Pages 5 features checklist

Just a suggestion, but think carefully about that purchase. Pages 4.3 no longer exists as a active product. How long will you have that new iMac? 3-4 years? There are bound to be several OS iterations and updates in that time and sure as bananas, support of old 2009-based software will not be around for long.

I would try copying the iWorks folder you'vegot and dropping it into the Applications folder of the new machine. It's worth a shot. Or get an old copy on disc.

JCX2009 wrote:

Can anyone tell me what happens to those of us who rely on Pages '09 on both an iPad and iMac for our professional writing --saved via iCloud --when we next need (or want) to replace either our desktop or tablet?

We won't be able to add '09 to them. And we will lose all our professional formatting.

Your mileage may vary, but I have experienced and then successfully reproduced (with a mock document, see p.53 of this thread) a not-so-unreasonable workflow that does irrevocably destroy Pages 4.3 documents, through editing with the iOS 7 Pages, and then editing on the OSX, which forces Pages 5.0. However, if you stick with the iOS 6 Pages and OSX Pages 4.3 (which is what I was doing before I upgraded), files stored in the iCloud should be fine. (I'd make back-ups nevertheless.)

In turn, for a new Mac and a new iPad, the App Store and iTunes/Apps will only sell you the newest software. You may be able to legally buy Pages 4.3 elsewhere, but the iPad is supposed to be a single-suplier ( = iTunes/Apps) device.

I discovered the unedited version of Tim Cook's recent email to employees with what he took out.

Team,

We've just posted financial results for fiscal Q4, including record-setting iPhone sales. I am happy to report that Apple's business has never been stronger, and we are heading into the holidays [with an] amazing lineup led by the new iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, the stunning iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display. You and your teams work incredibly hard to deliver the very best products in the world, and our customers simply love them. Except for Pages and iWork. We screwed the pooch on that one. I'm extremely proud of the collaboration going on across the company and everything we've accomplished as result of this great team effort.

Please join me for an employee communications meeting tomorrow at 9 AM Pacific time. Except iWork developers. Please do not leave your work stations until you are able to release something users actually want to use and will "simply love". The meeting will be broadcast to locations throughout Cupertino and Apple offices across the world. AppleWeb has a complete list of sites where you'll be able to watch live or see a replay in certain time zones. We've also created a link on AppleWeb where you can submit your questions in advance, and we'll do our best to answer as many as we can during the meeting. We have also attached a Word file listing the times since I couldn't figure out how to rotate a table in Pages 5.0. I look forward to hearing from you.

Tim

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

linda2009

Microsoft stole Apples AppleWork team, to create Works. Twice! Which is why Apple gave up competing with Microsoft and gave up on AppleWorks as well.

vonkempnz

The writing is on the wall. There may be no iMac in 3-4 years when Apple lets the other shoe drop. So what you decide to put on it will be very academic. It will be the 21st century Amiga.

Peter

I had no idea! (about the AppleWork --> Works!!)

Yep, writing is on the wall and it's going in the WRONG direction... backwards!!

vonkempnz

The writing is on the wall. There may be no iMac in 3-4 years when Apple lets the other shoe drop. So what you decide to put on it will be very academic. It will be the 21st century Amiga.

Peter

Agreed. I think the writing has been on the wall for professional and business customers for a long time. And not just software. Remember the XServe?

vonkempnz wrote:

I think the writing has been on the wall for professional and business customers for a long time. And not just software. Remember the XServe?

And yet they're just about to release a new Mac Pro that's priced waaaay out of reach for anybody but serious professional users, and obviously took years and gobs of money to develop.

I AM confused.

So, you have basically not answered my question or addressed my points, other than noting that I can use the minimal, OS-level font styles panel in Text Edit and paste inline images into an RTF doc.

1. You say "Just don't make it an excuse or rationalisation for the demise of the solution of choice for the rest of us. " Again, I ask, how exactly is giving a single use case as a response to an earlier comment from another poster, while acknowledging and not excusing the many broken use cases "rationalizing" Apple's approach to upgrading from Page '09, which I have specifically critiqued as badly done? In fact, your own posts seem to be making your problems a rationalization for why no one else anywhere should be able to find Pages 5.0 useful in any way, i.e. applying your own use case as the overriding use case.
   
2. You didn't address my needs of collaboration as being a benefit of Pages. Why have you ignored this? Does it not fit with the conclusion you are trying to reach?
   
