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PC Mag Review of Apple iWork '05 133

Posted by michael from the iwork-uwork-we-all-work dept.
sammykrupa writes "PC Mag has a review of Apple's new office suite, iWork '05. iWork '05 includes a word processor, called Pages (though the article refers to it as a cross between a page-layout program and a word processor) and presentation software, called Keynote. They say that iWork '05 is a 'small but significant assault on Fort Microsoft.' The article also explains that the suite is strong in typographic and visual features - the areas where Office is weakest."
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PC Mag Review of Apple iWork '05 More

PC Mag Review of Apple iWork '05

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  • I think business users are going to use Office, whatever. I think the good thing about Pages is that it offers a cheap home alternative for those who just wouldn't buy a full copy of office for 400 odd quid, and who only want to write and read letters.

    Not a moment too soon...
    • I wish that Apple would have gone with an established app, rather than add another to the ever-growing list of choices.

      On the Mac, right now it appears that there's several options: Neo Office (a Mac specific flavor of OO, it appears), the MS Office Suite(s), Abiword, Appleworks, and now Pages. There's probably a lot more than that, but that's what I'm aware of off the top of my head.

      Not to mention the lyriad of choices you get if you want to go back in the Macs history (I didn't jump ship till OSX,
      • On the Mac, right now it appears that there's several options: Neo Office (a Mac specific flavor of OO, it appears),

        Still in beta, not usable for anyone who doesn't know what they're doing.

        Appleworks

        Replaced for the most part with either iWork or MS Office.

        Not to mention the lyriad of choices you get if you want to go back in the Macs history (I didn't jump ship till OSX, but there's lots of options available for older versions of Macs, which will still run fine on the shiny new G5's)

        They may run

        • but they're almost definitely missing a pile of nice OSX features only available to native apps.

          Yeah, like the services that allowed me to determine that "lyriad" is not a word in the English language. It is, however, a welsh word, and one spelling for an annual meteor shower. I think you meant "myriad."

          Omnidictionary service allows lookup of words in multiple online dictionaries simultaneously from any cocoa app. The look up in google service is offered by Safari. :)

      • much less deliver it to your boss/teacher/what-have-you without having to worry about formatting, compatability, fonts, and so on.

        This is not an issue, because export to PDF is built in to the OS X printing system. Every Apple application that prints supports it.

      • "There's probably a lot more than that, but that's what I'm aware of off the top of my head."

        Yup. Mellel, Nisus Express, RagTime, ... Compared to this, the Windows word processing market looks small.

        But like the above-mentioned ones, Pages doesn't have a lot in common with the more commonly-used apps like Word or OOo Writer. It's been written and *designed* from scratch. Its UI is unusual, and maybe so in a positive way.

        They have done the same with Keynote, and I can see your unhappiness about the fact t

      • Re:Pages not an Word competitor (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I wish that Apple would have gone with an established app, rather than add another to the ever-growing list of choices.

        Yeah. Choices suck. I hate those. Lock me in, please. ... but I'm still a bit confused on why Apple has chosen Pages, and a proprietary format, versus a more open format.

        You are absolutely correct: You are a bit confused.

        Pages uses an open XML format.
      • I'm all one for choice, but Apple needs a clear winner for it to gain corporate acceptance.

        Pages isn't a bid to win corporate acceptance. If you want a clear winner for corporate acceptance, Office X has been the clear winner for years.

        Like the parent of your post said, Pages isn't built to be a MS Word killer. It's also not supposed to be an Adobe InDesign killer. And neither iPhoto or Preview are meant to replace Photoshop.

        However, Pages does seem to be pretty good at what it does, which is simple/e

        • To what extent do you think Apple kept Pages feature stripped on purpose? The rumor mills were rife with the 'Word killer' threads, and this proved fruitless. Is this because of the relationship Apple continues to keep with Microsoft following the 1997 (I think) deal? Lets not forget, Microsoft is one of Apple's largest shareholders.

          Similarly, did Apple choose not to step on Adobe's feet any further, since Adobe have already abandoned OS X versions of Premier?

          • Re:Pages not an Word competitor (Score:5, Insightful)

            by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Friday January 28, 2005 @05:02PM (#11508676) Homepage
            Well, I think the whole "not wanting to step on Microsoft's and Adobe's toes" certainly provided incentive to keep Pages simple.

            However, I suspect that there's another big reason, one that was probably at least as influential in the design of the final product. A lot of the Geek/Linux crowd really DON'T understand Apple's design philosophy.

            If you look at Microsoft products, for example (and I'm not trying to start a flame-war, just noting a different design method), and version 1.0 is usually crap. I can't think of an MS program that was even usable before version 3.0, and it's usually not very good until version 4.0. Why?

            Microsoft will create a version 1.0 application with 1000 features that barely work, and the program will be a PITA to use. By version 4, they've spent years redesigning, taking things out, putting things in, until it's a patchwork program with 700 useful features.

