Pages 5 features checklist

I've put forward nothing but pertinent answers, Peter. But you ignore them. I think you forget you're using a product someone else has writte, not custom for you, but for a vast array of users. I'm a professional. I use Pages in my business. I'm using both versions of Pages side by side and learning the new version. You were trash talking it before you even used it, so I can't see how you've even given it a chance. Despite what you need to think, there's a good logic to much of it, and I can definitely see where it's going. It's exactly like FCPX. It's a work in progress. Meantime, 4.3 is there, perfectly functional for you to use. There should be no issue. But that doesn't fit into your paradigm of anger, so I doubt you'll ever see it. You're too busy being 10,000% sure of yourself and the demise of Pages and Apple and omg the sky is falling.

If I were you, as a fellow professional, I'd stick with '09 for now. You're not losing anything by doing so. Right now, Pages 5 is an option, not mandatory. And why not see what happens with it? That's at the point where I'm optimistic. I still don't see the problem with it. It defies logic to think that Apple wouldn't try to add as many features back as possible, with the only limitations (perhaps) being the functional parity between iOS and OS X.

Hirschkorn wrote:

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.

Another thought... People were saying the same thing when FCPX came out. It was exactly the same situation. Based on my assessment of the 20 or so users I know, half the people who used it were ok with it (even though it looked like less than half based on the ratings), and the other half took to the street with torches. Of those, 3/10 actually jumped ship to Premiere, and others threatened but stuck around. Apple kept FCP7 around and began adding features back in to FCPX. Today, FCPX is a much better tool than FCP7, and Apple has gained more users. Of the three people I know who left, one returned and one is using both in parallel. I don't know about the other but I should call her up. Despite some clamoring about doom and gloom, I'm confident the stiuation with iWork will improve greatly in the next four to six months.

Message was edited by: robogobo to add another thought

All speculation. So tragic.

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j kfrommorgantown wrote:

you wrote.... So, could we please fous (sic) on the original intention of this thread—cataloguing the functionality gained/lost/changed in the Pages '09 → Pages '13 upgrade, and explore possible workarounds?

The fact that this posting is going on the way that it is, indicated the reality that there is no functionality gained.... only lost or changed.

Measly though they may be, there do exist a few gains; see Peter's full listing: http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/. You may have no need for those, but let's be fair.

Unsuspecting users could open a document only to find that they have destroyed hours of work, simply by “NuePages” recreating, changing, and in some cases destroying the document. That’s pretty unfair of Apple. Literally a dozen documents that were highly important to us were destroyed. Fortunately one of our employees discovered that “Pages” was still on our computers and not overwritten by “NuePages”. Probably because this is not an upgrade.... it’s a completely different program. We’re slowly restoring from backup drives, the documents that were destroyed, now that we know we can open them in Pages.

It would have been nice if documents created in Pages would open in Pages and documents created in NuePages would open in NuePages. But when you click a file in Finder and it opens in a completely Nue program.... work is lost.

Something the left winger radical kids at Apple should learn.... in business the time it takes us to retrain employees costs us money!!! But they’re too busy riding their bikes, playing video games, and creating new apps to tell them where to find Starbucks.

What frustrates older users and business users is that a bunch of kids in an Apple convent that looks like a space ship on the left coast have written a program geared to teenagers and colleges students..... not those of us who have a vested interest in the smooth transition toward new tech.

This is not an issue of people not liking change. I would gladly look for an update of Pages that could incorporate better stability, functionality, and improvements. But when you lose dozens of key functions that businesses use every time they open Pages, this can’t be considered an update.

I do grok the predicament, the sentiment, as well as the "five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargain, depression and acceptance). I simply suggest getting to the 5th stage ASAP and moving on (not much use in dwelling on the first four stages). For those who need the Pages '09 functionality that was dropped in the Pages '13 upgrade, let's explore realistic options; Peter said he started working on it, let's help.

Okay... I'm trying to be reasonable Tristan,

Let's be ACTUALLY fair... the minor functionality gains in this new program (and be honest, it's not Pages anymore...) are so few and far between that they've done nothing to improve the program for the vast majority of users. So posting a link to another blog site with hundreds of files to dig through doesn't help the dialogue. If you wanted to create a version of Pages for marketability in other countries, adding language functions and right to left text functions... yes, I see that.