3. Stating or implying that Text Edit is somehow feature equivalent to Pages in terms of styles and images is extremely misleading. In addition to not being able to style paragraphs, lists, shapes, or images, Text Edit doesn't allow images in the background, masking / rotating of images or even images floating above text or wrapping text around them. TextEdit uses the OS-level font styles that can be accessed from a lot of OSX applications and are not a feature of Text Edit, nor are they at parity with even the new Pages. Are you really suggesting to the readers of this thread that Text Edit can handle all text styles, including paragraph and list / bullet styles, that Pages can? Not to mention other object styles? And are you suggesting that Text Edit has equivalent image handling? If not, then why are you even making the case of (paraphrased) "why use Pages at all when Text Edit can do it instead"?
   
4. You said: "TextEdit does support styles, images, even multimedia, as well as saving/opening Word files which Pages doesn't" . Are you saying that Pages doesn't open word files or that it doesn't save them? I haven't seen either to be true, unless you are saying that importing doesn't count as opening, and exporting doesn't count as saving, in which case I point out the Pages '09 imported / exported rather than opened / saved as well. And I also point out that Text Edit can only edit / save RTF level formatting in Word docs. Whereas Pages is compatible with far more complex Word doc formatting.

"The new Pages 5 has an enormous long list of what it doesn't do now. So what are you going to do?"

I don't think anyone is disputing that, certainly I am not. What you may not realize is that your long list of things Pages doesn't now do (any application has a long list of what is doesn't do, by the way) isn't as relevant to every user as it is to you specifically. I myself, and pretty much everyone on this thread empathizes with and supports the frustration of pro users who have been burned by the update. However, your unwillingness to accept that Pages 5.0 may be useful for any single human being and claim that my statement that Pages 5.0 is beneficial for a single one of my use cases "just fails under its own weight" really just demonstrates more about you and your attitudes than about the application itself. Your story isn't the only story worth telling.

And last time I checked, this thread was about Pages 5 features, not "No one should ever use Pages 5".

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

Tristan Hubsch wrote:

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

Simultaneously they also removed iCloud support for [Pages 4.3] as well. Also curious.

Peter, I seem to have no problem storing Pages 4.3 files in the iCloud, and accessing/editing/saving them with Pages 4.3. I open Pages 4.3, and open the files using the "Open…" menu command, then selecting the file from the resulting iCloud "folder." Does this not work for you?

Is that in Mavericks? Because if you collaborate using the new iCloud version, that will alter your file irrevocably.

I'm not quite sure what you are asking, so here are some details:

My MBP is on Mavericks, and I have both Pages 5.0 and Pages 4.3 installed. When I over-exuberantly trashed the iWork '09 folder, I did not clean out the system files, …come to think of it, nor did Hazel (a 3rd party System Preference pane, which normally detects deleting apps and offers to trash all systems files, receipts and alike). Hm. Anyway, once I realized the loss in Pages 5.0, I scrounged around among several separate back-ups (I set my Time Machine back-up to omit the Applications folder... Oh, well) and found a complete copy of my Applications folder from many moons ago, which did have the iWork '09 folder with Pages 4.3 in it. I copied that into my (MBP/Mavericks) Application folder, and Pages 4.3 works and accesses the iCloud just fine. (Since I did buy the iWork '09, keeping a back-up and copying it back on my one computer I'm certain is within the EULA.) Finally, FWIW, my iPad is now on iOS 7 and has iOS 7 Pages 2.0—I no longer open Pages 4.3 documents with it. All my files edited by the iOS 7 Pages 2.0 turn up with generic icons, while those edited with OSX Pages 4.3 and 5.0 have custom icons: <https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/54668219/PagesIcons.jpg>.

Now, I do not collaborate with anyone on any of my Pages documents, but edit them myself; some were stored in the iCloud and I have not yet moved them all out. Since I can no longer edit them with my (iOS 7) iPad without irrevocably losing non-Pages 5.0 formatting and data, I am moving them out of the iCloud... one by one.

So, "iCloud support for Pages 4.3" seems to be OK if "support" = "storing, opening, editing, saving by one user, one App, one iCloud account," but I have no way to test anything beyond that.

And yet they're just about to release a new Mac Pro that's priced waaaay out of reach for anybody but serious professional users, and obviously took years and gobs of money to develop.

I AM confused.

Yes, that's true. But don't be surprised if it's the last one they ever make. Or it devolves into the Mac Pro Air for iOS.

Still, I'd pay a lot of money to have a few of those little tin cans rack mounted.

Text to Table / Table to Text missing