I have been using Pages now for a week. At first, it seemed frustrating because it isn't really a word processor or a page layout app. It is somewhere in between and both at once.
If you just want to open it up and start typing you can do that. Or if you want to spend a little time and think about what your document will be visually, you are in total control of just about anything you can think of.
But there are little things that at first throw you off. Deleting a page. Strict use of the inspector and font palette. Not being able to use the tab bar to indent the next line on numbering and bullets. Etc.
I read the manual before I even started to use it, (plane ride) and still at first found myself falling back into the old way of thinking about it like a word processor. After using it for a little bit and going back to the manual, everything seemed to make sense. (Don't usually need a manual for most Apple apps but in this case, it is worth it and it is an easy read.)
Templates and styles are the power of Pages. And I'm not talking about the templates Apple gives you. It is so easy to save and make your own. I have created several "blank" templates of my own that are suitable for work or personal use. These allow me to use Pages like a regular word processor. I also have templates that are suitable for our standard report format with graphic placeholders, etc. More like a page layout app.
The delete Pages issue is best remedied by always working with Invisibles showing. Then you are able to delete everything very easily. (My blank templates are set up so that invisibles are activated.)
I think in a few weeks you will start to see more glowing reviews of Pages. For now, it is just different and odd enough that fast criticism is easy to put forward. I was guilty of this myself.
Pages really grows on you. Being in control and not having the program guess what you are trying to do is refreshing. Formatting my documents is now easy and I know they are correct. And since I really don't do anything really complex, my work exports to .doc flawlessly.
From the super-secretive Apple, the Services menu may be their best kept secret. Honestly, in my entire time from 10.0 I have never directly selected anything out of the services menu. I don't know if there are certain operations that I do that indirectly access the services menu. But if access to this type of functionality is the selling point of Pages, then I don't think I'm too impressed.
Services are easily forgotten. If you make a point of trying to member what's up there they are very useful. For example select a URL in any Cocoa and select Carbon app and there is an Open URL service. Select a file in the Finder, there is a service to email it as an attachment. It's just a matter of remembering to use them.
trumptman, this is the new OpenDoc. Services allow many applications to offer up, well, services, that can be used on data selected elsewhere. This lets third parties step in and fill in needs in other applications.
And in case it's lost in the product page:
Count statistics on a per selection basis.
If Apple wants to use services to access some features within a program that is fine by me. I know that the spell checking within Pages for example is simply the system spell checking.
However we are talking about a replacement for an existing product that already had this feature. Hence the name new wine, crappy bottle. Appleworks may have been old and carbon, but it had these features and didn't require people to go looking all over the web to fill in the holes.
I just thought I should point out that Pages does have a wordcount and it's not particularly difficult to find: inspector / document / info
It's so obvious that it could well be I'm totally missing what everyone else is complaining about, in which case, sorry.
This was already mentioned by me above. However it will not count the words within a selected portion of text. My professor would be quite upset if I turned in a 5000 word essay and had counted my name, class section, etc as "words" within that essay.
Pages is a great app. I love it; but it's a classic NeXT application where version 1's primary attribute is that it exists. The gestus of the application is there, but there's a fair bit of implementation to come. Hence 'building' the successor to AppleWorks, rather then 'delivering' it, as said in the last Stevenote.
I disagree. The whole point of the NeXT model is rapid and better application development. Pages is anything but a model of that. It has been long in coming and is short in features. It clearly relies on many of the system frameworks but the reality is that for such a long wait, it should be a much better, more mature app and the holes should not be so large and obvious.
Oh... new hole of the day... no mail merge. Something I could not only do in Appleworks v6, but do in Appleworks v. Apple IIe.
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And it's a new class of application. So there. Not a 'word processor' or a 'DTP app' but something slightly different, and something that makes you create rather different documents ... let me explain.
I've been playing with it today; I started to write a document in TextEdit which I normally start documents off in as it's easy to get your text down. Then I thought ... Pages. It was an internal document about a new product my company could make. Using a template, I swapped the graphics out and changed the titles and subheadings to my purposes. Took seconds. Then texty-text blah blah tap tap tap ... what I created was an extremely attractive internal marketing document that communicated rather then disappearing into the memoscape of modern business. It looked like marketing bumf that you get in the post. Saved as a PDF the impact it will make is 1000 times greater then an RTF would have been.
I apologize in advance if I sound like an ass, but that doesn't sound creative to me at all. It sounds like Printshop for Word Prcocessing. I don't know if you own Appleworks, but the point is that I recreated a couple templates to show how easy they to do on something even as old as that and that there really is no new functionality. In fact there is quite the opposite. A load of functionality has been removed, not to make it easier or more efficient, but simply because it was not included.
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Apple's aim with this app is to make productivity software for a mythical 21st Century enterprise that has creativity and communication at its heart; businesses looking for a competitive edge through use of IT. This is a Good Thing. And it's a great CONCEPT v1.0. Oh, and the Inspector is a wonderful tool.
Then Apple should have included features like revision tracking and collaboration tools within Pages. I see nothing of the sort.
The Inspector is a poorly organized pile of crap.
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Yes, I have some beefs with the interface (you can't set default dictionary for example) but when I create documents on this my colleagues will think I'm a fucking genius. Which I like.
If your colleagues think that Print Shop type prettiness denotes genius, then I feel for you having to work in such an environment.
This was already mentioned by me above. However it will not count the words within a selected portion of text. My professor would be quite upset if I turned in a 5000 word essay and had counted my name, class section, etc as "words" within that essay.
I would hope professors would spend their time reading the essay, rather than counting all the words in it, then busting you for being five under and "cheating" by adding your name to the count.