But why not just add the handful of gains to the program and not take away hundreds of functions that business users use every day?

And for the record, it's childish to bring up grief counseling. As a small business owner with 120 employees, a masters degree, and 30 years of experience in the corporate world, I don't need to be lectured about the five stages of grief by Apple sycophants.

This is not grief. This is choosing whether or not my business will continue to invest (financially, time and energy) in a program that left us hanging for days and corrupted dozens of vital documents. It's a business decision to consider if we should wait out Apple who has historically not been very responsive to user recommendations. (Do you not recall the asinine decision to do away with "Save" and "Save As" used by virtually every other program in existence?

So the likelihood that this Peter is going to bring back the Inspector function ... or convince the children at Apple that adults in the business world actually use a vertical ruler... I'm not holding my breath. I don't have time to continually convert and reconvert documentation that is needed every time someone in a spaceship on the left coast decides to change things.

Again, if they had improved the program by adding functions and cleaning up some bugs... that's called an upgrade. Rewriting the program to the point that long time users don't even recognize it... that is NOT an upgrade.

Peter, you're begging the question.

"There are those here who object to me seeing the obvious too quickly. I could hold out a while and pretend it took me ages, and only after enormously deep investigation, to discover the elephant in the room, but heck, there it is!"

Nobody's objecting to your speed, but rather your conclusion as to what is "obvious". EVERYTHING you said is unfounded speculation. None of it is obvious. It's all FUD. You somehow think you know other people's intentions and thoughts. That's not obvious. It's conceited and arrogant.

The transition from 4.3 to 5 isn't obviously unnecessary. You don't know the ins and outs. You only see the ripples on the surface.

It's isn't obvious that Apple execs or employees use Office. Some do and some don't

Dumbing down OS X isn't obvious. The entire Post PC era is a huge transition toward interoperability. This is something which is obviously not your cup of tea. So be it. If indeed you are being "fooled" so many times, well, yes, shame on you then.

I don't know what makes you think you can divine the future, or even the present for that matter. You made way too many assumptions from day one, before you even tried the software, and now you have to stick to those assumptions to save face. Yuor conclusions are flawed, Peter. And instead of sticking to the purpose of this thread, you continue to derail it with your anger and misdirection. I may be the antagonist here. But I've gone dark twice now until I saw you get back into your ranting. This mess of a thread is your doing.

Apple's intentions and plans are not right in front of your nose, Peter. You're inferring these things.

I am looking. I see the big picture. You're looking through a microscope.

Nobody waved a sales brochure in front of my face. Again, you think you know things you do not.

I never quoted Magnus. You said lack of transition, and I was hastily paraphrasing. It doesn't matter - the effect is the same. You don't know what was necessary and what wasn't because you didn't write the software. Nobody knows except Apple.

Your "certainty" is equally based on wishful, albeit negative, thinking. You don't know anything more than I or anybody else here about future plans. (And who is "we"? You're the only one who escalated the certainty factor. I guess in your world you're a "we". Explains a lot.)

This next line is going to get you deleted and you know it. It's about the rudest most ignorant thing I can think of saying at this point.

The last line is just rubbish. I only ever asked you nto stop being rude and spreading FUD and you continue to pidgeonhole me as a fanboy of some type. That's just more ignorance. Very typical of you.

You have no leg to stand on here. You're slapping yourself in the face.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

You clearly have a problem with people seeing what is right in front of their noses.

I can see why you have that problem, because you aren't looking.

You repeatedly get things wrong because you have a preconceived notion of what it is you are looking at or a blinkered view of the big picture. Someone waves a sales brochure in front of you and that is "evidence".

You misquote Magnus as saying the fact that Apple didn't delete 4.3 (the legal department may have had a say in that) was evidence of something or other (make up your own reason here everyone) and now you quote me as saying the transition is unnecessary. Not what I said at all.

We made a huge joke of your escalating "certainty" based on nothing but wishful thinking. Guess we have wrung all the laughs out of that that we can.

