Pages 5 features checklist

Fun Facts for Today:

Pages garnered 6 5star reviews yesterday.

Pages garnered 1 5star review yesterday.

Pages garnered no 3star reviews yesterday.

Pages garnered 12 2star reviews yesterday.

Pages garnered 23 1star reviews yesterday.

This has caused the average rating to drop from 2.095 stars to 2.092 stars.

At this rate of change, Pages will hit an actual 1.5 star average in 197 days.

However, I dont know if averages are rounded up, down, or truncated when assigning stars, so I don't know exactly when we will see the 1.5 stars.

That's what I thought. You speak for others. Right. You don't need evidence for your certain claims. I do. OK, gotcha. "We" (you) are laughing at your 10,000% jokes. We. You need help.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

Seems the Apple execs didn't know the good features, to articulate them and nobody briefed them. It's all foreign to them, they use Office for their work.

FWIW, this is the sad truth: do you picture Apple execs creating documents that need all of Pages '09 functionality? They pay people to supervise people who order people to do that. All execs of large corporations need are memos, and perhaps brainstorming/mindmapping apps. And, even if somewhare in the distant prehistory of their career they have done so, power corrupts. "Make it so!" is very addictive.

By all means help me with chronicling escape routes, but I know the subject area well enough to know there is nothing that will do everything Pages '09 does, even in multiple applications and thanks to Apple there is nothing to neatly transition you.

Certainly nothing in a reasonable timeline and has been pointed out, this is not just going to impact on mainly smaller buisnesses it is going to eat into time and money in a big way.

Alas, yes: "whether translating the Pages '09 document into Pages '13, Quark or InDesign (or...) document, there will be blood, sweat and tears." For all those who need the pro features of Pages '09 (and Pages '13 is not an option), the only choice is to bite the bullet sooner or be forced to bite it later.

I only just learnt that LibreOffice will fairly cleanly open old ClarisWorks and AppleWorks documents.

THANK YOU!!

Apple is once again driving people into the arms and security of Microsoft. My quick assessment* is that MsWord running on Windows is the closest replacement you are going to get to Pages '09. Sad isn't it?

Being mainstream, produced by a company that sees the product as a cash cow and used by so many other users means it will serve you for the life of your work without too much disruption. Want to follow the actual recommendation of users who are in the know about what is good for the long term, do what the Apple employees and executives do. Use Microsoft Office.

The cost of the software is nothing compared to the cost of losing your work or having to reconstruct it multiple times.

A conspiracy theorist might wonder about this "...driving people..." I tend to agree with your recent line about Apple semi-consciously ditching the pro users of iWork '09 for the throves of new, paying customers of less-than-pro persuasion. Oh, well...

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

I will give a quick summary of why Ms Office on Windows will be the obvious choice:

1. Apple already provides the translation tools. More accurate to MsOffice than to Pages 5 in fact.

2. MsWord actually does mostly what Pages '09 does, just less elegantly

3. You need the Windows version of Word to get R to L and full language support

4. Both Windows and Word have wide compatibility and will be developed as a paying ecosystem.

5. It is out of the reach of Apple.

Peter

Ouch. (And, M$Word can split the editing window into two panes, so you can view/peruse two distant portions of your document while you edit.—I've been requesting that for Pages for a loooong time.)

M$Word can split the editing window into two panes, so you can view/peruse two distant portions of your document while you edit.—I've been requesting that for Pages for a loooong time.

I've also been requesting that for a long time. But I guess at this point I'd just be happy if they put back the stuff they took away.

-Israfelli

"Yo mama uses Pages 5"

I haven't contributed to this discussion since about page 37 (I think), but I thought Israfelli's 7+7 point summation of the situation was masterly - concise, accurate and perceptive.

The question that keeps nagging in my mind is this - given the stated goal of merging the file formats of Pages in iOS7 and OSX, why couldn't the file format already used for OSX be adapted for iOS rather than vice versa, as seems to be happening?

I seem to recall that when Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone, he proudly said that it was using the Mac OS in a mobile form, and even pointed to Safari as evidence of that. If iOS and OSX had a common root, why couldn't Pages 4.3, with all its great features, have been the basis of the common app?

