Apple Updates Pages and Keynote

[plasticparadox]

Unless you're making sales presentations, the resolution and transition effects (affects?, I allways get those confused, blonde roots) are not as important as the content. In fact, a presentation that looks too slick only undermines the credibility of its content, at least in the corporate world.

Don't be silly. Image is at least as important, if not more important than content. People are like robots - transfixed by shiny objects, moving things, and indeed, 3D cube transitions. I know this from experience, and I'm while I can definitely see where you're coming from regarding the text-based outline, I believe that if a company uses a crap PowerPoint presentation, (think blue/black gradient background, size 18 Arial white font, and clip-art downloaded from MS Office Online) it's just going to go in one ear and out the others. Because everyone uses those crappy presentations. And they all look the same.

Keynote has gotten me plenty of compliments, and that's all the endorsement I need

 

[mattriff]

Keynote is incredible. I just converted one of my PowerPoint-using friends (she already has a Mac) because I showed her how to export to .ppt. I love the transitions. But one feature it could grab from PowerPoint is the ability to have presenter notes - notes that appear on the Mac but not on the projector.

What version are you using? Because Keynote 2 absolutely does do that. I use it all the time.

Besides presenter notes, it will also show any/all of: previous slide, next slide, a clock, and a countdown timer, arranged to your liking.

Matt

 

[plasticparadox]

What version are you using? Because Keynote 2 absolutely does do that. I use it all the time.

Besides presenter notes, it will also show any/all of: previous slide, next slide, a clock, and a countdown timer, arranged to your liking.

Matt

No way! - I didn't know that. I'm on v2.. gonna check it out! You made my day! Can't wait till my next presentation!

 

[jsalzer]

Huge New Pages Feature

Yippee - worth the 3 hour download - they added a Keynote-type navigation bar with thumbnails of the pages to Pages!!!

Oh, that's going to make my next catalog so much easier to get around than this past one that I did.

Woohoo! Thank you, Apple!

 

[plasticparadox]

Yippee - worth the 3 hour download - they added a Keynote-type navigation bar with thumbnails of the pages to Pages!!!

Oh, that's going to make my next catalog so much easier to get around than this past one that I did.

Woohoo! Thank you, Apple!

Sweet. They aren't giving up on Pages. I'm glad that they're trying to improve it!

 

[kcmac]

But one feature it could grab from PowerPoint is the ability to have presenter notes - notes that appear on the Mac but not on the projector.

Maybe you should take a look. It just may do what you want.

 

[iGuy]

Don't be silly. Image is at least as important, if not more important than content. People are like robots - transfixed by shiny objects, moving things, and indeed, 3D cube transitions. I know this from experience, and I'm while I can definitely see where you're coming from regarding the text-based outline, I believe that if a company uses a crap PowerPoint presentation, (think blue/black gradient background, size 18 Arial white font, and clip-art downloaded from MS Office Online) it's just going to go in one ear and out the others. Because everyone uses those crappy presentations. And they all look the same.

Keynote has gotten me plenty of compliments, and that's all the endorsement I need

I'm very happy for you.

But in my case, the medium is NOT the message.

~iGuy

 

[Tulse]

We regularly use Pages at our office for a newsletter. It's really great to be able to set up a nicely designed template that novices can use. Instead of having to do all the layout and final production myself, the authors now enter all their text in the template, and all I need to do is final tweaking.

Pages has serious performance problems with flowing text around objects, but other than that, it is pretty darned neat, and really can be a meaningful production tool.

 

[magicbbird]

Pages vs. Word:
The only thing preventing me from working with Pages full time is its numbering or listing feature. MS Word's numbering feature is very smart. It guesses right most of the time whenever I want to insert a line without number ('enter' twice), or start a new sequence or not...etc.

Pages -- I need to go to inspector or something to reset it everytime I change something. Very time consuming...

 

[NeoMayhem]

Does anyone even use these products on a day to day basis? I don't see the point of buying iWork after I bought Office 2004.

I use Pages everyday, and keynote at least once a week. Keynote is so much better then powerpoint I usually start to laugh when I see all the lame effects and poor quality themes people usually use with powerpoint. Pages is pretty good, better then Word for my uses.

 

[lotrfan]

Perhaps someone can educate me, but I think I still prefer PowerPoint because of its text-based outline tool. Let me explain.
...
... an outline feature that is visually-based is not as useful as a text-based one. That is because I use the outline feature to organize my thoughts and create the basis of the presentation. I can't read the text on small iconic representations of screens.

~iGuy

Keynote has had a text-based outline feature from version 1. To get to it just go to the "View" dropdown in the toolbar and switch from "Navigator" to "Outline."

Give it a try ... this will let you organize and prepare your presentations, and still have the best looking presentations around.

 

[~Shard~]

Sweet. They aren't giving up on Pages. I'm glad that they're trying to improve it!

I'm sure it's only the beginning for Pages and iWork in general - I'd expect iWork '06 to possibly expand and include a spreadsheet-type of app as well. Lots of potential if Apple can execute it properly.

