A Review of Pages '08 (v3.0)
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Let me make something clear at the onset of this post (my first to this forum, by the way): I am not an immaculate, needs-everything user of Microsoft Word. I have used Microsoft Word for all of my word processing needs up until this point, but I will not be able to cover every aspect of how Pages compares to Word. In fact, I think it's probably useless to do so because the applications, while intended for similar purposes, are entirely different in their approach.
I have spent a little over ten hours with the iWork '08 demo, most of that time in Pages. Given that I write a variety of documents on a regular basis, Pages was the most important application for me to try out. My reasoning for trying iWork '08 at all is this: the addition of Numbers puts it in direct competition to Microsoft Office. Others may claim otherwise, but with Mail/Address Book/Stickies/iCal, Numbers, Keynote, and Pages, Apple has crafted a suite of applications that matches directly against Office. And, I think for the most part, fairs well against it for average, normal users like myself.
I tried Pages in its v1.0 release form several years ago and switched back to Word almost immediately. Fortunately, my software experimentation abilities have matured since then. Unlike many of the posters I've seen on a variety of forums, I decided to give Pages a fair chance on its own terms. Comparing it to Word was the problem I had with v1.0, and I think many people are still waiting for an Apple-fied version of Word instead of a radically new, easy to use, fun word processing application.
One of the immediate things I noticed about Pages in v1.0 was its use of 6 pt spacing after each paragraph by default. With the inspector and the fact that it was not readily available, I basically gave up on Pages v1.0 right away. Why? It didn't feel or look like Word. Now I've matured and so has Pages. I think Apple recognized this "problem" and has fixed it. Now, the default styles in Pages have no spacing after each paragraph and it immediately makes you think of Word.
Fortunately I was able to move past this "feature" and explore everything else as well on its own terms. I found myself on several occasions noticing myself "thinking Word" and having to remove myself from years of bad habits. The first instance of this was with styles. In Word, styles are almost impossible to find unless you know what you're doing. For years now, I have had no clue what styles were nor how to use them. In Pages, styles are the bedrock of writing in the application. You're presented with several styles by default: Free Form, Body, etc. Manipulating these styles to meet your individual needs is not terribly difficult, but I do wish that I could change the master font for all of my styles at once. For example, I like to use the "Optima" font for all of my styles, and going through each one to change it at the onset of writing is a bit annoying.
However, one of Pages' best features is the ability to save your own templates. So, once I manipulated the styles to my liking, I went ahead and saved a template with all my settings and styles applied and it is now stored in the "My Templates" section. When I create a new document that I know needs certain formatting, I can simply load up one of my templates that meets the specifications and start writing.
Speaking of writing, last night I discovered something about Pages I had missed from the previous days and hours of working with it. I was starting to get annoyed that "Free Form" was the default style chosen by Pages every time I opened a new document. Last night, I started to realize that Apple probably had a reason for doing it that way. And it all clicked. You see, Pages is made for you to write as well as do some basic layout. Word is similar in this regard. Perhaps one program is stronger than the other in writing and vice versa, but the programs are similar in this regard. Where Pages shines is its use of styles. If you create a new document and just start writing, using the "Free Form" style, you can always go in and change the styles of various pieces of text at a later time. Pages is made for you to go in and write first and do layout and formatting second. It's a brilliant idea that I hadn't been accustomed to using Word.
There were several features I needed Pages to have:
1) Ability to input Hebrew and Greek words and possibly some Aramaic. Pages passed the Hebrew and Greek test (using the input menu via the International preferences), and I haven't had a chance to try Aramaic.
2) Footnotes. Pages is fine here, although a keyboard shortcut for adding a footnote is still not a feature. Annoying, but manageable. By the way, somehow or another, it is being spread around that Pages does not support endnotes. This is false, plain and simple, and must be being propogated by people who have not even touched the software. It's not immediately accessible from the "Insert" menu, but if you take the time to open the inspector and look around, endnotes are there and can be used.
3) All the other stuff I use in Word on a regular basis: page numbers, fonts, double-spacing, etc. All of these formatting features exist as well as some more advanced features I've used on occasion in Word: mail merge, track changes, etc.
Are there problems with Pages? Yes.
First and foremost, it's not Microsoft Word. If you have to deal with Word documents on a regular basis, Pages probably isn't for you. If you're fortunate enough to be able to use PDF when sending documents and only need to read Word documents, Pages would probably fit the bill just fine. Importing and exporting is never the best-case scenario. So, if you'll be dealing with Word documents on a regular basis, I'd recommend against Pages.