I am still using Pages 4.3, and unless Pages 5 introduces similar serious DTP functions (which is the reason I use Pages), I'll continue to use Pages 4.3 while ever I have a functioning Mac that will run Mavericks, or whatever the final version of OSX is that will enable Pages 4.3 to function.

The first OSX update that disables Pages 4.3 will be the one when I stop updating to new versions of OSX - unless of course Apple fulfils my dream - which is to use Pages 4.3 as the basis of a new, even better DTP app.

And I am saying that as a continuous, unbroken, loyal Mac user since 1989.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

israfelli wrote:

"Yo mama uses Pages 5"

ROTFL!

Yup! That sums it up.

Dalavia wrote:

The question that keeps nagging in my mind is this - given the stated goal of merging the file formats of Pages in iOS7 and OSX, why couldn't the file format already used for OSX be adapted for iOS rather than vice versa, as seems to be happening?

Actually, the file format story is more complicated; see http://www.macworld.com/article/2063353/how-to-work-with-iworks-new-file-formats .html, even though it still does not answer your question.

That's a very well written article, balanced and level headed. Dan is a fine writer. He did a great job of pointing out the history and logic behind the very necessary transition to a single file format.

Btw, that apple support doc was never taken down - lauren j just had the link wrong. The original link was http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6049

Sorry if that bursts anybody's hate bubble.

Here is what Apple said regarding Pages, you have to be wearing rose colored glasses to see this as anything to cheer about:

In rewriting these applications, some features from iWork ’09 were not available for the initial release. We plan to reintroduce some of these features in the next few releases and will continue to add brand new features on an ongoing basis.

Some features in upcoming releases in the next 6 months

Pages

• Customize toolbar
• Vertical ruler
• Improved alignment guides
• Improved object placement
• Import of cells with images
• Improved word counts
• Keyboard shortcuts for styles
• Manage pages and sections from the thumbnail view

Notice 4 of these are "improvements" of existing features, not a re-introduction of missing features. That leaves only 4 re-introductions of missing features: Customized toolbar, Vertical ruler, Keyboard shortcut for styles and manage pages and sections from the thumbnail view.

This is what they say is their plan that they are willing to tell frustrated consumers. Absolutely pathetic!

Edward Cross wrote:

This is what they say is their plan that they are willing to tell frustrated consumers. Absolutely pathetic!

Indeed, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6049 announces 8 Pages '09 features returned (of the about 98 listed in this thread); that's 8/98 = 8.15% recovery after 6 months. At this pace, if this recovery effort continues linearly, we can expect Pages '19 to fully recover Pages '09 functionality—with full iOS editing. (In a simple-minded linear extrapolation, why not?) Of course, your hopes may differ. Perhaps Apple will ramp up the recovery of the iWork suite exponentially (Apple does have the resources to pull it off), in which case full recovery may come within another 6-12 months? (Yes, I know, those glasses are a shade of pink that defies real world physics.) Or, recovery may flatline after those 8 features are back... Since Apple is telling us naught, your bet is as good as mine.

Now, looking at those 8 promised features a little closer (as it has been done on this thread, by yours truly), note that they do not include "purely DTP" (non word-processing) features, nor business-running features such as mail-merge. Is that by intention, accident, or simply because the 8 listed features are easiset to recover?

Furthermore, 3 of those 8 feature recovery promises are labeled as "improve ..." — which is imprecise, a preemptive wishy-washy word to CYA in case the result does not measure up to the desired goal. Also, "Import of cells with images" is not "Images pasted into cells (inline with text, while fully editable/maskable)," one of the features lost in the Pages '09 → Pages '13 lobotomy. So, (at least) 4/8 of those promises are (at least) a tad uncertain.

Last but not least, and resonating with Edward's post, Apple tells us nothing else on the matter.

The bottom line: can Pages '09 pro users wait for the recovery of the missing 89 or so features?

(Of course, you can stick with Pages '09 as long as your hardware and the OSX support it. Of course, you can restore most of your work from backups if the Pages '09 [OSX]→ Pages 2.0 [iOS]→ Pages '13 [OSX] editing destroyed the file and its earlier versions. Of course, the sky is not falling. And, of course, there are other programs out there that have over the past decade or two shown more backward-compatibility and stability.)