            Apple, on the other hand, will put out a comparable application with version 1.0 having only 500 features, but most of them work decently, and the program is fairly pleasant to work with. It won't do everything the Microsoft version 1.0 program will do, but what it does, it's pretty good at. They use this product as a base, and spend years carefully adding features in places that don't disturb the original design. By version 4, it's a solid program with 700 useful features.

            So it gets to be a question of what you think is better-- to throw in all sorts of features all at once spend years sorting it out, or use a smaller set of more targeted features as a base and then build off of that?

      • "On the Mac, right now it appears that there's several options: Neo Office (a Mac specific flavor of OO, it appears), the MS Office Suite(s), Abiword, Appleworks, and now Pages."

        MS Office is owned by MS. Apple doesn't control it (price, features, speed).

        Neo Office is a start, but it is non-native, java, and has a ways to go to even be a complete OO.o system, let alone a Office replacement.

        Appleworks is outdated, runs in carbon, not cocoa, and needs massive updating.

        Pages needed to be a cocoa word proces

      • Re:Pages not an Word competitor (Score:4, Insightful)

        by hunterx11 ( 778171 ) <hunterx11.gmail@com> on Friday January 28, 2005 @02:22PM (#11506558) Homepage Journal
        Apple doesn't want to replace Office. For a lot of people, Office is the killer app. If MS stopped making Office for Mac, no amount of "switch" campaigns would make up for it.
      • Oh, no! Mac OS X has too much software. Someone please save me from all these choices!

  • Most important part of TFA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Staplerh ( 806722 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @10:46AM (#11503780) Homepage
    Damn. This was a dissapointing read. The most important paragraph IMHO concerned 'Pages' - I'm a Mac user who relies on MS Office and was mildly excited about being able to switch to iWork in lieu of Office (and the inevitable $$$ upgades). Unfortunately:

    In our tests, Pages imported our Word test files with only minimal changes in page layout. And there are still plenty of features where Pages needs to play catch-up with Word. For example, Pages lacks a grammar checker and revision mark-up abilities. Also, there are none of the collaboration, tracking, and security features that make Word so excellent in business settings. Pages lacks Word's long-document features and Word's (sometimes shaky) ability to combine multiple subdocuments into one master document, as well as the ability to split a window so that you can work on two different parts of a document at the same time. We were also surprised to find that Pages loads and saves files slowly compared to other modern applations.

    Damn. The revision abilities in Word are excellent - even better in Office X than in the MS Office XP version. "Minimal Changes" in page layout? Damn.

    Now, I'll admit that much of this is Microsoft's fault - they have their proprietary .doc format, and it's probably a bitch to crack. But other things.. revision could have been aped by Apple. Heck, the feature to split the window so you can work on two different parts of a document at the same time. These are all things that perhaps the standard enduser doesn't work, but I'd say the cost/benefit analysis would have argued for the inclusion of these features!

    Now I know that Pages is just going to be a 'page layout' feature, and it does look beautiful - but damn it, for a minute there I was hoping that I could finally have a Microsoft free Mac.
    • I don't know about the other features, but revision tracking is critical in a corporate or other group environment (university papers) where there are multiple authors and reviewers. I hate the lack of support in Word for citations (without 3rd party hacks), but live with it over just using LaTeX primarily because of the review/revision facilities.

    • Re:Most important part of TFA (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What is the current version of Word? If I am not mistaken, it's version 9. Also, it's been on the market for roughly 20 years.

      Pages is version 1.0 and it's not even a months old. Give Apple some time to add features and fix problems. The fact that it's compared to Word instead of Nisus Writer et al. shows that it's a strong contender.

    • Re:Most important part of TFA (Score:4, Informative)

      by searleb ( 168974 ) * on Friday January 28, 2005 @01:16PM (#11505665) Homepage
      I think there is an important thing to note about the page layout problem. Conversions between Mac Office and Windows Office have always resulted in "Minimal Changes in the page layout" as well, even if they are the same version number. You still always have to check (and fix) your document on a Windows computer.

      This is particularly noticable in Mac Powerpoint to Windows Powerpoint. For example, a couple of years ago I gave a small presentation I wrote on my mac with (the then new) Office.X. They wanted me to do it on their Windows computer and so I decied to wing it. I was horrified when all my tiff graphics didn't come up and all my properly (mono) spaced fonts were converted to san serif (nothing lined up). I learned my lesson and never trust the (or any) converter anymore.

