to the way 10.4 works, that the functionality asked for by a select few would be something Apple could conceivably include.
Absolutely.
That said, if Address Book integration could be implimented in some mail merge capacity, or as a tab in the Inspector like we have access to pictures in iPhoto, etc. then what other features are likely to be included when Tiger is released? Certainly Apple has ideas for further features beyond that of the 1.0 release, any guesses as to what that functionality may be?
Where to start? How about a tool that takes the latest documents created by any user on the system regarding company X, and organizes text (summarized) and photo into a linear storyboard as a snapshot of your company's interaction with that client in a nutshell?
Originally posted by trumptman
[B]Look, I'm not trying to sidetrack you. I've just never seen Appleworks have an issue with consumer level printing. I've people complain that it doesn't have high end features, but it isn't that type program.
On that we agree completely... but neither is Pages a unified Works-style solution. It is a *piece* of that solution, but the whole bundle isn't here yet.
However the point is that Firefox, Word from what I understand still use the same hack we are discussing with Appleworks and they have had further development done on them as well. Doesn't Word and Firefox/Mozilla still use the Quickdraw imaging model?
Not to my knowledge, no. Word was using a hybrid QD/Quartz model in v.X, but IIRC Office2004 is almost entirely Quartz now. Remember the big boost to Excel's charting? Firefox and Mozilla have never been QD to the best of my knowledge.
I didn't claim that this was the ONLY improvement Apple needed to make. The point is that even as a carbon app, improvements could have been made and it could still run acceptably on OS X. This has been the case with Word and Mozilla. If no Mozilla version had been released until it removed all carbon code, we would still be waiting for example.
Ah, I'm beginning to see perhaps part of the issue here.
Carbon code can call Quartz just dandy. I wasn't saying that moving from Carbon to Cocoa was necessary, but moving from QuickDraw to Quartz even within the Carbon frameworks is a HUGE undertaking. Entirely different event models, runtimes, heck, even the coordinate systems are different. Silk is a front-end-only hack. Yes, it works, but it's not at all an example of how easy it would be to update AW, which was your assertion as I understood it.
Carbonizing an OS9 app isn't that hard, really. Moving from QuickDraw to Quartz is a rather large deal, and in fact, as a developer I'd strongly consider moving from Carbon to Cocoa at the same time. AW6 is Carbonized, but it's the lightest level of Carbonization. A surface char, if you will.
Appleworks 7 could have simply made some improvements to each of the modules. I haven't claimed it had to be the end all killer app. Spell as you type, a few spreadsheet improvements (like maybe tabs for multiple sheets), some more prefab draw objects, load of templates, anything is better than the years of stagnation.
Well, spell as you type would have to be done from scratch... it's part of the Cocoa frameworks, not Carbon. SS tabs should be doable (but again, dead code base), more draw objs and templates would be simple enough in theory... but of course every man-hour spent on AW is a man-hour not spent on getting the new suite ready.
Apple for example is just now getting Quicktime up to date as true OS X code. Yet no one would suggest that incrimental improvement in that service didn't yield good results and help keep Apple in a good position until a full solution is available.
QT was made to be modular from the get go, so the new codecs and such were external development. The core of QT, however, hasn't changed appreciably since OS9.
I mean think what you are endorsing right now. A business has to sell a solution. You are suggesting that what Apple has done with Pages/Keynote is okay because, well there are third party hacks that can help address the shortcomings. That isn't a solution. Office from Microsoft is a solution. People will spend money on it even though it doesn't tie into every service yet. Firefox/Mozilla will be used even though they aren't fully native X apps yet.
Define 'solution'. No, I'm serious. Let me give you my definition: a solution is a set of tools that gets your necessary tasks completed with a minimum of trouble. Word isn't a solution for me because it can't seem to tackle *my* necessary tasks without a lot of pain. Office, ditto. Too. Much. Pain. Finding a script out there with a few minutes of work is too much pain? Google once, use many, minimize pain. Let me gather the set of tools that do my tasks best, and I'll be more productive in the long run. Force feed a set of tools down my throat that do the tasks half-assed, and I'll be struggling for a long time.