We get that you worship at the Church of Later Day Apple and have outsourced all your thinking to them.

We get that this is just you misidentifying yourself with Apple and getting in high dudgeon that not everyone else does.

Peter

Arguing about our individual perceptions of the current mess doesn't really accomplish anything tangible. Peter has valid points. Robo has a right to feel optimistic. If we focus on the facts, then there is little room for debate. Let's refresh ourselves and those new to this thread on the inarguable concrete facts concerning only this debacle, and there are only a few:

1. Apple re-wrote Pages09 as part of iWork13 and released it.
2. Pages13 eliminates dozens of features Pages09 offered.
3. Pages09 is not overwritten or removed from a user's application folder, it is still useable.
4. Documents, by default, open in Pages13 when clicking them.
5. Pages13 irreversibly breaks documents created in Pages09 simply by opening them.
6. Apple briefly communicated that they would be re-introducing some of those missing features within 6 months, and that they would re-introduce other features at some unspecified time. This public notice has since been deleted by Apple.
7. Pages09 is no longer available from Apple.

All our discussion and arguments have been the result from the above seven simple facts. It's fair to say that the above facts have caused consequences that we've identified here; we now see demographics of users who:

1. Enjoy on the features removed when creating.
2. Rely on the features removed when creating.
3. Invested time and money in creating output with Pages09.
4. Now have hundreds or thousand of documents created with Pages09.
5. Cannot use Pages13 for business purposes.
6. Cannot use Pages13 for non-trivial purposes.
7. Have had to fix documents broken by Pages13.

All the above has led to these 86 pages of outpouring of emotions, predictions, and conclusions. There is little joy in Mudville. Families are squabbling. Long time friends are moved to fisticuffs. Tears are flowing. Robogogo is no longer invited to Peter's wedding. Therapists are seeing an increase in business. We should instead focus on what was done right and "wrong" by Apple. The following is my opinion:

What was done right:

1. Apple decided to re-write Pages into what could potentially be an improved, more efficient cross-device app.
2. They made it free.

What was/is done wrong:

1. Apple did not appreciate, underestimated, or chose to ignore the pain that would be caused by releasing an app that breaks existing users' documents, especially without warning them.
2. Apple did not initially, and is no longer communicating exactly what their plan is for Pages13 in regards to both future functionality and how it will maintain the integrity of Pages09 documents.

If Apple had not left Pages09 on the hard drive, the list would have been much longer.

So where are we? Everything above has led to long-time Pages users feeling:

1. Abandoned
2. Unacknowledged
3. Worried
4. Unsure how to proceed.
5. Angry.
6. Hopeful (at least one person anyway)

We can't change what's happened. But what we need now is:

Communication.

I cannot fathom the disconnect between the friendly greetings one gets walking into an Apple store, and the culture of no-communication from corporate to customer. If I am ever in the fortunate position of running a business, I firmly believe that communication will be first and foremost a necessity. It is a corporation's valuable asset; the ability engage loyal customers, to encourage interaction. So many large corporations fail because, ultimately they forget that success (profit) comes not only from selling a product, but from building relationships. This ongoing debacle with Pages is hurting our relationship with Apple. In fact, the problem is so emotionally charged that it's hurting out relationships with each other. It's not good.

j kfrommorgantown wrote:

Okay... I'm trying to be reasonable Tristan,

Let's be ACTUALLY fair... the minor functionality gains in this new program (and be honest, it's not Pages anymore...) are so few and far between that they've done nothing to improve the program for the vast majority of users. So posting a link to another blog site with hundreds of files to dig through doesn't help the dialogue. If you wanted to create a version of Pages for marketability in other countries, adding language functions and right to left text functions... yes, I see that.

But why not just add the handful of gains to the program and not take away hundreds of functions that business users use every day?

And for the record, it's childish to bring up grief counseling. As a small business owner with 120 employees, a masters degree, and 30 years of experience in the corporate world, I don't need to be lectured about the five stages of grief by Apple sycophants.