      I haven't tried the new Pages and Keynote yet, but other positive reviews of the conversion features suggest that Pages/Keynote to Word/Powerpoint is probably not any worse off than where current Mac Office users are now. I'm not going to ditch Mac Office, but I'm going to buy iWork next time I get to the Apple store. The new features not included in Office, such as the Keynote to QuickTime converter (programs to do movie demos cost high hundreds to thousands of dollars), are my motivation.
      • PowerPoint also has a QuickTime export feature, although in my opinion Keynote QuickTime export works better. Both applications support interactive QT (clicks on links work), but with Keynote you can navigate with clicks and keyboard keys like it is a presentation.
      • Most of the reason documents don't convert properly is due to differences in the fonts they use.

        The Mac has a glut of bitmapped fonts that tend to look OK on the screen, but turn to crap on paper. They also lack Windows counterparts. Windows apps (at the Office level of sophistication, anyway) will try to match the font to one that is named similarly, and failing that, a default font (usually Arial). This causes alignment to be way off with any kind of other elements (graphics, WordArt, etc). Add to this t
    • The "minimal changes" referred to could simply be the result of the same fonts not being present. This is not the fault of the "Pages" application.
    • The revision abilities in Word are excellent - even better in Office X than in the MS Office XP version.

      I think this is something that should be built into the OS, not added to a word processor. It'd be great if they bundled subversion, and gave users easy to use version control right there in the finder, and of course in an API accessible to the applications too. They could have a central repository (hidden) for each user, and just check stuff in and out as it was changed, collecting comments from the us
      • > I think this is something that should be built into the OS, not added to a word processor.

        Have you used Word's revisions? The feature is tightly bound to the presentation layer. It works nothing like a sourcecode version control app.

        Anyway the root poster should try Office 2003. Vastly improved revision markup over O XP. (Haven't used the Mac version, so can't compare.)
    • Well damn, I guess iWork is designed as a replacement for Appleworks, not Office. Apple stated this already. Why are so you confused as to who they are targeting with this? If you are looking a revision abilities, then you are obviously a business user and should stick with Word.

      There is no need for revision tools in a home user application. Perhaps they will add it in later versions but we are talking about a version 1.0 product here.

    • compared to other modern applations

      And which applation did they write this in? Whose spellchecker actually works?

  • I'm not there yet. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lonesome Squash ( 676652 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @10:47AM (#11503786)
    It's not really a replacement for Appleworks, since it doesn't have spreadsheet, drawing, or painting components, although the FA hints that there might be a spreadsheet in a future release. Those get used a lot in our house, where three school-age children use Appleworks (and occasionally Office) to prepare their lab reports, papers, and projects.

    On the plus side, it:

    does'nt have a grammar checker, Who need's 1, anyway's?

    imports/exports Word docs

    integrate with iLife. It's a matter of hours until my daughter has a garageband track backing her history report. Wait, maybe that's a minus...

    Apple's site (cited in the OP) is short on details. But from what we see, I'm going to wait until the product fills out a little more. Appleworks with the occasional resorting to Office is working well enough that I don't need to spend $80US.

    But I would tell anyone who wanted cheap, high-quality presentation and layout software to grab it. The samples on the Apple site look just lovely.

  • I guess it has been a long time since I last read PC Magazine but I find it interesting that they are reviewing iWork. I suppose Apple is an advertiser and lord knows these rags have to keep the people paying the bills happy.

  • Early adopter (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Laplace ( 143876 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @10:54AM (#11503878)
    My wife and I have been using Pages to write letters and resumes. So far the only complaint that I've had is that it can be a bit tricky to change the style and formatting of some of the sample documents.

    One thing that confuses me is why Apple doesn't buy The Omni Group's productivity software (Omni Graffle and Outliner). Adding those to iLife would bring it much closer to being an Office competitor (no such thing as an Office killer).

    iWork was well worth the $79 for Pages alone.
    • Apple has been a bit of a nusiance to third party resellers and developers of late. They are slowly killing their business by duplicating it themselves. The Konfabulator story comes to mind plus some resellers have filed lawsuits.

      Still, I don't think it is in their best interest to buy up an app and re-package it. In the long run it is better to have more diversity and let consumer eco-system sort it out.
      • Still, I don't think it is in their best interest to buy up an app and re-package it.

        It's worked pretty well with iTunes so far.

      • Re:Early adopter (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ColdGrits ( 204506 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @11:22AM (#11504231)
        "They are slowly killing their business by duplicating it themselves. The Konfabulator story comes to mind"

        WTF?

        You mean Dashboard in OSX 10.4, which is an OS X implementation of features from OS7 and earlier, are somehow ripping off Konfabulator (which itself was nothing more than a ripoff of MacOS 7 and earlier's features anyway)?

        Interesting revision of huistory there!
        • That's a typo. I meant ...they are slowly killing their 'Third Party businesses'...

          I'm familiar with the history of Konfabulator but that story still got a lot of milage in the press. I mean, afterall, here was the alternative to the evil empire stepping all over some poor little independant developer.

          Similarly, the reseller can't get stock because the Apple retail stores snap it up and they have a price matching policy now to boot making it very hard for those guys to eek out a business.