This was already mentioned by me above. However it will not count the words within a selected portion of text. My professor would be quite upset if I turned in a 5000 word essay and had counted my name, class section, etc as "words" within that essay.
Oh... new hole of the day... no mail merge. Something I could not only do in Appleworks v6, but do in Appleworks v. Apple IIe.
Without a database, that seems like an obvious duh, not a hole.
I mean jeez, you can't even play Solitaire in it! What a complete bug!
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there really is no new functionality.
Sorry, but you just lost a lot of credibility in my eyes. No new functionality? Riiiiiiiiight. The fonts management and typographic control, Unicode, object and image composition and masking, gridded layout with helper guides... don't recall any of those in AppleWorks. Those are just off the top of my head from knowing the standard system tools.
Poke around in the guts a bit more, and you'll find a ton. Just because there isn't a menu item staring you in the face for every little feature doesn't mean it's not in there.
Pages may not meet your idea of a document creation application, and it may not even meet your needs, but come on, have some perspective. I'm not expecting it to replace my LaTeX and BibTeX tool suite, nor am I expecting it to be my technical writing tool. It's obviously got a different design philosophy. For what it's geared for, it looks *fabulous*, and I'm quite eager to start using it to create the documents I find troublesome in LaTeX. Keynote is one of my absolute favorite apps, and I think it's brilliant, so perhaps that's the difference. That and I ditched the OS 9 mental models years ago... I find AppleWorks 6 to be positively a horror to work in.
Without a database, that seems like an obvious duh, not a hole.
I mean jeez, you can't even play Solitaire in it! What a complete bug!
The reality is that MS Word, with or without a database allows you to create a small flat file for mail merge.
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Sorry, but you just lost a lot of credibility in my eyes. No new functionality? Riiiiiiiiight. The fonts management and typographic control, Unicode, object and image composition and masking, gridded layout with helper guides... don't recall any of those in AppleWorks. Those are just off the top of my head from knowing the standard system tools.
Again while some of those features are nice, we are talking about a word processor. I'm much more likely to need to address five envelopes with my word processor than I am to control the masking on my images. If I do have such a need, there are desktop publishing programs that allow even greater control than Pages. That doesn't mean Pages is terrible. It means that each app can have a purpose and serve it well. Appleworks served the consumer grade office suite "works" niche well. Pages does not fit the bill yet and doesn't appear to be going in the right direction. People buying $500 miniMacs need mail merge more than say, full typographic control.
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Pages may not meet your idea of a document creation application, and it may not even meet your needs, but come on, have some perspective. I'm not expecting it to replace my LaTeX and BibTeX tool suite, nor am I expecting it to be my technical writing tool. It's obviously got a different design philosophy. For what it's geared for, it looks *fabulous*, and I'm quite eager to start using it to create the documents I find troublesome in LaTeX. Keynote is one of my absolute favorite apps, and I think it's brilliant, so perhaps that's the difference. That and I ditched the OS 9 mental models years ago... I find AppleWorks 6 to be positively a horror to work in.
I didn't claim it had to be all things to all people. In fact I think I characterized it very well as PrintShop Word Processing. OS 9 was not a terrible mental model. OS X could still take some good cues from it. The point is that Pages should be better than what it replaces. It is not. Appleworks can duplicate, on the consumer level, everything Pages does and still do much more. The model of taking large individual apps and forcing them to work together clumsily feels very Microsoft-ish which was something to avoid. Additionally while I can appreciate that OS X has certain services which can be utilized by an app like Pages, that still does not excuse shortcomings, like mail-merge, have been a part of all modern apps of this nature be they "works" or full blown word processors.
The reality is that MS Word, with or without a database allows you to create a small flat file for mail merge.
Yes. And it also doesn't allow you to use Unicode, have guides while placing elements, access the advanced typography, etc, etc.
But it *does* let you have that rich MS UI design experience.
You consider mail merge to be A Critical Feature. I've never used it, not once. Ever. I can't remember anyone else ever asking me about it ever. (And trust me, as the family techie, I'd hear about it.) It's just not on the radar.
Now, having the app not decide to move my pictures around, play loose and free with my styles, indenting, and other things I consider to be the *primary* function of a word processor, I *DO* think of as Critical Features. Maybe you don't, that's your perogative.
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Again while some of those features are nice, we are talking about a word processor. I'm much more likely to need to address five envelopes with my word processor than I am to control the masking on my images.
And I'm much more likely to need my word processor to help me produce a document than I am to have it save me two minutes of writing addresses by hand.
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If I do have such a need, there are desktop publishing programs that allow even greater control than Pages.
For $79? Please point me to one, that'd be a great bargain.
No, that'd be an amazing bargain. Much like Pages.
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That doesn't mean Pages is terrible.
Your first post:
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Never in my life have I encountered such a terrible application from Apple.
Glad to see you've changed your opinion.
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It means that each app can have a purpose and serve it well.
Exactly. There are cheap little address printer apps that hook into Address Book that would make much better choices for printing envelopes. I can easily see a quick script to grab names and addresses from Address Book for Pages documents.
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Appleworks served the consumer grade office suite "works" niche well. Pages does not fit the bill yet and doesn't appear to be going in the right direction. People buying $500 miniMacs need mail merge more than say, full typographic control.
Really? Because I've never used mail merge. Not once. Ever.
OTOH, I thought AppleWorks was awful, even several years ago when it was fresh and shiny.
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I didn't claim it had to be all things to all people. In fact I think I characterized it very well as PrintShop Word Processing. OS 9 was not a terrible mental model. OS X could still take some good cues from it. The point is that Pages should be better than what it replaces. It is not.
And it does not replace. AppleWorks is still available, and in fact is still the default suite shipped with each Mac. iWork is extra. Your beloved AppleWorks has not yet been replaced.