Pages is *one* tool.
I guess we just have severely different ways of approaching time optimization.
I see Pages as the Printshop of word processors. People love how Printshop allows you to create posters, banners and so forth with little real ability. You mostly use templates.
Pages taps into an amazing amount of power and functionality that AW wasn't ever going to get without a complete rewrite. I really don't get this Printshop comparison. Is it because of the templates? Heck, delete them from your hard drive then, and use Pages as a creation tool. You'll find out precisely how much power there is in there. Printshop has a reputation as a toy app, deservedly so. If that's what you're attempting to allude to, you're wildly off base, IMO.
I think the lack of true draw function is a deficit. Appleworks wasn't a monolithic app.
Monolithic does not refer to size, it refers to design. It is an approach that says "We will provide for you every tool you could possibly imagine. Well, that *we* can possibly imagine. You don't ever need to go outside our boundaries, so there's no need to have robust integration with other programs, or import or export other data types. We will do all you ever need. If you need something else, well, tough." ie, Office apps. AppleWorks too.
iWork is taking a different approach: "We can't provide every tool *you* can imagine, you'll have needs we can't think of, or can't provide a solution for right now. So we're going to concentrate on *one* task here, and provide ways for you (or most likely others) to create those solutions we can't foresee. We'll let you use the tools that best fit your workflow, and bring the product into our app. Likewise, we'll try and make sure that we can convert our product to what you might need elsewhere."
It is smaller and faster than Pages, Word or a host of other programs. No one is asking for Adobe Creative Suite or anything like that. However by the same notion, we shouldn't have to wait for an operating system to provide a service before an app can have that feature either. That model is very Microsoftish. We all know that Pages has great text tools because of the OS. We also know that Pages has decent draw tools because of the OS. That isn't a comforting model.
*boggle*
There are plenty of excellent art creation tools out there, raster and vector, that rely on zero graphics services other than display to screen. GraphicsConverter, OmniGraffle, heck even Gimp. And those are just the ones under $30, or free. Have more needs? Move up to the level you need.
Again, you're expecting Apple to provide the functionality at some level, such as the OS, or the app. I say both are short-sighted, look up at the plethora of excellent apps out there, and choose one that fits your needs and budget. iWork will accomodate. Monolithic apps (and yes, I include AW due to its design), won't.
I agree. But what Apple is doing here is providing the core functionality via the OS. Then using a little development to put a wrapper on those services and call it an app. They then leave holes that you hope others might plug via hacks or even more small and obscure third party solutions that are not really full apps, but rather third party services. (Nisus Thesaurus for example)
At what level would you like them to not provide functionality? You're missing one critical point: ANY developer can use that little amount of development and create apps like this. This is just the start.
That isn't a model most people can market well or convince others to easily use.
I think it's time for user education, to be honest. Once you show someone how easily the iWork apps integrate with their other workflow apps, it's a quick sell in my experience. People are so used to being dictated to by the monolithic Office mentality, that stepping outside the bounds of the current app is foreign to them. That needs to change.
This solution, while it works is obscure and contrary to the ease of use Apple uses to market their solutions.
Pages+find some scripts=usability. Perhaps but that isn't a solution the general public is going to want to purchase and it doesn't build support and momentum.
Spin, baby. "Does it have mail merge? I need mail merge." "No, but this free script integrates it directly with the Address Book that you use for everything else too, so you only have to enter it once." "Oh, that's slick." "You can also find scripts for integrating with Mail, the Finder, what ever you have that you use regularly."
That financial figure might change considerably if the only way to get some increased features in Pages is to also purchase OS updates at $129 a pop. Apple has done this with Safari and to me, it is a troubling trend.