          I see it all as
          • I get what you mean.

            Although with the Dashboard / Konfabulator thing, it's hard to see what else Apple could have done?

            They are adding back the nice additional things left over from old MacOS, but a 3rd party comes along and copies Apple's own stuff and releases it.

            What should Apple have done? Not added their own feature back to MacOS X? Licensed their own stuff back from teh Konfabulator guy?

            Apple do have a history of buying or licensing things to add to their portfolio where it makes sense (most rec
            • They also bought (soundjam, or something?) iTunes' original code. I also think(?) that they offered to hire the Watson guy... Which they really should have done, it is badass software and Sherlock was a pretty obvious catchup to the functionality. So there is a history of at-least trying to buy/hire good talent, when needed and where it makes sense.

              FYI: The Watson developer is now working at Sun on an unrelated, but cool(so he says) project.
          • I see it all as lose-lose. If they buy up Omni, lets say, then they lose an oppertunity to expand the product offerings for their platform and if they write there own

            I'm not so sure about that. I'm sure that many of the Omni shareholders would love to cash in their stock in a nice Apple buyout. It would give them the freedom to start on a new venture, or to continue developing software they love without fear of going bankrupt (which I would imagine is a very real threat at Omni).
          • I'd have a little more sympathy for Arlo Rose and Konfabulator if he'd go ahead and fix the grievous memory leaks in his program that I paid for.

            Until then, I'm eagerly awaiting Dashboard.
      • "Still, I don't think it is in their best interest to buy up an app and re-package it"

        I think Apple getting rid of (or, at least, reducing the severity of) their "Not-Invented-Here" complex is the reason they're so successful now. Now, they seem to take good ideas, polish them 'till they gleam, and sell them at reasonable prices.

        All I got to say is, I'm a very happy customer.
    • One thing that confuses me is why Apple doesn't buy The Omni Group's productivity software (Omni Graffle and Outliner).

      Probably because it's useful to them to have a 3rd party developer of Omni's calibre that they have such a close relationship with (Omni products are bundled with new Macs - full versions, but not the latest version - and Omni's web site is linked to all through the Apple developer docs).

  • It's the interface, stupid (Score:5, Interesting)

    by legLess ( 127550 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @10:55AM (#11503907) Journal
    The article also explains that the suite is strong in typographic and visual features - the areas where Office is weakest.
    Speaking as an ex IT manager and someone with many Office-using friends, the weakest part of Office isn't it's formatting. What most people I know hate about Office is Word's attitude. "Did you really mean to do that? How 'bout if I correct it for you?" "Are you sure you wanted to paste that? Don't you want me to change the styles a little?"

    Word encapsulates Microsoft's condescending attitude towards its users; it tells users that they're idiots and need hand-holding. Apple's software tells its users that their time is valuable, that they're probably right most of the time, and that they're smarter than their computers.

    Being a geek forum, I can see the responses now: "Ha! Those lusers just don't know how to use it. That's their own fault." Wrong. Microsoft's UI and workflow are driven by program managers with a list of market-driven features. Apple does the same thing, but adds list item zero, non-negotiable, absolutely primary, that Microsoft doesn't understand: the user experience.

    • So true. Although I do a majority of my writing in LaTeX, I do occassionally have to use Word. My biggest problem with this program is convincing the program that I know what the heck I am doing and to stop changing things for me. I actually have a MS Office Specialist Certificate for Office 2000. It just seems to me that the way things ought to work are often backwards of the way they do work.

      • Re:It's the interface, stupid (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I second that.

        When I wrote my thesis, I had a choice to go with LaTeX or with Word. Being a so-so LaTeX user and seeing that Word supports LaTeX features such as cross-referencing etc., I went with Word, believing that I would save time.

        Big mistake. Word kept changing the heading levels, lists, figure placements, widows/orphans. It was not consistent from the point where I saved the document and the next time I opened the document. It corrupted some of my equations (which made the file unsaveable -- had t
        • I third that. I quite happily wrote ten thirty-page chapters for my diss, only to find that when I pasted them together into one doc, just before I was to hand in the final draft to my committee, the formatting got screwed up in a bazillion unpredictable ways and I had to go through the whole thing and reformat by hand. It took hours. iWork may be basic, but it can't possibly be more *shite* than Office.
          • Amen!

            It's like the difference between drawing a picture (word) and writing a program to draw a picture (latex) -- word may seem easier at first, but as soon as you want to change something non-trivial, or ensure some kind of consistency across a large document, well, you're screwed if you used word.

            I dread getting documents in word because I know that it will look crappy and be damn near impossible to change in any non-trivial way.

            Unfortunately many people are so fixated on the initial learning curve bum
        • Unfortunately, Word use is becoming far more common in academia. The last conference I submitted to were really sniffy about accepting PDFs, and the days of getting LaTeX article templates seem to be numbered.

