Pages 5 features checklist

lauren j wrote:

Please read this announcement from Apple...

Lists features that will be added back, and tells how to continue to use '09 and convert documents opened in 5 back to '09

support.apple.com/kb/ht6049

Ironically, that feature has been removed too:

The current-version star-review ratings for Pages as shown today in the Mac App Store calculate to a 1.4 stars. Since the app store uses "half star" reviews, this average should, at best, be indicitive of a 1.5 star result.

However the rating as shown in the app store is 2 stars.

What's going on? Is Apple holding the rating of this no lower than 2 stars?

My Bad. Sorry. The current average is 2.095. I Messed the calc up. Apple's rating is correct.

EEeeekkk!

Are you saying Quicken will not work in Mavericks?!!!

Ande I have gone through so much horsepucky up to this point to have Quicken for Mac?

Please say it ain't so!

Hedgehog

I'm saying the old 'professional' Quicken was never recovered when it broke in OSX updates. Apple's abandonment eventually led to a lite version in a very similar way as Pages 5. I finally had to turn to iBank, etc. with limited compatibility. I still need the old Quicken to access old data and for some features. My fear parallels what is happening here - people that say 'oh, don't worry, all the features etc. will be back' clearly have not been through this before or are in denial. Over the years I've had to spend hundreds of dollars updating apps I was perfectly happy with just to keep them working. Some apps never returned. iDVD for example. Once Apple deleted the DVD drive, it assumed iDVD was obsolete. There is no reason to not offer it as a download from the App Store. You can find it if you look, but why hide it? It was highly touted as an iLife app until it disappeared. I understand developing Pages, but why in a way that abandons Appleworks and provides no path? Apple developed Rosetta precisely to reasure people that legacy apps would remain functional, then Rosetta was abandoned. The reason people are 'over-reacting' is that they've learned from past experience: in the past Apple has abandoned apps with no warning, Pages 5 feels like a warning.

Anybody here have another app that can open Pages files? I thought not. A good word processor should be the foundational app of an operating system. Pages should not only be compatible with Appleworks, but MS Word and should have all the feature of '09 AND 5, but it is barely compatible with itself.

Oh, so now Quicken's lack of development is Apple's fault, and indicates that Apple won't update its software? Man, where do you guys get this stuff? You are aware that Apple doesn't own Quicken, right? Intuit does, and they're notorious for abandoning the Mac platform, over and over again.

cosmofromwatertown wrote:

I'm saying the old 'professional' Quicken was never recovered when it broke in OSX updates. Apple's abandonment eventually led to a lite version in a very similar way as Pages 5. I finally had to turn to iBank, etc. with limited compatibility. I still need the old Quicken to access old data and for some features. My fear parallels what is happening here - people that say 'oh, don't worry, all the features etc. will be back' clearly have not been through this before or are in denial. Over the years I've had to spend hundreds of dollars updating apps I was perfectly happy with just to keep them working. Some apps never returned. iDVD for example. Once Apple deleted the DVD drive, it assumed iDVD was obsolete. There is no reason to not offer it as a download from the App Store. You can find it if you look, but why hide it? It was highly touted as an iLife app until it disappeared. I understand developing Pages, but why in a way that abandons Appleworks and provides no path? Apple developed Rosetta precisely to reasure people that legacy apps would remain functional, then Rosetta was abandoned. The reason people are 'over-reacting' is that they've learned from past experience: in the past Apple has abandoned apps with no warning, Pages 5 feels like a warning.

Anybody here have another app that can open Pages files? I thought not. A good word processor should be the foundational app of an operating system. Pages should not only be compatible with Appleworks, but MS Word and should have all the feature of '09 AND 5, but it is barely compatible with itself.

This is hilarious. You seem to have a pattern here: few days of calm and reasonable followed by a thrashing irrational panic. Perhaps your meds need adjusting?

You're the FUD spreader here, Peter. The master of FUD. FUD is a rhetorical tool used to cast something in an absolute negative, to manipulate an audience, to incite panic. Apple has made its decisions, perhaps not perfectly to your liking, and you reacted by spreading the fear, uncertainty and doubt about the future. You did. And you outline your actions perfectly below. But it's you spreading the fear, uncertainty and doubt. You. don't pretend otherwise.

