Q: Pages 5 features checklist

Oh no, I opened the original of a presentation i'm working on and wrote in the old Keynote, in the new Keynote, it converted it and now I can't open it in the old keynote. Mommy!

Exactly.  People are so quick to jump on developers for doing rewrites that will help in the long run.  Those who really need those missing features should just stay on the old version.  And hopefully they were smart enough to have backups available to revert to.  Everybody has backups, right?

What does the version history do?  You should be able to revert to the old copy.

It amazes me how many commenters here are acting like spoiled children.  Nobody is forcing you to upgrade.  Judging from how apple dealt with FCPX, which was in dire need of a rewrite! all the missing features will be returned in due time.  Writing software takes time and work.  Rewriting it takes more time and work, particularly in figuring out what users need.  So please, please, please go to http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html and leave feedback, and be nice.  Don't act like a five year old.  Sheesh.

robogobo wrote:

 

It amazes me how many commenters here are acting like spoiled children.  Nobody is forcing you to upgrade.  Judging from how apple dealt with FCPX, which was in dire need of a rewrite! all the missing features will be returned in due time.  Writing software takes time and work.  Rewriting it takes more time and work, particularly in figuring out what users need.  So please, please, please go to http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html and leave feedback, and be nice.  Don't act like a five year old.  Sheesh.

I strongly disagree with your opinion. This is not the same case of Final Cut Pro X. I have written an article about it but here are two bits regarding your opinion:

Regarding your comparison to FCPX:

• Some expert Apple journalists like Jordan Goldson of Macrumors are comparing this event to the Final Cut Studio to Final Cut Pro X upgrade. As much as there are resemblances, in order to fully understand what is happening here one would have to imagine Final Cut Pro being discontinued in favor of iMovie.

Regarding your comment "all the missing features will be returned in due time":

• The only update for the prior iWork is to upgrade to a dumbed down version. The Appstore will give us nothing else. And the way I see it, if full iOS editability is the rule, there will be no future alternative from Apple for those of us who use iWork to actually work. Why? Because:

  • From a usability perspective, iOS devices will not be able to do as much as iWork could do on a Mac.

  • From a market perspective, iOS users will not demand the features Mac users do.

<Link Edited By Host> 

These are people who trusted Apple, who believed Apple when they said that Pages 5 was groundbreaking and stunning, and who thought that an upgrade would contain a superset of the featurjes in the previouos version. That's not an unrealistic expectation. What did we get? An app that is called Pages but isn't Pages, has apparently been ported from iOS, and has a subset of the features in the previous version to accommodate the limitations of an iPad.

This time the "update" turns a $3,000 iMac into an iPad that can't be carried around. Apple doesn't seem to understand that we love our iPads and we love our iMacs and that we know the difference and like it that way.

Many people didn't download it intentionally; Software Update bills it as an update and installs it automatically unless you are very careful. They are stuck, and they need to get out. Apple trivialized a tool that we use every day. We are definitely not amused and we are entitled to our feelings, because it is like taking a car in for repairs, but they replace it with a rickshaw, and call it an improvement.

The question is not how difficult it is to put features back, the question is why did they take them out in the first place. Why did they remove features we used every day and relied on?

The problem has an easy solution. It doesn't take any time or work or figuring out what we need, because all that work is done. It's called Pages 4.3. All they have to do is reinstate it and consider it a separate and parallel program to Pages 5.

Apple can solve this problem today. The fact that they can and haven't compounds the frustration.

I also strongly disagree. Many of us innocently upgraded our iPad Pages app only to find once the iOS version had opened the files they were rendered useless in Pages 4.3 forcing us to upgrade to 5.0 with no path back to the original version of the file that retained anything close to the original formatting. Many have lost years of work. Many innocently took Pages 5.0 'for a spin' only to find they had rendered useless every file they looked at.

This upgrade was at the very least thoughtless if not close to malicious.

Might I remind you of Tim Cook's 'we get it, no one else does' attitude. I call that hubris.

As you say, Sheesh...

Kenneth Collins1 wrote:

 

What did we get? An app that is called Pages but isn't Pages, has apparently been ported from iOS, and has a subset of the features in the previous version to accommodate the limitations of an iPad.