          I'm always astounded when I see people using Word for academic work. LaTeX is just so much less work and produces vastly superior output.

    • Re:It's the interface, stupid (Score:5, Funny)

      by Lonesome Squash ( 676652 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @11:34AM (#11504370)
      When I used to teach a course on MS Office (pauses while PTSD-style flashbacks ease off a bit) I used to explain it like this. "Office is like having a big, friendly, eager-to-please giant with an IQ of 80 standing helpfully between you and your work."

      Don't worry, I'll capitalize that for you. When do I get to pat the rabbits, George?

    • Re:It's the interface, stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kaan ( 88626 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @11:38AM (#11504413)
      The parent post is right on. In fact, I think it barely touches on the differences between Office and Pages (or any other Windows-based software vs. it's Mac counterpart).

      For example, look at iPhoto: fairly minimal on features. In fact, when iPhoto was released, I recall hearing all kinds of important sounding people say a bunch of unimpressive things, that iPhoto lacked features, that it didn't have the power, blah blah blah. But what they missed was the simplicity of use. iPhoto is so much easier to use that it absolutely nails 90% of the things you want to do in a perfect, simple package. For the remaining 10% of your photo tasks (advanced editing, for instance), use something else.

      Apple's approach in general is to nail the common use cases, and nail 'em to the goddamn wall, whereas the Microsoft approach (and again, a majority of apps on Windows) is to offer you 4,000 features that you can't understand or figure out, so you kinda hobble along with the app, barely able to get your tasks done.

      So could Apple have added multiple sub-document support? Yeah, probably. Do I even know what that is, aside from having read someone else's rant that it doesn't exist in Pages? No, I don't, and I don't think I care. I could say the same thing for a lot of the other "features" that are supposedly "missing" from Pages.

      The Omni Group also gets this same design principle - do something well, and keep it simple. There's a huge reason why OmniOutliner is an app that I (and thousands of other folks) use on a regular basis, and it's not because it has all kinds of complicated, contrived "features" that some marketing group in Redmond came up with under corporate sales pressure.
      • The Omni Group also gets this same design principle - do something well, and keep it simple. There's a huge reason why OmniOutliner is an app that I (and thousands of other folks) use on a regular basis, and it's not because it has all kinds of complicated, contrived "features" that some marketing group in Redmond came up with under corporate sales pressure.

        Curiosity... I got a copy of OmniOutliner bundled in my powerbook, as well as iCal. What makes Omni so much better than iCal? It looks nice, but I j

    • Death to the paperclip.

  • Where the cover story on PC Magazine was:

    WordPerfect vs. Word
  • Another review [macworld.com], picking up some unfortunate problems with multiple page layout and PDF exports on non-Apple machines. It does sound like an excellent beginning to a great package, but it's very much 1.0 at the moment. I'm not sure I'll be getting the iWork suite straight away after reading the reviews, but I'm definitely going to keep a eye on it.

    Personal pet hate about many programs - rubbish WYSIWYG, which applies to so many word processors and most definitely OpenOffice and KOffice. My old Atari ST runn

  • Dear Apple, (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @11:00AM (#11503980) Journal
    iWork needs a spreadsheet and database. In fact I often find Office for OS X's poor database functionality (and in particular relational database functionality) to be a constant source of frustration. Unfortunately there are no integrated alternatives.

    If this/these programs are in the works and simply waiting for Tiger's Core Data [apple.com] framework, that's fine. I'm planning on upgrading to Tiger ASAP anyway. But if iWorks with the spreadsheet/database is included on new systems, I will buy a new machine.

    • Re:Dear Apple, (Score:2, Informative)

      by Tanlis ( 304135 )
      I would think with Filemaker 7 that this would solve the issue of not having a relational database.

      Mind you, I'm not the biggest fan of gui dbs and would rather code my own stuff any day of the week, but I've heard pretty high praise about Filemaker.

      • Re:Dear Apple, (Score:2, Informative)

        by Golias ( 176380 )
        Filemaker 7... Mind you, I'm not the biggest fan of gui dbs and would rather code my own stuff any day of the week...

        PostgreSQL runs on OS X if you want to get your fingernails dirty.

        It's not quite Oracle, but then again, it's free.
    • We are thrilled that you have expressed interest in Apple products and/or services.

      As you know, two years ago, we introduced Keynote, our package which allows you to easily create visually stunning presentations. This year, we have released version 2 of Keynote, along with our new document creation package, Pages.

      Perhaps in another two years, we will introduce version 3 of Keynote, version 2 of Pages, and version 1 of some hypothetical spreadsheet package. Maybe then, we'll strike a deal with FileMaker, o
    • In fact I often find Office for OS X's poor database functionality (and in particular relational database functionality) to be a constant source of frustration.

      What database functionality?!? As far as I can tell, there isn't any at all.