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Appleworks can duplicate, on the consumer level, everything Pages does and still do much more.
No, it simply can not. Please stop making this false statement as if it were gospel. This is simply wrong, as has been pointed out previously, and you're just starting to look foolish. At best you could accurately say that AppleWorks does everything Pages does *that you ever did in AppleWorks*, and has other features you wish Pages had. Pages can, however, do many things AppleWorks simply cannot, and will not, ever be able to do.
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The model of taking large individual apps and forcing them to work together clumsily feels very Microsoft-ish which was something to avoid.
Hmm... I seem to recall AppleWorks being one large app with modules...
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Additionally while I can appreciate that OS X has certain services which can be utilized by an app like Pages, that still does not excuse shortcomings, like mail-merge, have been a part of all modern apps of this nature be they "works" or full blown word processors.
'This nature'. I think there's your problem. You want this to be an AppleWorks clone, or a Word clone. It's not. It's a new type of app that straddles the layout and document production genres, and from what I see does so very nicely. If it doesn't meet your criteria, then use an app that does. Word is still for sale, last I checked.
You have a letter you want to send out to a dozen people, and only the name/address at the top is going to change. You can copy/paste manually, or do a mail merge, which goes to a database and grabs the name/address info and makes N copies, each with a different set of personal data. It's great for businesses and such, but to be done properly it has to have access to a database.
iWork has no database, and the only database that Apple is associated with commercially is FileMaker which is extreme overkill for this sort of thing.
Pages *could* hook into the Address Book for this, and I hope to see a Service pop up to do this, it looks like a pretty easy task to do for a third party. (Gotta love Apple creating apps that instead of trying to be everything for everyone, create a platform for others.) But since it's not really a feature that most consumers are going to need or use on a regular basis, I totally see why it's not in the 1.0 release. It's much more important in a document creation tool to have it produce documents as the primary task, and do so efficiently and effectively without screwing around with the user's setup, like, say, Word. MS skipped right over the basic tasks of a document production tool and started slapping on features that few will use, resulting in a bloated app that most people will use no more than 10% of, but everyone has to struggle to use. Lame. From what I've seen so far, Pages get the basics right, and does it well. The fluffy bits can come later.
This is the end result of intelligent application and system design: one application doesn't have to include every widget under the sun, and one application developer doesn't have to do everything to compete. MS creates apps that are, effectively, fortresses. If *they* don't include feature X, good luck getting it. If someone else can figure out how to add it, then their development time and effort was large enough that they're going to have to charge a good chunk of change for it.
Apple has taken a different approach: create an app that does the basics of what the app is supposed to do, and does them as best of breed. Make sure that there are systems in places (Services, AppleScript, etc) that provide hooks into the app and the data such that others can *easily* create tools to provide special functionality and easily integrate. End result is that small developers can quickly produce helper apps and tools, and provide them for little or no cost to the user.
Expecting every little tool and feature to come from Apple is, frankly, an outdated way of thinking about applications. As time goes on, you're going to see more users' workflows become an integrated collection of widgets and tools that work *together*. Witness Keynote, and the uproar that happened over its rudimentary drawing tools. People were stuck in the mentality of PowerPoint: if it isn't *IN* PowerPoint, good luck getting it to work *with* PowerPoint. Ever tried dragging and dropping images into PowerPoint? How about PDFs? Vector graphics? Pain. In. The. Ass. Usually the results are less than good, so you are *forced* to use PowerPoint's drawing tools, which *forces* MS to produce better drawing tools within PowerPoint.
Keynote, instead, lets you import anything effortlessly. Drag it, drop it, done. This means that you can use *ANY* application to produce your drawings. Need special CAD software to produce it? Use it. Have a medical imaging app that will work best? Use it. Find OmniGraffle to be a kick ass diagramming tool, like I do? Use it. You get to pick the tools that work best for you.
Consider mail merge: I don't need it, can't say I ever will. trumptman obviously finds it a killer feature, but has a scale of perhaps a few dozen addresses at once. My brother's business could use (if they brought mailings in house), but would need to scale to thousands of addresses. Instead of requiring Apple to try and produce it, the user can select the tool that works for them. Me: none; trumptman: a script to hook into Address Book; my brother: a FileMaker or MySQL database backend with a robust mass-selection UI. We each get to choose the tool that scales to our needs, and nothing more.
It's a different mindset, and one that will take some getting used to for some people, obviously.
It's where things are headed, however, and I am thrilled to see it start to become a reality.
I believe one of the low-end tasks that mail merge is used for is printing onto those little sticker sheets for addressing mail. Something that AddressBook does all on it's own.
The fake sincerity of a mail merged document strikes me as *so* 1980s.
Regarding repetitive tasks such as mailmerge (I am guessing it is something like the following):
- grab address from AddressBook
- paste into document
- print document
- print envelope address
- go back to step one for next address
In the past, I believe something like AppleScript was supposed to be easy enough for people to do this; although I think that overestimated people's ability.
The one gotcha I see to writing a script for Pages to do mail merge is that apparently Pages *doesn't have a scripting dictionary*. This just boggles my widdle head.
A Service is still possible though, and I'll check on whether it has an Automator suite as soon as I get my *()%^#@ copy.
Yes. And it also doesn't allow you to use Unicode, have guides while placing elements, access the advanced typography, etc, etc.
But it *does* let you have that rich MS UI design experience.
I've never claimed that Apple should aspire to be Microsoft. They should be better and the fact that Microsoft tosses in the kitchen sink while leaving out say, unicode support doesn't justify Apple leaving out features either. If you want to beat the standard, you have to be better, that doesn't mean feature for feature per say, it just means you can't justify or allow bad practices. Apple isn't above this. We can see those cubes and Lisas coming down the road. Hopefully that fate won't befall Pages.
