Things I like in Pages 5 are the much improved drawing tools and the cross linking of tables, which got sneaked in somewhere along the way.
I do have to question the following though:
1. Improved speed. Simply not true and easily tested. Pages rapidly starts dragging the chain with even moderate number of objects. Many people post typing problems after a while and I tested adding objects in Pages 5 bringing a tanked up Mac Pro to a beachball spinning grinding halt with a number that Pages '09 breezes through. The interface is hardly fast for most operations, in fact there are a lot of what used to be one click options buried down deep in obscure locations up to 8 levels out of sight. If they even exist! If you could possibly find them with all the right "contextual" ducks miraculously lined up for you.
2. Sharing works. With whom? You can't even exchange with someone on a slightly older OSX version let alone other App or PC (the online version being even slower, clumsier and more deficient than the desktop version. And there are problems with non-Apple server/mail clients. The iOS version is great for a mobile App but still lacks a lot of the features that are in the desktop Apps, which was supposedly the reason why we had to change, even though Pages '09 worked with sharing until Apple put a stop to it.
3. Photo integration works. So excited that two much degraded Apps work together, (poorly) and Pages '09 (but better with iPhoto and Aperture) doesn't, only because Apple made it so it doesn't. And I haven't been able to add my own totally flexible folders of media to the Media Browser as I can in Pages '09.
4. Font Glyphs are rendered better than 09 ever achieved. That may be due to OSX changes rather than Pages.
5. Alignment Guides are improved. How?
6. Bye bye floating inspector. The Inspector in Pages '09 is much more compact, logical, comprehensive and can be hidden with one keyboard command. There is only one for all the documents open. Pages 5's uninformative sidebar (took users ages just to find the hidden settings "at your fingertips") eats up massive amounts of screen Real Estate for EVERY SINGLE Document! Bizarre.
7. I like the way Paragraph styles and Character styles are done now. Really? They lack the detail of Pages '09 where you could choose what to keep and exclude in Character styles, and Paragraph Styles keep List options in Pages '09, which Pages 5 doesn't. Pages 5 Lists are in fact a disaster.
8. Switching between layout and word processing with one click? Wow? Pity the Layout mode in Pages 5 is so awful. All Apple has done is destroy the default layer when switching along with everything in it, when switching from WP to Layout. Switching back doesn't bring back what was deleted. Who wants to link Textboxes anyway?
9. Shapes are nicer. They are exactly the same except copying object Styles for some reason doesn't copy the TextWrap which is perpetually on by default. The drawing tools have improved with the addition of the Boolean operations which I like very much. Except Connecting Lines are badly handled and crude in Pages 5 leaving ugly gaps at the joins. The UI for Image Styles is a plus but lacks names for subtle/invisible differences and inexplicably doesn't keep all properties, rendering it half baked.
10. Masks are handled better. How? Pretty much the same as Pages '09. Both have problems with choosing between overall masked objects and the mask itself, plus Pages 5 keeps losing the placeholder setting when first image is dropped on the shape.
That leaves well over 100 things dropped in Pages 5, mostly biggies, and unlikely ever to see the light of day.
In practice, I am reminded daily of how badly Pages 5 performs. Just putting together what will be a pdf Travel Guide in Pages and I stuck with Pages 5 as long as I could because of the drawings but after (only) 14 pages and watching the spinning beachball after every edit, I have switched back to Pages '09 and keep Pages 5 open only for any extra drawings as needed.
I am getting a strong whiff of The Emperors New Trousers. The one where people install a new version of OSX and swear blindly that it "runs faster", having tested nothing, and ignoring that practically every new version of any OS usually does run slower because of greater overhead and features, and requires faster hardware just to keep up.
Peter