  • great programs (Score:4, Informative)

    by e**(i pi)-1 ( 462311 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @11:01AM (#11503990) Homepage Journal
    Pages and Keynote are both great programs. Both are easy to learn. I tried out Pages a week ago the first time and liked it immediatly.
    • Both Pages and Keynote has good templates which makes it easy to get started.
    • I found already the first version of keynotes more stable then powerpoint, especially for presentations with lots of movies. I did not find any flaws in Pages yet but I must say, that I write almost everything with LaTeX myself.
    • Both Pages and Keynote store their documents in an XML form with pictures, etc stored seperatly. This makes things more stable. Pages stores the XML file in gziped form. To look at the XML source of Pages (which does not have line breaks), just add some newlines with :1,$ s/>\r if you use the vi editor.
    • Pages can read and export MS word documents. This works fine for simple documents, more complex layouts get tossed around a bit but it is easy to rearrange things.
    • Keynotes can read and export powerpoint. Similarly, if Keynote exports to powerpoint, there are things which need to be touched up.
    • What I like especially about keynote II is the ability to export the presentation in SWF form. If only one could chose the size of the exported file. There is an easy way around: export as quicktime movie in a smaller format and toss that into Flash.
  • I've been surprised at how many people glaze over the flaws in Pages when they are fairly significant and wouldn't be glazed over in Office. While I do use Pages the problems with are very pronounced, especially from an export perspective. Unless you're exporting to PDF or raw Text, the export is just poor.

    • Re:Worth it for Keynote, Pages a buggy mess (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Unless you're exporting to PDF or raw Text, the export is just poor.

      I have only tested pages preliminarily as it does not have certain features I require every day. I mostly would want to export to PDF, HTML, and a custom XML, with the occasional word export. I could make the XML work with their native format and some perl-fu. What export problems have you encountered? I thought the HTML was very nice, especially compared to the crap that Word poops out. I tried the word format, and it seemed to be

    • the export is just poor

      It is? The HTML makes text in the form of a URL into links automatically. I am not too keen on that, but I can see where other people would like it. It would be nice to have an option to customize the export and remove that feature. Aside from that, HTML and Word formats both seem pretty perfect. What issues have you found?

      • Take the family newsletter template. It will convert parts of this that has user editable text into one big image, while simultaneously splitting up some single columns into several columns. It will dump background entirely when they could become table backgrounds and it will use fonts that aren't likely to be present in many other places.
  • Based on everything I've read, it looks like Pages is pretty darn good - the analogy to other Mac applications (iTunes, iMovie, the iLife suite, etc) is obvious, in that it does what the majority of home PC or Mac users need it do, but cleanly, intuitively, and naturally. The lack of grammar checking is a fairly major flaw, but I would expect that to come in a later version (just as early versions of iPhoto had some significant limitations that were largely resolved in later versions)

    Incidentally, the pos

  • Missing information (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28, 2005 @11:38AM (#11504417)

    The PC Mag review is missing a number of fairly significant points. They fail to cover:


    Word compatibility - this has been perfect so far for me, although I have only used it on a few documents. The import and export has been just as good as that in Word so far.


    HTML - the HTML export feature produces clean and readable HTML with each character or paragraph style mapping to a CSS style. Again, I have only tried a few documents, but this is much, much better than Word's HTML output.


    Other formats - Pages can output to text, rich text, and PDF, in addition to HTML and DOC. The native format is a container folder (similar to applications) containing the file in an XML format, and all binary resources. This makes extracting an image, sound, movie, graph, or whatever easy on any platform.


    Missing formats - there is no option to output a customized XML, OpenOffice format, WP, Appleworks (import is supported), or Latex.


    In general, pages is fairly usable, and seems like a great replacement for reading and writing basic documents in word, and great for general home word processing. I'd like to see more templates, cross-references, and the inclusion of a good thesaurus (will be in tiger).


    The review mentions Word's long document support. We had to abandon word at one of my previous jobs simply because it could not reliably open and save documents more than about 150 pages with a medium number of graphics. My preliminary tests with Pages seem to indicate no problems with documents about 200 pages long. The review also mentions long open and save times. It is actually about 3 times faster to open and save the same document as word (with each using their respective formats) and almost as fast as word at converting and opening a word document. I can't believe how little recognition the DOC and HTML capabilities of pages have been getting. Perhaps I will write up a thorough review myself, at some point in the near future.

    • It won't be long before someone (maybe Apple, maybe not) sets up a template repository. Then it's just a matter of waiting for people to submit their own templates that you can download.
  • Name me one word processor that has one. (And don't try to tell me the thing in Word actually checks English grammar.)

