Pages as replacement for Word ?

couple of dozen or so people have reported in this forum that they're experiencing a typing lag.

Typing lag, sluggishness...same issue, and it seems as if there are quite a few people experiencing these problems.

as far as our two iBooks:
You have more ram installed than I do, although I find it hard to believe that 768M would not be enough.

You are running Tiger.

What fonts do you have installed? I added quite a few True type fonts from my OS 9 machine so I could trade docs back and forth.

Pages has unlimited undos from the time you open a doc. This must use up a lot of scratch space. My version seems to get slower as I go along.

Kurt

Kurt,

My 1.5 GB RAM is in my iMac. My iBook has 768; same as you. At any rate, I've seen posts from people who meet the bare minimum of system requirements, and they seem to do just fine. I've also seen posts from folks with pimped out G5s who experience typing lags and slow redraws. So, go figure. It's a maddening issue, and I'm sure it's driving Apple's programmers crazy. At least, I hope it is.

-Dennis

At any rate, I've seen posts from people who
meet the bare minimum of system requirements, and
they seem to do just fine.


-Dennis

When I first got iWork '05 my eMac didn't even come half way to the recommended system requirements, but this didn't stop me producing dozens of assays, reports, newsletters, posters and final dissertations. Even then, Pages was a dream to use. When I increased my RAM to the recommended for Pages, the only difference I noticed was some documents would open faster and scrolling through a long document was less ‘sticky’.

But I would like to know what is causing the typing lag some users are talking about. I sometimes use to experience it in Appleworks, and I seemed to find it was related to the number of languages installed on the system and the spell checker slowing things down as it prepared the ‘wrong spellings’ dialogue.

In appleworks the problem is a full Recent Items folder. Go to your documents folder>Appleworks User Data>Starting Points>Recent Items and empty that sucker. It keeps an alias of every document you open (despite the name) and eventually can bring the program to its knees.

I use this beautiful folder action: ScriptBuilders: Keep10 1.0. When attached to the recent items folder it continually sends aliases to the trash, keeping only the 10 most recent items.

Kurt

The AppleWorks bug has been known for quite a long time.

Odd that Apple hasn't thought to write the few lines of code that would fix the problem by disposing of the older aliases. While they are at it they could fix font rendering and handling.

AppleWorks isn't going to get any fixes. It is dead though at least for now you can still buy it. New consumer Macs are no longer bundled with it, instead we get a 30 day demo of KeyNote and Pages.

Of course one does wonder why this bug was permitted to fester for so long. I reported it about 30 days after AW6 shipped.

It is extremely bad form to both sell and recommend a program like AppleWorks in the state it is in.

Apple should not sell products that make it and the Mac look bad.

It is extremely bad form to both sell and recommend a program like AppleWorks in the state it is in.

The lack of development is strange I will agree, but Appleworks is far from being a dead program. It works without problems in X and includes one of the easiest database programs which works seamlessly as a full-functional mail merge. It also includes a decent spreadsheet app. I prefer its simple interface to Word and 99% of my word processing is done in Appleworks.

The recent items glitch is a very minor problem and is easily rectified using the folder action script I mentioned.

In addition, if you have an older machine running os 9, Appleworks files transfer back and forth with no compatibility issues... except missing fonts, perhaps.

Frankly, I am disappointed Apple did not continue along the lines of Appleworks. I would expect the next incarnation of iWork to at least contain a spreadsheet app or even a database app. Until such a time I will use both Pages and Appleworks on my system.

Kurt

t is extremely bad form to both sell and recommend a program like AppleWorks in the state it is in.

Oh? Extremely bad form to sell a program that a great many people and schools use and have used for many years? I've run a business on Appleworks since 1995, and let me tell you, iWork is not in the ballgame at all compared to Appleworks for what it can do. Not at all, despite better graphics handling in Pages.