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You consider mail merge to be A Critical Feature. I've never used it, not once. Ever. I can't remember anyone else ever asking me about it ever. (And trust me, as the family techie, I'd hear about it.) It's just not on the radar.
Any tech savvy teacher likely uses mail merge often. It is very helpful for small to medium size businesses as well.
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Now, having the app not decide to move my pictures around, play loose and free with my styles, indenting, and other things I consider to be the *primary* function of a word processor, I *DO* think of as Critical Features. Maybe you don't, that's your perogative.
I do and Appleworks does provide that while also providing the missing features as well. As mentioned Appleworks is frame based. I feel restricted in no manner in Appleworks. That is why I recreated the templates at the beginning. To show that the same power is there with regard to those mentioned features.
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And I'm much more likely to need my word processor to help me produce a document than I am to have it save me two minutes of writing addresses by hand.
Pages includes templates for filling out envelopes. If you really would rather delete and replace those addresses by hand, that is your choice, but don't call it productivity enhancing. Looking pretty is nice. Enhancing productivity is what makes the sale.
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For $79? Please point me to one, that'd be a great bargain.
No, that'd be an amazing bargain. Much like Pages.
The point is that Pages is confusing its needs. If I wanted advanced typography, that is a professional need and would likely produce a professional price and product. Consumer needs should be met with a consumer product. If that product is missing consumer features, pointing out that it has some very nice pro or near pro level features doesn't fix the fact that a consumer need is not met. I can be thrilled for example that iMovie lets me edit HD video. However if it didn't have any titles, that wouldn't be fixed by the fact that it can edit HD video. Claiming I can substitute another program or that Final Cut Pro does have titles wouldn't make it any better either. Consumer level apps still need to have certain features.
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Glad to see you've changed your opinion.
Pages is the most terrible app I have encountered FROM APPLE. Just because it isn't terrible in comparison to say, the evil Microsoft Word doesn't mean it doesn't have major shortcomings.
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Exactly. There are cheap little address printer apps that hook into Address Book that would make much better choices for printing envelopes. I can easily see a quick script to grab names and addresses from Address Book for Pages documents.
The reality though is that I might be creating a mail merge with a nice flat file given to me by say a church, or college class that has nothing to do with my own personal address book. Being able to quickly import this into an Appleworks database, or a Microsoft .dot file is a very useful feature and is a selling point on the consumer level. It is not a big deal for you, and for that, you should be glad. However there are plenty of small uses where it is a timesaver and necessary.
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Really? Because I've never used mail merge. Not once. Ever.
OTOH, I thought AppleWorks was awful, even several years ago when it was fresh and shiny.
Again, obviously the number of people you send items to is either small, you can always generalize the greeting, or you have no need for this. That is fine and good for you. There are plenty of people who always buy a new display when they purchase a new computer. There are just as many who don't and if you claim that you don't need that market, be prepared for lost sales.
As for Appleworks, tell me what you don't like and perhaps I can address it. If not, enjoy what you like and have now.
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And it does not replace. AppleWorks is still available, and in fact is still the default suite shipped with each Mac. iWork is extra. Your beloved AppleWorks has not yet been replaced.
Appleworks is very good at what it does. I'm glad it is still being shipped and if Apple creates something better and ships it for free, I'll be happy to purchase it and use it as well. Plenty of people were thrilled when Apple shipped the cube. Others pointed out the shortcomings and knew it would fail. Now Apple has the mini and it appears to be selling very well. Criticism can help bring about a better result. I hope Apple will take the feedback and add what is necessary to help iWork be the best it can be for its intended purpose.
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No, it simply can not. Please stop making this false statement as if it were gospel. This is simply wrong, as has been pointed out previously, and you're just starting to look foolish. At best you could accurately say that AppleWorks does everything Pages does *that you ever did in AppleWorks*, and has other features you wish Pages had. Pages can, however, do many things AppleWorks simply cannot, and will not, ever be able to do.
I carefully stated that Appleworks is a consumer app and matches Pages on a consumer level. I have no doubt that Pages can do some features better. However for now creating something as simple as a spreadsheet, mail merge, printing labels, etc are items that Pages cannot do. I recreated those templates to show that Appleworks can do what is expected of it as a consumer word processor and that the "new" features, like being able to use graphics and have text properly flow around them, or being able to rotate, resize, etc pictures is all easily done with Appleworks.
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Hmm... I seem to recall AppleWorks being one large app with modules...
It is and that feels better for what it does. I don't want to use iTunes and open up a seperate app called "encoder" which then allows me to take the tracks I've encoded with it and then transfer them back to iTunes for example. Again I can appreciate services, but using two or three apps to do the job of one is not more simple or elegant.
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'This nature'. I think there's your problem. You want this to be an AppleWorks clone, or a Word clone. It's not. It's a new type of app that straddles the layout and document production genres, and from what I see does so very nicely. If it doesn't meet your criteria, then use an app that does. Word is still for sale, last I checked.
I believe I already stated that Pages could drive sales of Word. However the reality is that in business you don't ignore your competition, you stand up to them. When you have a truly better alternative, it makes gains. Firefox is a great example of this. Pages is billed as being part of the replacement for Appleworks, so I feel very justified in comparing the two. If a hole is there, it would be wiser to claim it might be coming in the future than to claim it is not necessary and to go buy your competitor.
Apple's aim with this app is to make productivity software for a mythical 21st Century enterprise that has creativity and communication at its heart; businesses looking for a competitive edge through use of IT. This is a Good Thing. And it's a great CONCEPT v1.0.