  • One nice thing about these tools... (Score:4, Informative)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @11:54AM (#11504614) Journal
    ...is native PDF support. For example you can create diagrams in Omnigraffle or Adobe Illustrator (say) or equations in LaTeX (dragged and dropped from here [lse.ac.uk]) and insert them easily into your document as vector graphics. This means that they can still be scaled, rotated or otherwise transformed without any loss of quality even though they are no longer in the package that created them. This is a great boon for people preparing technical presentations.
    • I couldn't agree more. I've seen people on Windows try to use the drawing tools in PowerPoint and produce some really ugly looking stuff. OS X seems to exemplify the UNIX philosophy in this regard - one tool does one job well. Keynote is for laying out slides. That's all it does. If you want an equation, render it using the Equation Service (or whatever you prefer) and drop it in. If you want a diagram use OmniGraffle to draw it and drag it in. Images? Drag and drop again (being able to drag images
      • Hmmm...

        Now, more than ever before, I feel myself wishing I wasn't a poor student and had the money to shell out for a nice Apple Powerbook...

        *sigh*
        • See if your institution runs the iSchool program. You rent a machine for 1, 2 or 3 years and then pay a small amount at the end to take ownership of it. It's more expensive in total than buying at the education store price, but it's spread over longer. Also keep your eye out for education deals. When I got my PowerBook, Apple were doing 10 months interest free credit on iBook or PowerBook + iPod deals for education customers (which gave me a perfect excuse to get an iPod as well). Apple also have a ref

  • excellent security in word? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by compactable ( 714182 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @11:58AM (#11504658) Homepage
    From the article:

    "Pages lacks ... the collaboration, tracking, and security features that make Word so excellent in business settings."

    Can someone hilight the securuty features in word? I'm not trolling, I'm serious. The only mention of Word and security I know of comes from cases where Word has shown more than it intended. [com.com]

    • You can password-protect entire documents and sections of documents.

      There is a crude user and group system that allows you to define permissions, or alternatively you can just turn protection on or off.

      You can restrict non-privlidged users to either no read privlidge, no write/change privlidge, or the ability to only write/change to form fields.

  • export to html (Score:2, Informative)

    by r3dx0r ( 716364 )
    has anyone tried to export a document to html ?
    even word, which is known for its crappy html export, does a better job than pages.
    they could have at least made sure that the default templates export correctly.
    other than that i like pages, it's not a word competitor by any means.
    pages just makes the average user write good looking letters in no time.

    • Re:export to html (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      even word, which is known for its crappy html export, does a better job than pages.

      I have not tested it extensively, just a few quick documents and some imported word docs. I thought the HTML was very nice. It was readable and all the custom styles mapped nicely to CSS styles. all the preset styles map to plain HTML without CSS. I thought this was a great solution for backward compatible HTML. It makes it easy to avoid CSS if you so desire. Even background shading inside and out of tables worked pe

  • Lack of grammar checker is a *feature* (Score:5, Insightful)

    by revscat ( 35618 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @01:29PM (#11505842) Journal
    Look, I'm all for tools to make our lives easier. But if someone doesn't know their native tongue well enough to write a complete, well-formed sentence, grammar and spelling checkers just exacerbate the problem. Maybe I'm being somewhat Luddite-ish, but I believe that a firm grasp of language allows for clearer thought, not just A's on papers in college and high school.

    Moral of the story: Grammar checkers -- when they even work -- perpetuate stupidity.

    • Here here!

      --
      (Yes, I'm joking...)

    • Thank you.

      First thing I always do whenever I have to deal with Word is to turn the grammar checker OFF. It just annoys me. I write quite well, thanks, and I don't need Clippy telling me when he thinks I'm not.

      p
    • The grammar checker, like any other tool, has its uses. I find my grammar more than sufficient, yet I still make mistakes occasionally. I have Word do the underline thing if it thinks I make a mistake, and I review them. There are some I ignore outright, since I've been over them before and don't agree with the checker's assessment. But it does catch some mistakes, and teaches me something new in the process. But, like any tool, if you use it as crutch you will be weaker for it.

      • ind my grammar more than sufficient, yet I still make mistakes occasionally.

        This is not meant to embarrass you, but to point out that the grandparent is right, even regarding your not-too-grammatically-complex post. To wit, let's take the following sentences from your post.

        Sentence 1:

        There are some I ignore outright, since I've been over them before and don't agree with the checker's assessment.

        This is a grammatical error. Subordinate clauses (ones that being with subordinating conjunctions like

        • While all of your points may be correct, and I'm not certain they are (the second one, I make the first one all the time), it's something of a moot point since (and see, the heuristic model helps, too ;-) I didn't use a grammar checker on that post, and you wouldn't be able to tell the errors I've stopped making because of it. And for the record, I don't think those count as basic grammatical errors.

          BTW, no offense taken, or intended.