In Appleworks, when one of my clients (I only wholesale, so it's almost always the same group of customers) orders, I just duplicate their previous database record and change the number of items to reflect the current order. Then Appleworks merges it into the invoice, figures the extended cost, adds the shipping, and totals it up. Please tell me how to do that in Pages.

I totally agree with Kurt. I would infinitely rather have seen a revised Appleworks rather than what we've gotten in iWork.

While AppleWorks doesn't fit my needs any longer, I used it (as it is today) for well over 18 months. While it doesn't look as snazzy as Pages it is an incredibly serviceable program, with some warts.

Some of its warts are because its roots are in OS 9 and it didn't make the switchover to OS X as gracefully as some programs did. As you (or someone else) noted, its font rendering leaves much to be desired today. And the inexplicable loss of macros. Other warts came as a result of the chaos years of the mid 90's when Apple changed OS directions nearly as often as most of us change clothing.

I may not use it any longer but I know many people who do - including some offices and small businesses I used to service when I was still in tech support and consulting. In fact, two of those small businesses aren't so small any longer but are still using AppleWorks.

I see nothing wrong with Apple continuing to sell it. The fact that it isn't a perfect program doesn't detract from its overall strength or stability.

I agree that AppleWorks is quite serviceable and should still be available. A former client of mine is currently expanding and just bought 5 new copies. I suspect the company will continue using AppleWorks until the day he sells out or turns the company over to his sons (that'll be a few years!)

But AppleWorks has gone just about as far as it can go. If you think of a program as a house, AppleWorks was a two room log cabin that's been remodelled 5 times. New rooms have been added, small rooms had walls knocked out to make larger rooms, a basement was dug out underneath and a second story was added.

I use this analogy because growing up, my parents actually bought a farm house that had been originally built by settlers in the 1820's and lived in by the same family until we bought it. Each generation made changes. Then my parents decided to remodel it for all the modern conveniences. OMG!! When all was said and done, we'd have been better off if the contractor had burnt the place down and started from scratch! (Ok, historically speaking that would have been bad form.)

But if you can imagine all the disasters that were involved in that remodeling job you'll have an idea of what upgrading a program can be like. AW started life in OS 7. Then it had its innards torn out to make way for OpenDoc. (Who remembers that idea?) Then OpenDoc was shelved and the innards were stuffed back in. Then OS X comes along.

And now Intel Macs. Have you noticed that all the new programs written since OS X came out tend to be the ones that are being released quickly as Universal Apps? That's because the newer programs were written with Apple's OS X development tools. Older programs were written with older tools and aren't as easy to switch over. This also plays into the picture.

The only way AppleWorks was going to become AW 7 was with a re-write from the ground up. It isn't the same name, but iWork is, I think, the result.

t isn't the same name, but iWork is, I think, the result.

No argument there. But the lagging development of iWork and the significant lack of functions that were included in Appleworks mean that iWork is far from being a replacement for daily use for those who really used a significant part of what Appleworks could do.

Apple gave up on improving AppleWorks after Microsoft twice hired the entire development team away from Apple.

My principle points of disappointment are the font rendering which can make it very hard to read smaller type on screen and the clumsy implementation of styles. Also as has been pointed out, it in the end became a patchwork of not quite finished additions. Extremely disppointing because it actually worked better in earlier versions. For quite a while I suffered dreadful bugs with bad letter spacing and had to give up even trying to make it work.

The Open Recent bug made using it a slow **** for many people I knew and some of them gave up on the Mac blaming the machine for the problem.

I appreciate there are those who have grown to love it and live around its shortcomings. Some time ago that described myself, but now it just doesn't cut the mustard. Unfortunately it leaves a void in OSX that hasn't been filled.

Apple gave up on improving AppleWorks after Microsoft twice hired the entire development team away from Apple

Microsoft did hire quite a few former Claris programmers when Claris was brought back into the Apple fold but the entire AW team? I know at least 2 from the AW6 team are still at Apple.