I think Harald is right. Pages also could bring basic design savvy to education users (both teachers and students). Of course, this first iteration lacks subtlety and depth. Complaints are bound to ABOUND, and with good reason. But the potential integration of image and text in a template-driven application is what Pages is all about. DVD Studio Pro is to InDesign what iDVD is to Pages. It's a user-friendly entrance into layout?not word processing, mind you, but layout.
I think part of the disappointment lies in the fact that PAges is not a Word killer, and frankly, I don't thin it's meant to be. It could become that if necessary, but I don't think Apple is interested in mixing it up with MS on that level for both political and practical reasons. So, Pages does and will lack a lot of Word features, and with all likelihood will always lack some of these. It's mid-level WP with enough DTP in it to not drive people bonkers when they drop a picture in. Apple's strength is in this kind of solution, and good for them.
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If you just want to open it up and start typing you can do that. Or if you want to spend a little time and think about what your document will be visually, you are in total control of just about anything you can think of.
But there are little things that at first throw you off. Deleting a page. Strict use of the inspector and font palette. Not being able to use the tab bar to indent the next line on numbering and bullets. Etc.
I read the manual before I even started to use it, (plane ride) and still at first found myself falling back into the old way of thinking about it like a word processor. After using it for a little bit and going back to the manual, everything seemed to make sense. (Don't usually need a manual for most Apple apps but in this case, it is worth it and it is an easy read.)
Templates and styles are the power of Pages. And I'm not talking about the templates Apple gives you. It is so easy to save and make your own. I have created several "blank" templates of my own that are suitable for work or personal use. These allow me to use Pages like a regular word processor. I also have templates that are suitable for our standard report format with graphic placeholders, etc. More like a page layout app.
The delete Pages issue is best remedied by always working with Invisibles showing. Then you are able to delete everything very easily. (My blank templates are set up so that invisibles are activated.)
I think in a few weeks you will start to see more glowing reviews of Pages. For now, it is just different and odd enough that fast criticism is easy to put forward. I was guilty of this myself.
Pages really grows on you. Being in control and not having the program guess what you are trying to do is refreshing. Formatting my documents is now easy and I know they are correct. And since I really don't do anything really complex, my work exports to .doc flawlessly.
Originally posted by Kickaha
What did I say about Services?
http://www.grunenberg.com/wordservice.html
trumptman, this is the new OpenDoc.
And in case it's lost in the product page:
Count statistics on a per selection basis.
If Apple wants to use services to access some features within a program that is fine by me. I know that the spell checking within Pages for example is simply the system spell checking.
However we are talking about a replacement for an existing product that already had this feature. Hence the name new wine, crappy bottle. Appleworks may have been old and carbon, but it had these features and didn't require people to go looking all over the web to fill in the holes.
Nick
Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
I just thought I should point out that Pages does have a wordcount and it's not particularly difficult to find: inspector / document / info
It's so obvious that it could well be I'm totally missing what everyone else is complaining about, in which case, sorry.
This was already mentioned by me above. However it will not count the words within a selected portion of text. My professor would be quite upset if I turned in a 5000 word essay and had counted my name, class section, etc as "words" within that essay.
Nick
Originally posted by Harald
Pages is a great app. I love it; but it's a classic NeXT application where version 1's primary attribute is that it exists. The gestus of the application is there, but there's a fair bit of implementation to come. Hence 'building' the successor to AppleWorks, rather then 'delivering' it, as said in the last Stevenote.
I disagree. The whole point of the NeXT model is rapid and better application development. Pages is anything but a model of that. It has been long in coming and is short in features. It clearly relies on many of the system frameworks but the reality is that for such a long wait, it should be a much better, more mature app and the holes should not be so large and obvious.
Oh... new hole of the day... no mail merge. Something I could not only do in Appleworks v6, but do in Appleworks v. Apple IIe.
And it's a new class of application. So there. Not a 'word processor' or a 'DTP app' but something slightly different, and something that makes you create rather different documents ... let me explain.
I've been playing with it today; I started to write a document in TextEdit which I normally start documents off in as it's easy to get your text down. Then I thought ... Pages. It was an internal document about a new product my company could make. Using a template, I swapped the graphics out and changed the titles and subheadings to my purposes. Took seconds. Then texty-text blah blah tap tap tap ... what I created was an extremely attractive internal marketing document that communicated rather then disappearing into the memoscape of modern business. It looked like marketing bumf that you get in the post. Saved as a PDF the impact it will make is 1000 times greater then an RTF would have been.
I apologize in advance if I sound like an ass, but that doesn't sound creative to me at all. It sounds like Printshop for Word Prcocessing. I don't know if you own Appleworks, but the point is that I recreated a couple templates to show how easy they to do on something even as old as that and that there really is no new functionality. In fact there is quite the opposite. A load of functionality has been removed, not to make it easier or more efficient, but simply because it was not included.
Apple's aim with this app is to make productivity software for a mythical 21st Century enterprise that has creativity and communication at its heart; businesses looking for a competitive edge through use of IT. This is a Good Thing. And it's a great CONCEPT v1.0. Oh, and the Inspector is a wonderful tool.
Then Apple should have included features like revision tracking and collaboration tools within Pages. I see nothing of the sort.
The Inspector is a poorly organized pile of crap.
Yes, I have some beefs with the interface (you can't set default dictionary for example) but when I create documents on this my colleagues will think I'm a fucking genius. Which I like.
If your colleagues think that Print Shop type prettiness denotes genius, then I feel for you having to work in such an environment.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
This was already mentioned by me above. However it will not count the words within a selected portion of text. My professor would be quite upset if I turned in a 5000 word essay and had counted my name, class section, etc as "words" within that essay.
I would hope professors would spend their time reading the essay, rather than counting all the words in it, then busting you for being five under and "cheating" by adding your name to the count.