  • No Grammar Check? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thedbp ( 443047 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @02:55PM (#11506989)
    GOOD. I think that grammar check is a lousy feature. Not because it doesn't work, but because it encourages laziness and encourages people to rely on automated helpers rather than learn their native language. If I'm reading something that someone wrote, I want to know that they wrote it THEMSELVES, that they know how to construct sentences and use language effectively and properly. It is important in making hiring decisions as well. If someone comes off great on paper, but can't make conversation on the same level as their augmented written works, then they will be less effective employees.

    How is this different than spell check? Dictionaries have always been readily available to double-check your work, and it is much harder to memorize the exact spelling of every word in a language than it is to master the much fewer rules of sentence structure and the like. Also, in speech, spelling doesn't matter, only pronunciation. So as long as you can form sentences correctly and pronounce words correctly, you don't sound like an ass.

    Grammar check is contributing to the dumbing down of culture. If we continue to rely on automation to provide us with the basics of communication, communication will begin to break down and fail more and more often...

    • I think that you are trying very hard to distinguish qualitatively why spelling checkers are less of a "dumbing down" than "grammar checkers." There is not really much difference. Dictionaries are used to learn meanings, spellings, and pronunciation. Books like the "Chicago Manual of Style" are used to check grammar and usage. Meaning, spelling, pronunciation, grammar, and use are all misapplied, some in writing, some in speech, some in both. Professional writers like to have access to both. Most profe

      • For the record, I don't use either in day to day writing. If its a professional writing job, I'll use a spell check.

        And most professional writers proof and edit their own copy LONG before it winds up in the hands of an editor.

        I don't think it is elitist to expect people to be able to weild their own launguage properly. I certainly wouldn't want to have every gun owner out there carrying around a manual that they have to reference every time they reach for their pistol. I would expect them to KNOW WHAT

        • I don't think it is elitist to expect people to be able to weild their own launguage properly.

          I think it is funny that the above sentence includes two misspellings and one grammatical error.

          I certainly wouldn't want to have every gun owner out there carrying around a manual that they have to reference every time they reach for their pistol

          The purpose of a pistol is to kill. The purpose language, written or spoken, is to communicate. Hopefully the average pistol owner can aim, fire, and hit a targ

  • Keynote 2.0 is great, while Pages 1.0... (Score:3, Informative)

    by King Babar ( 19862 ) on Friday January 28, 2005 @10:47PM (#11511180) Homepage
    ...has issues. Here are the great things about Keynote 2.0:
    1. Like all Cocoa apps, you get emacs-style editing keys for free.
    2. 99% of the infuriating bugs in Keynote 1.0 have been fixed.
    3. "Paste and match style" (not the exact name of the feature)
    4. Vastly improved table handling.
    5. Better inspectors
    6. Improvements in load/save times
    7. Interactive quicktime export
    8. Can eat its own dogfood: check out the interactive introduction to Pages and Keynote that comes with the package.

    Basically, if you liked Keynote, you will really, REALLY like Keynote 2.0. If you hated Keynote, you're much more likely to be satisfied. Unfortunately, it still doesn't do HTML Export.

    Pages is an interesting concept. It does have the same emacs-style editing keys, paste with style, and an innovative templating idea. But its Word input is *very* buggy for documents with lots of placed graphics. It can't round-trip Word documents.

    Its HTML import is decent, but its export is very disappointing; it does use CSS, but then also garbages up many of the tags with ad hoc style entities. It doesn't round-trip HTML. The basic notion of styles is very nice, but rudimentary, and it doesn't let you define your own style sheet in CSS 2 or CSS 3 and be done with it. It was nice that they included letter templates, but the styles on those were mostly pretty twee; it would be easy enough, though, to template your own letterhead. The nucleus of a very good idea (similar file format for Pages and Keynote) right now mostly benefits Keynote over Pages.

    The nicest things I can say about Pages are that it would be a nice choice for any document you have that is shorter than about 8 pages or so and/or happens to match a pre-existing template well. It will be the King of Flyers and mailers. Also, there is the distinct possibility that some things will be fixed in dot versions, and that Pages 2.0 will be as improved as Keynote 2.0. If they introduce that next big upgrade *next January*, they might really have something.

    So iWork was completely worth my $39 (edu pricing) just for the vastly improved Keynote. It would have been worth $79 (regular list) for the same reason. Many people who would be tempted to do plainish documents in Pages might be better off using TextEdit, which is actually a service under Mac OS X 10.3

    And here ends my core dump. :-)

    • Only one thing irritated me about Keynote 1. It didn't automatically resize text (font and line spacing) in bulleted lists to fit the box. Does 2.0 do this?

      • Only one thing irritated me about Keynote 1. It didn't automatically resize text (font and line spacing) in bulleted lists to fit the box. Does 2.0 do this?

        I feel your pain, but the answer is "no". And, in Apple's defense, I think you could argue this is a feature and not a bug. If Keynote did what you would like, it would be an invitation to create all those maddening Powerpoint presentations with unreadably small text (when projected in an actual venue). I've learned to accept using a continuatio

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