Q: Pages 5 features checklist

I'm just another one who thinks Pages is now an unmittigated disaster. I hate it!

I do agree for every word you write. As a teacher myself I need all of the functions in the old iWork 09.

I understand that Apple is making more money with ePub books than printed books. But I think printed books will still be here with us for several years!

It's nothing more frustating to see kids living in a digital world, who never touched a real book, but only learned everything via digital media. Which by the way is scientifically proven is no learning! It is just observing!

The process of learning involves every senses. Especially touching! and practical experience by repeating and doing.

South Korea will banish all printed media from schools by 2016. But already now 40% of the students do suffer digital dementia that is they can't memorize anthing because everything is digitally saved somewhere for fast access when needed.

The biggest problem with these digital medias is that kids today believe they will find for every problem a solution on the internet. Which isn't the case at all. Already now many kids suffer depression illness, because they didn't learn hhow to solve a problem im real life when there is no solution.

All the courses I teach (Mathematics, science and computer science) I need Keynote presentations and Pages docs which I create on my own.

The new iWork just crippled or removed everything for creating with ease these docs. Drag and drop is a must, rearranging pages a must, roman numbers a must (by numbering my chapters with roman numbers I can teach roman numbers as a side effect. I know roman numbers aren't used anymore today, (except on analog watches) but it never hurts knowing more than needed!

The feature I use most is double page layout! It's nothing more frustrating to have 1-3 lines left on a third page, which I don't want in my papers. It is possible to avoid this with any DTP app, but with double pages layout I can avoid form the beginning!

I'm  happy that my old 2007 iMac hasn't upgraded iWork automatically this way I only killed a 200 pages Keynote presentation on my iPad.

Of all the 150 teachers at my school, I conviced about 60 to work with Macs years ago. But I already warned them not to upgrade to iWork 5.

A big THANK YOU to the person who launched this topic/discussion. But to all of us who are posting here, I think it's also important to send Apple a feedback (I did). I believe they will be more prone to listen. Or atleast I hope....

http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html

It is interesting to note that iBooks Author has escaped the iOS dumbing down suffered by the iWork suite. Does this reflect the fact that Apple wants certain people to still have access to professional tools for content creation? I know many educators want iBA to come to iOS so perhaps it's days as a professional OS X app are numbered...

All we need from Apple is a statement and an answer to one or more of these questions:

Will Pages 4.3 be optimised for Mavericks (or vice versa)?

Will Pages 4.3 be developed and exist (say, as Pages Pro) as a separate higher tier product?

Will it be long before Pages 5 gains missing features and a more customisable interface?

Becuase existing users need to start planning a way forward that fits their needs.

Apple should also be clear about the missing features of Pages 5 on the Mac App Store, and make Pages 4.3 available for those that need it.

I can resolve your question, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to fail:

NO. No one working with this code anymore, forget it

NO. No possibility, it would be a logical solution, so, being Apple, forget it

NEVER. iOS and iCloud versions are no costomizable and possibly will never have some features, as facing pages, so either OSX version will have

I'm pretty sure everybody inside Apple could imagine that reaction the day they plan that functionality slaughter.

If they didn't care then, what is going to change now?

You can reinstall Pages 1.7.2 on your iPad by deleting version 2, plugging in your iPad to your computer and firing up iTunes, going to "apps" on the IPad dialogues and finding and install the previous version (the icon should still be there: the ipa file is in tTunes/Mobile Applications). Then sync. 

One Gotcha! however, if you have auot app updates turned own (settings/iTunes & App Store) Apple will automatically replace version 1.7.2 with the crappy new version.

azamino wrote:

so many people have said that the new pages cant delete individual pages.

this is true for pages:word processing.

for pages: page layout, you can delete individual pages

this makes total sense to me.

 

not dumber, just different, and definitely easier to use

 

You are correct, individual pages in the layout mode may be deleted. However, to do this, we must uncheck 'document body' in Document Setup. Do that and we lose all formatting in a template. So all the templates are now word processing only.

Also, if we try and add a page in layout mode to the front of the document, it can't be done. So we add it after the first page, then reorder them. Nope, can't reorder. I must move everything from the first page to the second page via select and drag. Now in thumbnails I highlight the first page and choose to add a new page, but Pages randomly places it in various places, never after the first page. Perhaps these are bugs, and I will send a note to Apple via feedback. But not just different, and definitely not easier to use for someone using Pages for DTP layout.

I guess this could be viewed as complaining, and I expect a learning curve when new software comes out. But by just looking at the templates, it seems to me that Apple is not looking for anyone to do anything other than simple word processing in Pages. I am glad that I can stay with the old version, and do look forward to learning the new version. Perhaps in time, fingers crossed, we'll get some features back.

Ash435 wrote:

 

It is interesting to note that iBooks Author has escaped the iOS dumbing down suffered by the iWork suite.

Nonetheless the recent update removed a very major and important feature, font embedding.  I am sure this was a mistake which will be fixed however.

fruhulda wrote:

 

Quite a few more languages are added in Pages.

Good point!  Pages now, like other apps, has the full list of OS X localizations.  Apple had fallen far behind in the old version, presumably because they did not want to waste the resources on an app that was going to be essentially replaced.

Every change breaks someone's workflow:

http://xkcd.com/1172/

Roger,

That is only true if 1.7.2 is still in the the Mobile Apps folder. In my case it was not. I had to find it using Time Machine, put it back, and point the system to that file to reinstall it as I previously listed. It's not that simple for everyone.

Tristan,

I totally agree, I'm just trying to imagine what Apple must be thinking for nothing seems to explain their insensitivity and narrow-mindedness in this.

Yes, I'm going to try to take that with humor, because what my body ask me is to came to Cupertino with a katana, in Tarantino's way