Second, cross-referencing is still not supported as far as I can tell (and I've spent a decent amount of time in this program the past few days). If that's a make-or-break feature for you, Pages isn't for you. I consider cross-referencing a high-end word processing feature, and since Pages is more aimed at the normal, occasional word processing user, it doesn't surprise me that this feature is not included. I've always had cross-referencing on my list of criteria for a word processor, but when I thought about it more, I realized I had never used the feature! Obviously it wasn't as important to me as I thought.
Third, annoyances abound. The inability to set a master font for all styles quickly. The lack of a keyboard shortcut for inserting footnotes (and the lack of being able to assign one). The fact that you have to use the inspector for certain things instead of a toolbar. Yes, these are "problems" if you're mentally attached to Word. As soon as you let go of "thinking Word," however, they cease to be problems and you start to see the benefits of doing it Pages' way.
The features in Pages are great. The ability to assign F1-F8 for styles is fantastic. The ease of use and implementation of styles is brilliant. Media integration is better than in any word processing program I've seen (Mellel, Nisus Writer Pro, and Word). The ability to add, delete, and move pages is helpful, even in "pure" word processing (I want to add a title page... done, add section break, move it to the top, finished). And the new formatting toolbar is wonderful. A bit small on the text-size, but puts the most-needed items right at your fingertips.
My conclusion? The demise of Microsoft Office on my system is finally complete. I've waited years for this day, and it has finally arrived. Pages is feature-rich and functional enough to meet my needs, and it does things better than Word and it makes sense to me. I was a non-styles word processor up until two days ago. Pages has converted me in a short period of time. With the addition of Numbers and the continued development of Keynote, iWork '08 will be great for my purposes.
If there's one feature Apple needs to add to Numbers in a point-release, it's error bars. Obviously that's an important feature to many people. I won't use Numbers for anything more than keeping track of my CD collection and some very simple budgetary work. With Pages, I would recommend two simple changes that Apple could implement in v3.1 or v3.0.1, depending on how they number things.
1) Auto-save. Implement something simple. My guess is that Apple wants this feature included, but wants to implement multiple revisions, "time machine" like document management. That would be great, but for now... give us something. Pressing Command-S isn't that hard, though... but do it often.
2) Keyboard shortcut for footnotes. This continues to bother me. Just include it, for goodness sake!
Pages is a great application. Try it out and give it a fair chance on its own terms. Unless you really need some of the "more powerful" features of Word, I don't see any reason to not use Pages for word processing.
http://www.apple.com/iwork/trial/
--
Let me make something clear at the onset of this post (my first to this forum, by the way): I am not an immaculate, needs-everything user of Microsoft Word. I have used Microsoft Word for all of my word processing needs up until this point, but I will not be able to cover every aspect of how Pages compares to Word. In fact, I think it's probably useless to do so because the applications, while intended for similar purposes, are entirely different in their approach.
I have spent a little over ten hours with the iWork '08 demo, most of that time in Pages. Given that I write a variety of documents on a regular basis, Pages was the most important application for me to try out. My reasoning for trying iWork '08 at all is this: the addition of Numbers puts it in direct competition to Microsoft Office. Others may claim otherwise, but with Mail/Address Book/Stickies/iCal, Numbers, Keynote, and Pages, Apple has crafted a suite of applications that matches directly against Office. And, I think for the most part, fairs well against it for average, normal users like myself.
I tried Pages in its v1.0 release form several years ago and switched back to Word almost immediately. Fortunately, my software experimentation abilities have matured since then. Unlike many of the posters I've seen on a variety of forums, I decided to give Pages a fair chance on its own terms. Comparing it to Word was the problem I had with v1.0, and I think many people are still waiting for an Apple-fied version of Word instead of a radically new, easy to use, fun word processing application.
One of the immediate things I noticed about Pages in v1.0 was its use of 6 pt spacing after each paragraph by default. With the inspector and the fact that it was not readily available, I basically gave up on Pages v1.0 right away. Why? It didn't feel or look like Word. Now I've matured and so has Pages. I think Apple recognized this "problem" and has fixed it. Now, the default styles in Pages have no spacing after each paragraph and it immediately makes you think of Word.