Originally posted by trumptman
This was already mentioned by me above. However it will not count the words within a selected portion of text. My professor would be quite upset if I turned in a 5000 word essay and had counted my name, class section, etc as "words" within that essay.
Aha! I see.
Originally posted by trumptman
Oh... new hole of the day... no mail merge. Something I could not only do in Appleworks v6, but do in Appleworks v. Apple IIe.
Without a database, that seems like an obvious duh, not a hole.
I mean jeez, you can't even play Solitaire in it! What a complete bug!
there really is no new functionality.
Sorry, but you just lost a lot of credibility in my eyes. No new functionality? Riiiiiiiiight. The fonts management and typographic control, Unicode, object and image composition and masking, gridded layout with helper guides... don't recall any of those in AppleWorks. Those are just off the top of my head from knowing the standard system tools.
Poke around in the guts a bit more, and you'll find a ton. Just because there isn't a menu item staring you in the face for every little feature doesn't mean it's not in there.
Pages may not meet your idea of a document creation application, and it may not even meet your needs, but come on, have some perspective. I'm not expecting it to replace my LaTeX and BibTeX tool suite, nor am I expecting it to be my technical writing tool. It's obviously got a different design philosophy. For what it's geared for, it looks *fabulous*, and I'm quite eager to start using it to create the documents I find troublesome in LaTeX. Keynote is one of my absolute favorite apps, and I think it's brilliant, so perhaps that's the difference. That and I ditched the OS 9 mental models years ago... I find AppleWorks 6 to be positively a horror to work in.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Without a database, that seems like an obvious duh, not a hole.
I mean jeez, you can't even play Solitaire in it! What a complete bug!
The reality is that MS Word, with or without a database allows you to create a small flat file for mail merge.
Sorry, but you just lost a lot of credibility in my eyes. No new functionality? Riiiiiiiiight. The fonts management and typographic control, Unicode, object and image composition and masking, gridded layout with helper guides... don't recall any of those in AppleWorks. Those are just off the top of my head from knowing the standard system tools.
Again while some of those features are nice, we are talking about a word processor. I'm much more likely to need to address five envelopes with my word processor than I am to control the masking on my images. If I do have such a need, there are desktop publishing programs that allow even greater control than Pages. That doesn't mean Pages is terrible. It means that each app can have a purpose and serve it well. Appleworks served the consumer grade office suite "works" niche well. Pages does not fit the bill yet and doesn't appear to be going in the right direction. People buying $500 miniMacs need mail merge more than say, full typographic control.
Pages may not meet your idea of a document creation application, and it may not even meet your needs, but come on, have some perspective. I'm not expecting it to replace my LaTeX and BibTeX tool suite, nor am I expecting it to be my technical writing tool. It's obviously got a different design philosophy. For what it's geared for, it looks *fabulous*, and I'm quite eager to start using it to create the documents I find troublesome in LaTeX. Keynote is one of my absolute favorite apps, and I think it's brilliant, so perhaps that's the difference. That and I ditched the OS 9 mental models years ago... I find AppleWorks 6 to be positively a horror to work in.
I didn't claim it had to be all things to all people. In fact I think I characterized it very well as PrintShop Word Processing. OS 9 was not a terrible mental model. OS X could still take some good cues from it. The point is that Pages should be better than what it replaces. It is not. Appleworks can duplicate, on the consumer level, everything Pages does and still do much more. The model of taking large individual apps and forcing them to work together clumsily feels very Microsoft-ish which was something to avoid. Additionally while I can appreciate that OS X has certain services which can be utilized by an app like Pages, that still does not excuse shortcomings, like mail-merge, have been a part of all modern apps of this nature be they "works" or full blown word processors.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
The reality is that MS Word, with or without a database allows you to create a small flat file for mail merge.
Yes. And it also doesn't allow you to use Unicode, have guides while placing elements, access the advanced typography, etc, etc.
But it *does* let you have that rich MS UI design experience.
You consider mail merge to be A Critical Feature. I've never used it, not once. Ever. I can't remember anyone else ever asking me about it ever. (And trust me, as the family techie, I'd hear about it.) It's just not on the radar.
Now, having the app not decide to move my pictures around, play loose and free with my styles, indenting, and other things I consider to be the *primary* function of a word processor, I *DO* think of as Critical Features. Maybe you don't, that's your perogative.
Again while some of those features are nice, we are talking about a word processor. I'm much more likely to need to address five envelopes with my word processor than I am to control the masking on my images.
And I'm much more likely to need my word processor to help me produce a document than I am to have it save me two minutes of writing addresses by hand.
If I do have such a need, there are desktop publishing programs that allow even greater control than Pages.
For $79? Please point me to one, that'd be a great bargain.
No, that'd be an amazing bargain. Much like Pages.
That doesn't mean Pages is terrible.
Your first post:
Never in my life have I encountered such a terrible application from Apple.
Glad to see you've changed your opinion.
It means that each app can have a purpose and serve it well.
Exactly. There are cheap little address printer apps that hook into Address Book that would make much better choices for printing envelopes. I can easily see a quick script to grab names and addresses from Address Book for Pages documents.
Appleworks served the consumer grade office suite "works" niche well. Pages does not fit the bill yet and doesn't appear to be going in the right direction. People buying $500 miniMacs need mail merge more than say, full typographic control.
Really? Because I've never used mail merge. Not once. Ever.
OTOH, I thought AppleWorks was awful, even several years ago when it was fresh and shiny.
I didn't claim it had to be all things to all people. In fact I think I characterized it very well as PrintShop Word Processing. OS 9 was not a terrible mental model. OS X could still take some good cues from it. The point is that Pages should be better than what it replaces. It is not.