Get used to it, is all I can say. The alternative is to have them stop OS development. As new features are added to the OS, would you rather have them *not* integrated with the apps? Ah, you want them to port those technologies back to 10.x-1 and support them there as a part of the app, not the OS. Two words: support nightmare. Two more words: very costly.
New major developer features are rolled out in major OS updates, because they are so pervasive that the testing has to be utterly meticulous. You can't throw together a mishmash of technologies from various generations of the OS and expect them to work.
We're not talking about minor bumps to QT codecs here, we're talking about fundamental core pieces of the OS that affect every app on it. This is called 'hard'. Then, once those pieces are in place, it only makes sense to want to have the applications take advantage of them, no? Well... if you want the new functionality, then you have to move to the OS version that gives them to you. TANSTAAFL.
Likewise you can do plenty to a home without demo'ing it and starting all over. You can remodel an existing house and get more use out of it. I didn't suggest just a can of paint. Just that they could remodel AND have something to live in while they build their mansion on the hill.
While true, the realities of the QuickDraw -> Quartz move are closer to the complete gutting than the mild remodel.
No, it just makes a solution that was slowly becoming harder to use tolerable again until Apple moves the new solution further along and hopefully plugs the holes. Buying some shocks for your car doesn't make it new, but it makes the ride nicer until the new car can be bought.
And I still don't think that slapping Silk-esque tech in front of QuickDraw would be an honest thing to do to the customers. Silk exists. It solves it. Go use it. Problem solved, and you didn't even have to pay for an upgrade.
I'm not sitting on OS 9, talking about the good ol'days of Hypercard or some such nonsense so knock it off. I've obviously already tried Pages, Word Appleworks and even NeoOffice. I've not stuck my head in the mud refusing to accept the world changing.
The flip side of that is that I can also see better development be it from the past, from a third party, or from something that is not a system framework or service. The fact that this is so should not discount or exclude it. Appleworks having a thesaurus, selection word count, mail-merge, draw and database tools does not make it monolithic.
Actually, those combined with the lack of easy integration with other apps, do yea and verily meet the very definition of monolithic.
Likewise Pages gaining them from a $129 operating system update does not excuse their absense now, nor discount the true cost of acquiring them later.
Alright, I'm just going to have to give up then, if you don't see how untenable your position is here. You're asking Apple to: write a custom one-off DB integration that will be obsolete in a few months, port CoreData to 10.3 *just* for Pages when it would be a testing quagmire, or write an integration with Address Book that will also be obsolete in a few months. Hmm. None seem particularly reasonable or rational, not when they already provided all the necessary tools for a single individual to write a basic mail merge script in less than 48 hours after Pages came out. And yes, I know you're going to run with that and say "See! See how easy it is! They should have done it!" No, they shouldn't be in the school of quick hacks when solid solutions can be had in a matter of weeks. That's just silly.
For example we mentioned mail-merge and I'll harp on it just because it annoys you.
lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala!
Talk about using a tool in an odd way.
Yes, I've always thought that mail merge in a word processor was a damned strange beast. Oh wait, that's not what you meant...
Suppose I want to create a list for merge fields with a paper I am printing. To use the address book for what could be a couple of simple fields is just cumbersome.
Eh? Pop up AB, make new book, use search field, drag to new book, done. Made once, never have to do again. Smart Books (oh no! an OS upgrade for new functionality that requires new OS services!) will make these even easier.
Of course I can create custom address books that limit who I have to view for this mail-merge, but that still isn't addressing the matter. Small flat form databases are good for all sorts of uses. It could be a cd collection with labels, a class list of students, or whatever. Claiming that address book can solve all of this isn't true because in Word or Appleworks I can create a small flat form database file for merge rather easily. I can also use it for a Christmas Card list and not have to stare at those addresses all year and so forth.