 

[Rod Rod]

Argh, why do the Pages and Keynote apps NEED to be in the 'iWork' subfolder in order to be updated? I hate having subfolders in my Applications folder. So inefficient.

When life hands you lemons, make aliases and place them at the top level of your Applications folder.

 

[BWhaler]

Yippee - worth the 3 hour download - they added a Keynote-type navigation bar with thumbnails of the pages to Pages!!!

Oh, that's going to make my next catalog so much easier to get around than this past one that I did.

Woohoo! Thank you, Apple!

Awesome.

Pages is on its way to being usable. Nothing would make me happier than to be able to dump word once and for all if the next revision of Pages is solid.

 

[Trowaman]

Does anyone even use these products on a day to day basis? I don't see the point of buying iWork after I bought Office 2004.

I don't have office 2004 (I have the version before it) but for starters on Powerpoint and keynote I had never used either before I had Keynote 2 on my computer. I gave each a 5 minute test to try and figure them out, in 5 minutes on Keynote i had multiple slides with transitions, animated text, pictures, and music while on Powerpoint I still had not figured out how to create a new slide.

As for Word vs. Pages, I'm using Pages, then Appleworks, then Word, then text Edit. (This is my preferred order). My suggestion to the average person is if there is color anywhere on their document to use pages. The templates and drawing format is just too good for creating flyers or anything with a picture. On a note, I still like Appleworks toolbar at the top, thus is why I prefer it to Word (and in some ways Pages, that bar is jsut too easy for me).

 

[Zaty]

TOC still doesn't work correctly

They sill haven't fixed a bug with the TOC. The TOC only displays page numbers in Arabic numerals even if you chose to number your pages using Roman numerals.

 

[ryanw]

Yeah... I think I remember a rumor on this site that was leaning towards "Cells". We need a decent substitute for MS Office!

Is there anyone here who completely switched to Pages? I'm still using Word for my old documents and I try to create all my new ones in Pages.

I was using pages for a while. Great app but the Pages file format sux. It's not a file, it's a directory with a bunch of stuff in it. Sure, that's probably cool for compatibilty or 'open sourceness' or something like that, but it's lame when you want to transfer it or email it to someone else. You have to zip it up first to send it, then unzip it to see it and modify it, then zip it up again to send it back.

Lame...

 

[Windowlicker]

Perhaps someone can educate me, but I think I still prefer PowerPoint because of its text-based outline tool. Let me explain....

The reason Keynote kicks PowerPoint's ass is it's much simpler to use. Also, if you happen to like eyecandy it's good of course.

 

[Jason_Bryan]

I don't have to create a zip file to send pages by e-mail, the package is self contained. as far as I can tell most users do not know, or care, that the icon for their pages document is actually a file or not.

 

[wwooden]

I still use word to write all my lab reports because we work in groups and I don't want there to be any problems when converting. I try and use pages for anything that I will be writing myself. I enjoy using it and would like to use it more. I don't want to completely leave microsoft office, it is a good program in a lot of ways.

 

[andiwm2003]

Don't be silly. Image is at least as important, if not more important than content. People are like robots - transfixed by shiny objects, moving things, and indeed, 3D cube transitions. I know this from experience, and I'm while I can definitely see where you're coming from regarding the text-based outline, I believe that if a company uses a crap PowerPoint presentation, (think blue/black gradient background, size 18 Arial white font, and clip-art downloaded from MS Office Online) it's just going to go in one ear and out the others. Because everyone uses those crappy presentations. And they all look the same.

Keynote has gotten me plenty of compliments, and that's all the endorsement I need

he is not silly. no reason to offend people. when i give presentations in my company i do it most of the time in keynote. but i don't use cube transitions or other eyecandy because some if not most people stop listening. they believe if you need eyecandy then the content isn't good enough the keep their attention anyway. as for slide background that is defined by the company templates anyway. i use keynot because of the better rendering and the easier, more robust handling of images.
your point maybe true for presentations of your company to the outside where you want to bring an overview across. but when you're supposed to give an update on a project status to an expert audience then eyecandy just undermines credibility.

andi

 

[Bear]

They sill haven't fixed a bug with the TOC. The TOC only displays page numbers in Arabic numerals even if you chose to number your pages using Roman numerals.

Have you provided information on this issue as
feedback to Apple?

 

[Platform]

Good.....I hope apple really gte something good with iWork 06....Core-Image in Keynote and "Cells" and maby another app...as well as ofcourse pages imporovment

 

[Frisco]

Man the business world would be a lot better place if they used Macs and iWork. Thanks Microsoft!

Keynote is so nice--I plan to get advanced at using it. I love the axis feature. I am sure Microsoft will be copying that next

 

[JGowan]

Does anyone even use these products on a day to day basis? I don't see the point of buying iWork after I bought Office 2004.

Firstly, Keynote is totally badass and beats the pants off of Powerpoint. Secondly, Pages opens in about 2 seconds versus the two minutes+ I regularly clock with Word. I get ".doc" files all the time and opening them up in Pages is the only way to go. You just keep using that M$ crap.