Pages 5 features checklist

robert.b wrote:

We're all behaving according to the 4 stages of acceptance, as plainly explained by Peanuts

Yes, against all reason and against all past experience, we expect

cosmofromwatertown wrote:

At the risk of getting flamed yet again, and perhaps sounding conspiratorial, I think we are all missing the 'big' picture.

Interestingly, the "big picture" is the attempted doing away with the book as we've gotten accustomed to know it. Interestingly, because it is one of the key plot lines in Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy that grew into a decalogy, and where the chronologically last volume (by Asimov) has a nicely veiled answer: books are forever. 🙂

For my own part, i find discussions on possible directions with eBooks intriguing, as I myself publish (rather highly) technical material in science. In brief (for this is not really the place for it), there is perfectly good need for three types of pointers:

• to a side remark or commentary (usually fitted into a footnote): one instance in narrative → one item of text,

• to a reference to another source in the literature: many instances in narrative → one item of text,

• to a glossary explanation: many instances in narrative → one item of text.

In any hypertext model, these solvable either as "pop-up" text boxes, or pop-up windows another source.

But, there is no reason to remove the capability for producing printable books while a printable book industry still exists. Surely, Apple is not deluding itself that it will erase the book-printing industry by pulling features from Pages. 😁

Still, that was an interesting train of thought!

Good news!

Pages' rating in the MAS has plummeted another .012 points over the last 24 hours! Over 40 people yesterday saw fit to give it a 1 star review. At this rate it will bottom out at the 1.5 star barrier in only 48 days.

-Israfelli

"Yo mama uses Pages 5"

Tristan;

I did not mean to imply that Apple was trying to make print media itself obsolete. I am merely speculating that the digital format itself, the process we use to make the file, is being made obsolete in favor of one that transfers easily and accurately over to an ePub document that is viewable on a number of platforms. I don't know of any ePub program that allows floating, word-wrap illustrations except iBooks Author, but no common ebook uses them. You can still generate a pdf from the program, but it clearly takes a back seat to the ePub. The reduced feature set of Pages 5 makes sense if this is the problem.

Most ePub books to date are amateurish and are not nearly as useful as their printed counterparts. Yet, few ePub books employ all the features an electronic document could use. As it is today, ePubs are after-thoughts. Most of the ePubs I've boughten are near useless - invariably I've had to buy the print book anyhow. This wouldn't be the case if print media became the after-thought - if authors wrote the ePub first with that electronic feature set, and the print edition was merely generated from that with a reduced feature set. I think this is Pages 5 - when you write something in it, you are writing an ePub document first and foremost, the print version is a secondary creation.

I think the publishing industry must know this - they must know ePubs need to get much better if they are going to gain universal acceptance. They can't solve the problem without a semi-radical shift in how books are written and electronically generated. I merely think when you write a print book they want an easy, one-step conversion into an ePub media that retains everything of the printed edition (or vice versa). They want the ability of the author to do this rather than hiring a bunch of people to make a specialized edition for each retailer. To insure this, certain features have been made disposable, others will have to find work-arounds. In short, I think they've set a design criteria they themselves do not know how to solve at this point - there are certain features that will never be worked out. Even if they are worked out, they will not be used until the universal protocol is accepted by the various publishers. They are forcing a paradigm shift on us, and they've decided sooner rather than later.

Apple is being the harbinger of the future. Just as they abandoned Adobe Flash they are abandoning feature sets that do not fit. They are not telling us how to write books, they saying figure out how to do it within the new ePub friendly feature set. I am speculating they know all the implications, but they also know there is no way around them with out abandoning the new protocol, so they have decided to go cold-turkey on the lot. At this point Pages 09 is merely an umbilical cord waiting to be cut.

Just my speculations....

cosmofromwatertown wrote:

I did not mean to imply that Apple was trying to make print media itself obsolete.

Oops: sorry if I came off sounding that way; 'tis I who (wildly) extrapolated your interesting train of thought! 😁

I still don't buy it though as a grand strategy by Apple; perhaps the repeated removal/discontinuation of features and services (for my own part, the iDisk web-hosting and AppleWorks's database module were the sorest) has made me unbelieving and leery. Also iBA is still (even in v.2) half-baked at best. As for perhaps it being the case that Apple pushes the ePub route: as reported elsewhere in this thread, Pages '13 produces groteskly bloated ePub files as compared with Pages '09 export from the same document. So, that doesn't quite jibe. Also, many of the features (such as rotated tables, images pasted inline into cells) certainly do not fit the current (pretty lousy) ePub standards, but would conceptually fit the medium just fine. Whatsmore, in a "grownup" hypertext format such as the .iba files want to be, such objects could very well serve the purpose of a heuristic (thumbnail) pointers, that pop up into their full-sized detailed version on touch (iBA's widgets definitely are of this sort). So could reference pointers to external sources, cross-reference pointers to within the document, either to another portion of the narrative, or to a parenthetical remark too large for parenthetical grouping within the sentence, or to a glossary/lexicon item that is also listed elsewhere. Indeed the fact that Apple already has implemented the last of these but not the former to indicates that iBA needs "more baking". It seems pretty obvious that we've had a long succession of hypertext editors (anyone remember HyperCard?), most of which were "getting there" only to be discontinued. Nevertheless, I find your point of view very interesting!