And for the last time, nobody is objecting to anyone's questioning of Apple. Go ahead, question all you want. The problem is that you don't question, you just state absolutes about the future, all negative and all inciteful. You're so certain that the future is doomsday all around, and you spread that fear to other users. It's rude, unproductive and contemptable.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

As you like to copy and paste from one thread to another, here is my reply to you previously:

lauren j

The application is not "Apple 09", and no longer exists as was.

There are now unnecessarily added problems working with and maintaining Pages '09 documents in both Mavericks and with iCloud.

There is a hard to follow matrix of problems and errors converting between the multitude of .pages versions, particularly Pages 5. A great deal of formatting can be destroyed or so altered as to render the file broke. Presuming it can be opened at all.

The loss of over 90 features in Pages 5 means converted files can be so altered as to be unrecognisable and unusable.

The contrast in capabilities between Pages 5 and Pages '09 is readily apparent just by looking at the newsletter templates which are rich and fully designed in Pages '09 but flat and crude in Pages 5.

Given the difficulty of migrating work from iWork '09 to the current Maverick versions, with the prospect of more to come, continuing to work in the older format simply adds to the backlog of future problems and the prospect that the older software will be completely eliminated from the Mac just as it has from the App Store.

There have been some who strenuously object to any questioning of Apple's actions and label the flood of feedback in these forums and elsewhere as FUD. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

The Fear has been created by Apple unilaterally removing iWork '09 from the App Store, and pushing the 'update' on users. Apple gave no warning that files would be altered and damaged by the new Pages which was actually sold as an enticing major upgrade. The consequences confirmed users' fears that their work will become eventually totally, not just partially, inaccessible and unusable just as Apple made AppleWorks files inaccessible and unusable.

Apple's lack of communication on landing such a major change on its users has caused the Uncertainty. Users do not know whether to stay with Pages, Keynote or Numbers because they do not know what Apple plans for any of them.

Both the sudden, arbitrary change and the lack of consideration of the consequences to users work by Apple, plus the lack of a road map as to when if ever Pages will be restored to full functionality has lead to the Doubt that iWork will ever be the productivity suite it was, or ever be software that Apple customers can entrust their work to.

Apple has in one stroke proved itself to be an unreliable supplier for anyone who values their Work.

The only question is that given all the FUD generated by Apple, what can and should users do next?

Peter

Pages 5 does not feel like a warning at all to me. Admittedly a lot of functionality is gone. Admittedly a lot of previous users are justifiably upset, as their favourite features are gone.

But looking at it from Apple's perspective, this must be their biggest effort with Pages since version 1.0. The product had got a few minor updates since then, but none showing any major investment from Apple. Pages has been around for eight long years, and they had not even bothered making it possible to use it properly in Japan or the entire right-to-left writing world. Before Pages 5, the product felt like abandonware.

Apple must have spent a fortune on Pages 5, with new text handling, 64-bit support, a completely new file format, UI and several other changes. I deliberately write "changes" and not "improvements". The new architecture will hopefully be a good base for other improvements in the future. At least I guess that is what Apple hopes for.

The new version is perceived as lacking by many, but it still can be taken as a sign of commitment from Apple's side.

Well said.

Magnus, don't mind Peter. He's angry and insists everyone else should share his perspective. For some reason optimism threatens his world view. Every few days he seems to become enraged and declare iWork dead in the water despite perspective like yours. Like you, I see the fact that 4.3 was left on disk while the transition takes place as a sure sign that this is a work in progress.

robogobo, here's the way I see things.

I use Pages for work (work meaning "making money with it") and, even if it wasn't officially designated so by Apple, it is a pro app for anyone that really knows the app's actual capabilities. With these changes from version '09 to version '13, I have two options: clinging to '09 and hoping they will eventually update '13 to include everything they removed, or moving to another app (not really a word processor, more like a DTP app): InDesign or Quark.

And that means losing time and money (buying apps, time needed for learning them exhaustively) and my whole Pages work archive becoming useless.

More than that, Apple is keeping mum on the future: they'll add "some" functions back but, beyond that, it's just "hey, take a wild guess, guys!"

So you'll probably understand why "optimism" is not really the first thing that comes to mind in this — artificially created — Pages 5.0 situation.