This is not grief. This is choosing whether or not my business will continue to invest (financially, time and energy) in a program that left us hanging for days and corrupted dozens of vital documents. It's a business decision to consider if we should wait out Apple who has historically not been very responsive to user recommendations. (Do you not recall the asinine decision to do away with "Save" and "Save As" used by virtually every other program in existence?

Dear (no, really!) j kfrommorgantown:

I do grok your predicament, much more than you give me credit. In fact, it has been thrashed about on this very thread—which I know is hard to read through—but, if you did, you'd find that I've been not far from where you are now. I've just decided to move on. From past (multiple!) experiences with Apple's dropping features/compatibilities never to regain them fully, I've learned my lesson. (By far not just the "Save/Save As" idiocy, but... life is too short to relive old injuries!) Screaming at theTitanic or its dancing band as they play while the Titianic sinks only wastes precious time for finding life-boats. (Yeah, yeah, I know that the Pages '09 → Pages '13 upgrade didn't literally drown anyone, and with all the moola in the bank, Apple isn't sinking either... 'tis just that the pro users of Pages '09 have been ditched, with an uncertain supply of rations.) So, re-read what I wrote, stop yelling at me, and find your life-boat.

Since you seem to imply that I am an Apple sycophant (I'll assume that you do know what the word means), you do not understand what I am telling you (and other pro users of Pages '09): find an alternative while you can. In turn, your anger is indeed unmistakeable (and partly excuses your accusing me of intentions opposite of what I did write), it just remains for you to (1) realize that all the noise made at this Forum or elsewhere will not undo the damage, nor will bring back your already lost revenue, and (2) decide what you want to do next. As I wrote a few posts back in response to Magnus Lewan : "whether translating the Pages '09 document into Pages '13, Quark or InDesign (or...) document, there will be blood, sweat and tears." It is up to you to start now or continue howling at the Moon.

So the likelihood that this Peter is going to bring back the Inspector function ... or convince the children at Apple that adults in the business world actually use a vertical ruler...

Nor did I ever imagine dreaming of suggesting any such arrant nonsense. I am certainly not going to waste my time screaming at Apple what they should have done or should do, or hope that they'll make Pages '13 regain the full Pages '09 functionality, against all past similar experience to the contrary. And even less am I going to re-explain what I already wrote: "finding realistic options" is definitely not what you managed to so badly misread.

For my own $0.02, I'm looking for a way to convert all I need to convert before the OSX updates inevitably break Pages '09, completely and irrevocably. PeterBreis0807 (the OP, and your and my host on this thread) took on the initiative to compile the list of changes, to be found somehwere in these 1,250+ posts—good luck finding it, which is why I referred to the other 'blog; try

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewforum.php?f=22&mforum=iworktipsn trick

and look for "Removed Features," "Changed Features" and "New Features." Remember, not because this will magically make Apple turn back time (it cannot, even if it wanted to), but in case you wish to report a feature loss/change/gain and are not sure if we (on this thread) already know about it. More recently, he also took on the initiative to look into a feature-comparative list of "realistic options for pro users."

Peter, Who is we? You are aware that you're not more than one person, right? Perhaps this is the root of the problem. You feel that you speak for all, and anything that hurts you, hurts others. This is beginning to make sense now. The religious fixation. The grandiose soothsaying. That dictatorial speech.. The Dr Jeckle/Mr Hyde three days off one day on pattern. You actually believe you speak for all?

I know plenty, Peter. Plenty more than you seem to recognize. Try to brush me off as a fanboy with religious devotion to Apple. It's not true. That kind of Ad Hominem attack gives you no credibility. It only shows your desperation.

As I said not even ten minutes ago, nobody knows the inner workings of Apple. I don't work for them, and your 10,000% thing isn't funny anymore. It's pitiful that you need to hang on such a thing. I never said I know about Apple's plans. I do know what makes sense however. And Apple's intentionally damaging users' work and hanging them out to dry does not make sense. You say you never claimed certainty. Ha! what a load. You are so sure you know what Apple's intentions are, in EVERY POST!!! whatever, man. You make no sense.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

robo

We don't know anything about you, except that you really know nothing.

…delusionally you know the inner workings of Apple intimately, with absolute 10,000% certainty, …but don't work for them.

Peter