But then, Pages '09 most definitely is far from just a preprocessor for iBA; there are all the folks (posting here and elsewhere), who need Pages '09 features to run their day-to-day business... and, the Pages '09 → Pages '13 upgrade hurts them most, since they must plan ahead, the upgrade does not bode well, and the ePub/hypertext musings do not amount to a hill of beans for them.

Perhaps this is a chance for the 3rd party developers to fill in the imminent void...

27 years of using a mac, this is the most disappointing experience. And apple is so huge now, how can they not have the resources to do it properly? Reminds me of Vista. Too big to actually function anymore.

Why has Apple taken all these features out...?

I can't work with Pages 5 and I really liked it before.

I haven't yet tried the new Keynote but I hope it's not as bad as this update.

Perhpas it's a more general -worse free version - for everyone? Worse meaning more simple.

thanks for the summary PeterBreis0807

cheers

Maybe mentioned here somewhere - but in thenew Pages we lost the ability to highlight several words and change all of them in some way.

For example, if you had a paragraph with the word "Cleveland" ocurring in three places in the paragraph, in the old Pages you could hightlight the first ocurrence, then hold the Command key and highlight the second and third ocurrence and then enter "Command - B" and all three words would then appear in Bold face font.

In the new pages you can only highlight one word (or letter) at a time. Holding the Command key and highlighting multiple words does not function >

Please bring this ca[ability back !

Mort

Thanks israfelli, for a helpful summary of this thread - and for extracting the 1% of useful input from robo’s gobo ! I’d put a different emphasis on your first point of “what apple got right”. As you say:

Apple decided to re-write Pages into what could potentially be an improved, more efficient cross-device app.

A more coherent strategy would have been to develop “iWork Pro” (including the long lost database) for MacOS alongside the inevitable iWork Lite for iOS and iCloud.

Only half this strategy has been implemented - and half a bridge is more dangerous than no bridge at all. Thus all the cries from the flailing and drowning...

In the event anyone at Apple is listening, it is surely time to put together a Development Team specifically for Desktop / Power / Business users - prioritising those who do NOT do their primary work on pads, phones and clouds.

A gift, perhaps, for those long-term, loyal users who kept Apple alive through the dark ages until it could take over the phone business, the music business and the pad business and start drowning in its wealth!

Thanks also, Peter, for being a little lighthouse of “applecare” through this disaster.

I don't know if Apple checks these Community Support forums, but I have heard from Apple support they ARE reading the product reviews. They also are actively seeking feedback to decide which features are most desired to add to 5. Here is the direct line to let Apple know exactly what you want to have on Pages 5. I think it may be your best place to let them know exactly what you want and need...

www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html

I have a lot of layout documents with graphics so to keep those unchanged and updatable I am still using the old Pages '09 on my Mac with no problems. I exported from 5 to 9 all those I opened in 5 and they are fine and fully functional. So until they get 5 up to the same standards, the old 9 is still just as usable as it was before 5. After exporting documents back to 9, just quit 5 and work in 9. All document you open with only 9 active will open in 9.

Apple probably should have launched Pages 5 as a cross-device beta until more features were added. It took everyone by surprize and was confusing as an update. But for simple documents to share and amend on all my devices 5 is good. You can even start a new document in 5 and export and finish it in 9. I'm saving to a different folder for each app. The only problem is remembering to quit one Pages app before working in the other.

Well, 1% useful is better than 99% FUD! It's been almost two whole days since the last flame from "we" down under. Mission accomplished. Let's keep that lighthouse running tip top!

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

It is on the list:

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewforum.php?f=22&sid=1327321113575 4380817654c5a787234&mforum=iworktipsntrick

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for your well-organized list. You have one item that the list shows as missing, and in reality Apple just moved the handle:

Create series in cells by drag extend samples

The Fill Handle has moved from the lower right corner to the midpoint of the selection border, and the handle has changed from a white circle to a yellow circle.

Jerry

So who's going to be gamey enough to try the new and improved Page 5.0.1?