And it does not replace. AppleWorks is still available, and in fact is still the default suite shipped with each Mac. iWork is extra. Your beloved AppleWorks has not yet been replaced.
Appleworks can duplicate, on the consumer level, everything Pages does and still do much more.
No, it simply can not. Please stop making this false statement as if it were gospel. This is simply wrong, as has been pointed out previously, and you're just starting to look foolish. At best you could accurately say that AppleWorks does everything Pages does *that you ever did in AppleWorks*, and has other features you wish Pages had. Pages can, however, do many things AppleWorks simply cannot, and will not, ever be able to do.
The model of taking large individual apps and forcing them to work together clumsily feels very Microsoft-ish which was something to avoid.
Hmm... I seem to recall AppleWorks being one large app with modules...
Additionally while I can appreciate that OS X has certain services which can be utilized by an app like Pages, that still does not excuse shortcomings, like mail-merge, have been a part of all modern apps of this nature be they "works" or full blown word processors.
'This nature'. I think there's your problem. You want this to be an AppleWorks clone, or a Word clone. It's not. It's a new type of app that straddles the layout and document production genres, and from what I see does so very nicely. If it doesn't meet your criteria, then use an app that does. Word is still for sale, last I checked.
I seriously don't know.
iWork has no database, and the only database that Apple is associated with commercially is FileMaker which is extreme overkill for this sort of thing.
Pages *could* hook into the Address Book for this, and I hope to see a Service pop up to do this, it looks like a pretty easy task to do for a third party. (Gotta love Apple creating apps that instead of trying to be everything for everyone, create a platform for others.) But since it's not really a feature that most consumers are going to need or use on a regular basis, I totally see why it's not in the 1.0 release. It's much more important in a document creation tool to have it produce documents as the primary task, and do so efficiently and effectively without screwing around with the user's setup, like, say, Word. MS skipped right over the basic tasks of a document production tool and started slapping on features that few will use, resulting in a bloated app that most people will use no more than 10% of, but everyone has to struggle to use. Lame. From what I've seen so far, Pages get the basics right, and does it well. The fluffy bits can come later.
This is the end result of intelligent application and system design: one application doesn't have to include every widget under the sun, and one application developer doesn't have to do everything to compete. MS creates apps that are, effectively, fortresses. If *they* don't include feature X, good luck getting it. If someone else can figure out how to add it, then their development time and effort was large enough that they're going to have to charge a good chunk of change for it.
Apple has taken a different approach: create an app that does the basics of what the app is supposed to do, and does them as best of breed. Make sure that there are systems in places (Services, AppleScript, etc) that provide hooks into the app and the data such that others can *easily* create tools to provide special functionality and easily integrate. End result is that small developers can quickly produce helper apps and tools, and provide them for little or no cost to the user.
Expecting every little tool and feature to come from Apple is, frankly, an outdated way of thinking about applications. As time goes on, you're going to see more users' workflows become an integrated collection of widgets and tools that work *together*. Witness Keynote, and the uproar that happened over its rudimentary drawing tools. People were stuck in the mentality of PowerPoint: if it isn't *IN* PowerPoint, good luck getting it to work *with* PowerPoint. Ever tried dragging and dropping images into PowerPoint? How about PDFs? Vector graphics? Pain. In. The. Ass. Usually the results are less than good, so you are *forced* to use PowerPoint's drawing tools, which *forces* MS to produce better drawing tools within PowerPoint.
Keynote, instead, lets you import anything effortlessly. Drag it, drop it, done. This means that you can use *ANY* application to produce your drawings. Need special CAD software to produce it? Use it. Have a medical imaging app that will work best? Use it. Find OmniGraffle to be a kick ass diagramming tool, like I do? Use it. You get to pick the tools that work best for you.
Consider mail merge: I don't need it, can't say I ever will. trumptman obviously finds it a killer feature, but has a scale of perhaps a few dozen addresses at once. My brother's business could use (if they brought mailings in house), but would need to scale to thousands of addresses. Instead of requiring Apple to try and produce it, the user can select the tool that works for them. Me: none; trumptman: a script to hook into Address Book; my brother: a FileMaker or MySQL database backend with a robust mass-selection UI. We each get to choose the tool that scales to our needs, and nothing more.
It's a different mindset, and one that will take some getting used to for some people, obviously.
It's where things are headed, however, and I am thrilled to see it start to become a reality.
The fake sincerity of a mail merged document strikes me as *so* 1980s.
Still waiting for Pages!
- grab address from AddressBook
- paste into document
- print document
- print envelope address
- go back to step one for next address
In the past, I believe something like AppleScript was supposed to be easy enough for people to do this; although I think that overestimated people's ability.
Isn't Apple's new solution called Automator?
The one gotcha I see to writing a script for Pages to do mail merge is that apparently Pages *doesn't have a scripting dictionary*. This just boggles my widdle head.
A Service is still possible though, and I'll check on whether it has an Automator suite as soon as I get my *()%^#@ copy.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Yes. And it also doesn't allow you to use Unicode, have guides while placing elements, access the advanced typography, etc, etc.
But it *does* let you have that rich MS UI design experience.
I've never claimed that Apple should aspire to be Microsoft. They should be better and the fact that Microsoft tosses in the kitchen sink while leaving out say, unicode support doesn't justify Apple leaving out features either. If you want to beat the standard, you have to be better, that doesn't mean feature for feature per say, it just means you can't justify or allow bad practices. Apple isn't above this. We can see those cubes and Lisas coming down the road. Hopefully that fate won't befall Pages.
You consider mail merge to be A Critical Feature. I've never used it, not once. Ever. I can't remember anyone else ever asking me about it ever. (And trust me, as the family techie, I'd hear about it.) It's just not on the radar.