 

The question is not how difficult it is to put features back, the question is why did they take them out in the first place. Why did they remove features we used every day and relied on?

Apple did not take out any features at all. Pages 5.0 isn't an update of the previous version - it was a complete rewrite of the entire application. It's 64-bit. And we must remember, their goal was to obtain 100% compatibly among iOS and OS X and iCloud.com. In addition, they wanted collaboration to be compatible as well no matter what device you use. That's a HUGE undertaking, and they have succeeded in their goals.

Your comments regarding "porting Pages from iOS" is almost comical. Pages is fully developed for the Mac platform; Apple didn't create it with touch screen users in mind. The interface is fully optimized for desktop computers. It's far from a mobile app. Apple takes a very different approach than Microsoft. OS X apps are optimized for desktop computers, web apps are optimized for web (desktop version of the web), and mobile apps are optimized for that device specifically (iPhone version is not the same as the iPad version). Funny how people still respond with the "dumbed-down because they want it to be iOS" comments. There's a huge difference between consistency and compatibility vs the exact same app on multiple platforms.

We all have very valid feedback. Not implementing features a lot of people use isn't a good situation. So should Apple have spent more time in development to implement all features from the previous version? That's up for debate. Some of the features that are missing aren't actually missing but behaving differently, or I've never used such feature (but of course others have). But I certainly will use the new features (on all my devices), and I really appreciate 64-bit. I greatly look forward to collaboration - no more odd behavior with Google Docs. So I'm glad it was pushed out now rather than later. Even better, we still have the older Pages until they can further develop the new version - they kept it around rather than replace the old one for a reason. Yeah it'd be nice if you could use the old Pages with your documents opened in Pages 5.0, but that was one major improvement of the new version - 100% compatibility among all of your devices. It just isn't possible to improve the file format, without changing the file format...

So, file your feedback. I'm sure they'll prioritize their develop based on the customer feedback. We will get these features back.

cosmofromwatertown wrote:

 

Many of us innocently upgraded our iPad Pages app only to find once the iOS version had opened the files they were rendered useless in Pages 4.3 forcing us to upgrade to 5.0 with no path back to the original version of the file that retained anything close to the original formatting. Many have lost years of work. Many innocently took Pages 5.0 'for a spin' only to find they had rendered useless every file they looked at.

You do remember the popup stating if you open this document you can only open it in the new Pages, don't you...

You can get your "years of work" back, follow these steps:

Restore your old Pages iOS app from iTunes - or if it's already updated in iTunes, restore it from a backup.

Restore your older version of your Pages document from your backup.

You should still have Pages '09 unless you deleted it. If you did, restore it from a backup.

If you don't have a backup, shame on you.

The fundamental issue is that Apple should have fully disclosed in advance to potential downloaders that this was a significant rewrite, not an upgrade, and provided us in advance with a list of features that would no longer be working. This was not a trivial change. For example, I have tried to shift my law office to Macintosh and Pages. That effort ends now. In addition, I have already switched back to Microsoft Word because of the many downgrades that the new version of Pages has undergone.

Joey!! 【ツ】 wrote:

 

shame on you.

You are perfectly right: shame on us. Who in their right mind could have possibly thought such a bone-headed, frivolous, immature—nah, childish thought, that "Pages 5.0 for OSX" is an upgrade of "Pages 4.3 for OSX"???

Rick, I would agree. That would have been nice, rather than just a popup stating you can't go back to an older version if you open this document in the new Pages. On the other side of the fence, you must realize a lot of customers won't even use most of the missing features.

Side note: In the popup that warns you can't go back if you open the document, is there a Learn More button provided? That would have been a good solution - link to a web page that explains the situation.

'Restore your old Pages iOS app from iTunes - or if it's already updated in iTunes, restore it from a backup.'

I have already done that. I was the first to post on this forum how to do it to help others. It is beyond the technical savvy of most users.

'Restore your older version of your Pages document from your backup.'

