Q: Pages 5 features checklist
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Oct 26, 2013 9:17 AMby 1Azhar,Magnus Lewan wrote:
Does anyone know what word processor Apple employees use? If it is Pages there may be a heated in house discussion right now.
I hope so!!
I've said this since day 1 (in my posts on this topic): It appears to me that those who designed the new iWork don't actually use it. Otherwise they wouldn't remove key features from it!
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Oct 26, 2013 9:35 AMby wr_,Here is another issue. You can no longer use system short-cut keys to engage text-to-speech. You will have to go through the menu process in pages, requirig a great deal of attention and mouse dexterity. Not impossible, but why have to do this? Anyone have a work-around for this?
WR
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Oct 26, 2013 9:40 AMby Jose_Ortiz,It is unacceptable. As an engineer I use Pages with Mathtype daily (Latex is not always the fastest option). I can't understand why Apple removes key features from its software. What are we expected to do with something much less powerfull than Microsoft Word? Do you believe that we only play with our Macs or what? I will have to work with old ('09) software in my all new MacBook Pro. Good work Apple.
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Oct 26, 2013 9:50 AMby drewsky7821,Valid use case Apple:
In order to write, organize and edit a 700 page novel
As a professional novelist
I want the ability to quickly drag and drop pages from one part of the document to the other
It's these features that set you apart! You have BILLIONS of dollars! Don't REMOVE great features, ADD them!
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Oct 26, 2013 10:17 AMby PeterBreis0807,Magnus Lewan wrote:
Does anyone know what word processor Apple employees use? If it is Pages there may be a heated in house discussion right now.
With one exception the Apple staff I have spoken to profess relative ignorance of Pages as they use MsOffice, but of course I have no knowledge of what goes on at HQ except what files I see that seem to originate from there.
In my long contact with Apple I have however detected an almost reluctance to use Apple software, certainly no enthusiasm to match that of Apple customers. The rational given to me by some staff was that they needed to persuade PC Users to switch and they had to work with what made switchers comfortable.
I think there is also a notion that MsOffice is the serious choice and iWork is just for mere consumers, not business customers. With business customers they seem to get steered towards Microsoft products. MsOffice is certainly one of the first add on purchases with any Mac, especially with students and small businesses. It is only with the iPad which is almost entirely a consumer product that the iWork Apps got traction, which may explain Apple's current tactics.
Despite that the iWork Apps have always been amongst the best selling apps in the MAS, probably because MsOffice has no products there.
Peter
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Oct 26, 2013 10:27 AMby KiltedGreen,The list is very handy indeed and many thans, but to correct it:
You can delete pages as someone else mentioned - Setup > then deselect 'Document Body', select the thumbnail page and press delete.
Alignment guides are present in Preferences.
The zoom level of a document is retained when it's saved. A new document always opens at 125%.
Masking has options to mask with an Oval, Arrow, Star and other non-rectangualr shapes
Accented characters can be placed in headers and footers - type the character, hold it down, choose the number from the list and there you are. Standard OS X & iOS.
Really, the User Guide should be in Altered rather than Removed as it's now on the web (I think a lot of Mac Help is online anyway even when inside the Help application)
Marking as Removed 'Open Pages '08 documents' is a little disingeneous surely? Did Pages '09 open documents from the release prior Pages '08?
Though headers and footers seem multicolumn it's a bit confusing when you overtype one of the colums and then look in the inspector. Not quite sure what it's doing ...
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Oct 26, 2013 10:32 AMby MacFinn,>>Here is another issue. You can no longer use system short-cut keys to engage text-to-speech. You will have to go through the menu process in pages, requirig a great deal of attention and mouse dexterity. Not impossible, but why have to do this? Anyone have a work-around for this?<<
Use Automator to create a service for "Speak Text".
Once saved, select the text in Pages, right click and choose the relevant option from the Services menu. Simple and quick.
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Oct 26, 2013 10:50 AMby Joey!! 【ツ】,Thank you KiltedGreen! Alignment guides are indeed disabled by default. I filed a request for them to enable them by default - they are on iCloud.com.
Regarding Speak Selection, this is clearly a bug not a removed feature. File a bug report, and use Edit > Speech > Start Speaking until it's fixed.
Request: Can we move your list to a different thread, and state in post 1 that we should avoid posting rants, and instead point people to where they can file their feedback? This thread is hard to keep up with and sort out the complaints from the posts that list other changes or corrections.
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Oct 26, 2013 11:04 AMby mephisante,Find/Replace doesn't seem to correctly recognize the new line (new paragraph) character. The iOS period shortcut often leads me to making an extra space before a newline, which I used to delete with find/replace, but searching for the newline character now finds a space.
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Oct 26, 2013 11:18 AMby mephisante,Also, not that many will care, but I will point out that iWork for Mac and iWork for iOS now use the same system, no more converting back and forth. Apple didn't "remove" these features, they rewrote the app pretty much from scratch to be 64bit and cross-compatible with iOS and the web. Why they had to do that is up for debate, but missing features are missing because this is a whole new piece of software that will age much better than the previous version would have. That doesn't mean they shouldn't re-add them or that it's not frustrating, as a software developer I just want people to know Apple and other developers who "remove" features with major releases are maliciously removing your favorite feature, and it will probably come back, especially with a lot of people posting bug reports and enhancement requests! /rantover