Any tech savvy teacher likely uses mail merge often. It is very helpful for small to medium size businesses as well.
Now, having the app not decide to move my pictures around, play loose and free with my styles, indenting, and other things I consider to be the *primary* function of a word processor, I *DO* think of as Critical Features. Maybe you don't, that's your perogative.
I do and Appleworks does provide that while also providing the missing features as well. As mentioned Appleworks is frame based. I feel restricted in no manner in Appleworks. That is why I recreated the templates at the beginning. To show that the same power is there with regard to those mentioned features.
And I'm much more likely to need my word processor to help me produce a document than I am to have it save me two minutes of writing addresses by hand.
Pages includes templates for filling out envelopes. If you really would rather delete and replace those addresses by hand, that is your choice, but don't call it productivity enhancing. Looking pretty is nice. Enhancing productivity is what makes the sale.
For $79? Please point me to one, that'd be a great bargain.
No, that'd be an amazing bargain. Much like Pages.
The point is that Pages is confusing its needs. If I wanted advanced typography, that is a professional need and would likely produce a professional price and product. Consumer needs should be met with a consumer product. If that product is missing consumer features, pointing out that it has some very nice pro or near pro level features doesn't fix the fact that a consumer need is not met. I can be thrilled for example that iMovie lets me edit HD video. However if it didn't have any titles, that wouldn't be fixed by the fact that it can edit HD video. Claiming I can substitute another program or that Final Cut Pro does have titles wouldn't make it any better either. Consumer level apps still need to have certain features.
Glad to see you've changed your opinion.
Pages is the most terrible app I have encountered FROM APPLE. Just because it isn't terrible in comparison to say, the evil Microsoft Word doesn't mean it doesn't have major shortcomings.
Exactly. There are cheap little address printer apps that hook into Address Book that would make much better choices for printing envelopes. I can easily see a quick script to grab names and addresses from Address Book for Pages documents.
The reality though is that I might be creating a mail merge with a nice flat file given to me by say a church, or college class that has nothing to do with my own personal address book. Being able to quickly import this into an Appleworks database, or a Microsoft .dot file is a very useful feature and is a selling point on the consumer level. It is not a big deal for you, and for that, you should be glad. However there are plenty of small uses where it is a timesaver and necessary.
Really? Because I've never used mail merge. Not once. Ever.
OTOH, I thought AppleWorks was awful, even several years ago when it was fresh and shiny.
Again, obviously the number of people you send items to is either small, you can always generalize the greeting, or you have no need for this. That is fine and good for you. There are plenty of people who always buy a new display when they purchase a new computer. There are just as many who don't and if you claim that you don't need that market, be prepared for lost sales.
As for Appleworks, tell me what you don't like and perhaps I can address it. If not, enjoy what you like and have now.
And it does not replace. AppleWorks is still available, and in fact is still the default suite shipped with each Mac. iWork is extra. Your beloved AppleWorks has not yet been replaced.
Appleworks is very good at what it does. I'm glad it is still being shipped and if Apple creates something better and ships it for free, I'll be happy to purchase it and use it as well. Plenty of people were thrilled when Apple shipped the cube. Others pointed out the shortcomings and knew it would fail. Now Apple has the mini and it appears to be selling very well. Criticism can help bring about a better result. I hope Apple will take the feedback and add what is necessary to help iWork be the best it can be for its intended purpose.
No, it simply can not. Please stop making this false statement as if it were gospel. This is simply wrong, as has been pointed out previously, and you're just starting to look foolish. At best you could accurately say that AppleWorks does everything Pages does *that you ever did in AppleWorks*, and has other features you wish Pages had. Pages can, however, do many things AppleWorks simply cannot, and will not, ever be able to do.
I carefully stated that Appleworks is a consumer app and matches Pages on a consumer level. I have no doubt that Pages can do some features better. However for now creating something as simple as a spreadsheet, mail merge, printing labels, etc are items that Pages cannot do. I recreated those templates to show that Appleworks can do what is expected of it as a consumer word processor and that the "new" features, like being able to use graphics and have text properly flow around them, or being able to rotate, resize, etc pictures is all easily done with Appleworks.
Hmm... I seem to recall AppleWorks being one large app with modules...
It is and that feels better for what it does. I don't want to use iTunes and open up a seperate app called "encoder" which then allows me to take the tracks I've encoded with it and then transfer them back to iTunes for example. Again I can appreciate services, but using two or three apps to do the job of one is not more simple or elegant.
'This nature'. I think there's your problem. You want this to be an AppleWorks clone, or a Word clone. It's not. It's a new type of app that straddles the layout and document production genres, and from what I see does so very nicely. If it doesn't meet your criteria, then use an app that does. Word is still for sale, last I checked.
I believe I already stated that Pages could drive sales of Word. However the reality is that in business you don't ignore your competition, you stand up to them. When you have a truly better alternative, it makes gains. Firefox is a great example of this. Pages is billed as being part of the replacement for Appleworks, so I feel very justified in comparing the two. If a hole is there, it would be wiser to claim it might be coming in the future than to claim it is not necessary and to go buy your competitor.
Nick
Originally posted by Harald:
Apple's aim with this app is to make productivity software for a mythical 21st Century enterprise that has creativity and communication at its heart; businesses looking for a competitive edge through use of IT. This is a Good Thing. And it's a great CONCEPT v1.0.
I think Harald is right. Pages also could bring basic design savvy to education users (both teachers and students). Of course, this first iteration lacks subtlety and depth. Complaints are bound to ABOUND, and with good reason. But the potential integration of image and text in a template-driven application is what Pages is all about. DVD Studio Pro is to InDesign what iDVD is to Pages. It's a user-friendly entrance into layout?not word processing, mind you, but layout.
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