Many were wrongly deceived by Apple that documents on iCloud were safe. Yes there was a warning that file could not be opened any longer in 4.3 - no where did it say that all formatting would be destroyed. The least you should expect from a software company is to respect their own file format. They are supposed to know the intricacies of their own software. I've never bought an upgrade to anything that rendered old files near useless. To say that 4.3 files are compatible with 5.0 is a joke. 5.0 can't open the files correctly! If it could, and it could save the files correctly back to 4.3, there would be no issue. It can't!

'You should still have Pages '09 unless you deleted it. If you did, restore it from a backup.

If you don't have a backup, shame on you.'

Again, I was one of the first on this forum to discover where it was hiding. I reported it to help others. That does not excuse Apple for being entirely irresponsible in this.

We are the customers. We are not here to serve Apple.

I agree with both sides of this argument:

1. I believe Pages 5.0 was mislabeled as an "update" or "upgrade".  Apple could have and should have avoided this firestorm by simply labeling Pages 5.0 for what it is: a new, version 1.0 product.  Perhaps it could have been called "iWork Live" and "LivePages" 1.0 in reference to the real time collaboration across platforms. In any event, it IS a complete rewrite that is starting off relatively barren in terms of features and capability. 
   
   Apple did well by not replacing Pages '09 on disk with this update, because it isn't really a replacement.  It's a first step in an exciting (but as of yet, underdeveloped) direction. However, this should have been even more clear, e.g. legacy Pages documents should be nondestructively imported and saved as a separate file in the new format, not simply opened and overwritten forever.  Marketing materials should reflect that this is a new, 1.0 product and will be getting the focus of future iWork development and new features added with each release, to ultimately bring it up to parity with Pages '09 and eventually beyond.
   
   The miscommunication and poorly handled "update" presentation to existing users was a disservice to Apple's customers and users and worthy of censure.
   
   
2. However, the baseless and melodramatic statements that Pages 5.0 on the Mac is "an iOS port" or is somehow now and in the future only going to be an iOS app running on a Mac are completely unecessary and misleading.  I have now used the latest version of Pages extensively on iOS, iCloud and OSX, and while they are fully compatible (meaning they can all accurately display the same file the same way, and to some degree, edit it), they are most certainly NOT the same or simply ports of the iOS version.
   
   The OSX / desktop version is the most feature complete and allows for managing sections, tables of content, and style definitions, none of which can be created on iOS or iCloud.  There is no question that the desktop version is now, and in the future will continue to be, the most powerful of the versions, while iCloud and iOS will get versions of future features that make sense for their usage, UI capabilities, etc.
   
   So I think a lot of the FUD being generated in this thread is inaccurate and unproductive.  The reason why the new Pages for OSX is so stripped of features is because it is a new 1.0 product, with a misleading name.  Not because it is or was meant to be a port from iOS, or feature equivalent.  I have no doubt that as future updates are released, the desktop version will pick up many of its lost features, plus many more, and the discrepancy between the OSX and iOS versions will grow greater, as each version becomes more tailored for its own platform.

My last comment is that as a software developer myself, I understand and relate to what a complete rewrite of a software product means.  It is literally impossible, not to mention impractical, to take 10 years of incremental features, and include all of them in a rewritten piece of new software out of the gate.  When you rewrite software, you develop it until it has enough features to be meaningful and useful, and you release it.  Then you add on the most important and best additional features going forward from there.

I do believe that Pages 5.0 / 1.0 in its current state is meaningful and useful. It is slick, streamlined, and the collaboration and cross-platform compatibility is awesome.  It is NOT, however, a replacement or equivalent piece of software to Pages '09. 

So despite Apple bungling the release, misnaming the new iWork apps, and making a bad decision on how to handle legacy documents, I think it is wrong and unreasonable to call the new apps "bad", "iOS ports", "intentionally watered-down", "a complete disaster" or anything else like that.  As long as we recognize, as Apple should have, that Pages 5.0 is really "New Pages" 1.0, which is a separate product entirely from Pages '09 and will now be developed over time into its own mature platform, I think everyone will be much happier. 

It IS possible to still love and use Pages '09 as we always have, and also at the same time love, use, and be excited for the future possibilities of this new Pages 1.0.