Ah, ah, ah, you're showing precisely why a monolithic app is a nasty beast. You went from mail merge to small flat form database without apparently realizing it. Which is it you want? If you really want a database solution, with Pages integrating with it for mail merge, then say so. That's a very different beast than an amorphous 'mail merge', or even from the current solution of hooking into Address Book. A full DB app would be *stupid* to undertake with a completely new DB aware data storage system around the corner. It would be an utter waste of time IMO.
In my view using a monolithic operating system and a service available in it, to deal with something that would only be a feature in an app is just as backwards as expecting one app to be everything to everyone.
OSs are by definition almost entirely monolithic because they control the entire local environment. There are well developed paths for data import/export (http, imap, mime), but for the most part, the OS is what you get. Apple is in a unique position of developing the core technologies *and* the apps that use them. As such, they can produce some tech in an app, then migrate it to the OS when it matures (CoreVideo/Image from Motion), but many times the tech isn't amenable to working on older versions of the OS, or the workload to getting it working would simply be overly costly and cumbersome.
Consider it this way: if MS produced an Office 'shell', a wrapper suite of technologies that allowed 3rd parties to play in their sandbox, and produce high quality tools quickly that add new functionality as needed, and you could pick and choose which tools you needed and went out and purchased, instead of being stuck with a pre-defined set of tools, you'd think that was pretty neat, right? That's the OS. That's what Apple is doing. They provide the shell (MacOS X) and a plethora of great technologies, and some really quite good starting points (Pages, iPhoto, iTunes, etc)... then let folks craft things from there. They know they can't be everything to everyone, so they don't try to even get stuck in that game. It's a losing proposition from the getgo.
What you see as a deficit in the lack of robust drawing tools in Keynote and Pages, I see as one less point where I'm forced to use a tool that I don't want. I have OmniGraffle, I have access to Photoshop when I need it, and instead I can concentrate on producing a presentation or document without other cruft getting in the way. If I find that OG doesn't meet my needs anymore, I can go find another tool that does. If I was locked into Apple Drawing Tool For Pages, and found that it really wasn't what I needed, I'd be stuck.
Maybe we should just agree to disagree on this, because you're simply never going to convince me that the unified app (Office, AW, etc) is a better approach, nor that Apple should have been spending resources on shoring up a dead end code base in AW, nor that Apple could have 'easily' converted AW to a more modern API system. None of those make sense.
The presenter view alone made it worth the upgrade in my opinion, and many smaller nice items were added. The core app didn't need much mucking about with, I think future upgrades will be incremental adoption of new OS services.
I expect we'll something similar with Pages, but I do hope that they simplify the layout/content workflow a bit. Right now it's... kludgy.
Between the release of Keynote 1 and Keynote 2, there weren't many updates, and those updates were focused on bug fixes and the like. I wanted to know if anyone knew if Pages would suffer a similar fate and not recieve any new functionality (new features) until 2006? While Pages is really cool, and a great starting point for someone that isn't needing all of Office's excesses, there are still some features many people feel ought to be included in this release. We all excuse Apple saying," Well it's only a 1.0 release so we have to give them time to get it right.", and for the most part, we're justified in that. But I'd sure like to see a significant speed increase in Pages and some new features before next year. While you folks using PM's and the like my not see any lag with Pages, I use a 1.25 GHz PB with 1GB RAM, and let me tell you, I can't use the word "zippy" to describe Pages, not that I can even use the word to describe my PB, which I think is significantly underwhelming when it comes to performance, but that's another thread.
Any chance that the Pages team will give us new features and added functionality rather than just the occasional bug fix before 2006?
See, because now I *do* agree with you that Pages needs speed, I'm in the exact same hardware boat you are, and you're right, it's not exactly a speed demon. KN2 feels quite a bit faster than KN1, but that may just be my imagination. This follows with the 'make it work, then make it fast' mantra that Apple's been going with. Here's hoping Pages can get some speed injections before 2.0, but I can't say I'm going to hold my breath.
Nick