Fortunately I was able to move past this "feature" and explore everything else as well on its own terms. I found myself on several occasions noticing myself "thinking Word" and having to remove myself from years of bad habits. The first instance of this was with styles. In Word, styles are almost impossible to find unless you know what you're doing. For years now, I have had no clue what styles were nor how to use them. In Pages, styles are the bedrock of writing in the application. You're presented with several styles by default: Free Form, Body, etc. Manipulating these styles to meet your individual needs is not terribly difficult, but I do wish that I could change the master font for all of my styles at once. For example, I like to use the "Optima" font for all of my styles, and going through each one to change it at the onset of writing is a bit annoying.
However, one of Pages' best features is the ability to save your own templates. So, once I manipulated the styles to my liking, I went ahead and saved a template with all my settings and styles applied and it is now stored in the "My Templates" section. When I create a new document that I know needs certain formatting, I can simply load up one of my templates that meets the specifications and start writing.
Speaking of writing, last night I discovered something about Pages I had missed from the previous days and hours of working with it. I was starting to get annoyed that "Free Form" was the default style chosen by Pages every time I opened a new document. Last night, I started to realize that Apple probably had a reason for doing it that way. And it all clicked. You see, Pages is made for you to write as well as do some basic layout. Word is similar in this regard. Perhaps one program is stronger than the other in writing and vice versa, but the programs are similar in this regard. Where Pages shines is its use of styles. If you create a new document and just start writing, using the "Free Form" style, you can always go in and change the styles of various pieces of text at a later time. Pages is made for you to go in and write first and do layout and formatting second. It's a brilliant idea that I hadn't been accustomed to using Word.
There were several features I needed Pages to have:
1) Ability to input Hebrew and Greek words and possibly some Aramaic. Pages passed the Hebrew and Greek test (using the input menu via the International preferences), and I haven't had a chance to try Aramaic.
2) Footnotes. Pages is fine here, although a keyboard shortcut for adding a footnote is still not a feature. Annoying, but manageable. By the way, somehow or another, it is being spread around that Pages does not support endnotes. This is false, plain and simple, and must be being propogated by people who have not even touched the software. It's not immediately accessible from the "Insert" menu, but if you take the time to open the inspector and look around, endnotes are there and can be used.
3) All the other stuff I use in Word on a regular basis: page numbers, fonts, double-spacing, etc. All of these formatting features exist as well as some more advanced features I've used on occasion in Word: mail merge, track changes, etc.
Are there problems with Pages? Yes.
First and foremost, it's not Microsoft Word. If you have to deal with Word documents on a regular basis, Pages probably isn't for you. If you're fortunate enough to be able to use PDF when sending documents and only need to read Word documents, Pages would probably fit the bill just fine. Importing and exporting is never the best-case scenario. So, if you'll be dealing with Word documents on a regular basis, I'd recommend against Pages.
Second, cross-referencing is still not supported as far as I can tell (and I've spent a decent amount of time in this program the past few days). If that's a make-or-break feature for you, Pages isn't for you. I consider cross-referencing a high-end word processing feature, and since Pages is more aimed at the normal, occasional word processing user, it doesn't surprise me that this feature is not included. I've always had cross-referencing on my list of criteria for a word processor, but when I thought about it more, I realized I had never used the feature! Obviously it wasn't as important to me as I thought.
Third, annoyances abound. The inability to set a master font for all styles quickly. The lack of a keyboard shortcut for inserting footnotes (and the lack of being able to assign one). The fact that you have to use the inspector for certain things instead of a toolbar. Yes, these are "problems" if you're mentally attached to Word. As soon as you let go of "thinking Word," however, they cease to be problems and you start to see the benefits of doing it Pages' way.
The features in Pages are great. The ability to assign F1-F8 for styles is fantastic. The ease of use and implementation of styles is brilliant. Media integration is better than in any word processing program I've seen (Mellel, Nisus Writer Pro, and Word). The ability to add, delete, and move pages is helpful, even in "pure" word processing (I want to add a title page... done, add section break, move it to the top, finished). And the new formatting toolbar is wonderful. A bit small on the text-size, but puts the most-needed items right at your fingertips.
My conclusion? The demise of Microsoft Office on my system is finally complete. I've waited years for this day, and it has finally arrived. Pages is feature-rich and functional enough to meet my needs, and it does things better than Word and it makes sense to me. I was a non-styles word processor up until two days ago. Pages has converted me in a short period of time. With the addition of Numbers and the continued development of Keynote, iWork '08 will be great for my purposes.
If there's one feature Apple needs to add to Numbers in a point-release, it's error bars. Obviously that's an important feature to many people. I won't use Numbers for anything more than keeping track of my CD collection and some very simple budgetary work. With Pages, I would recommend two simple changes that Apple could implement in v3.1 or v3.0.1, depending on how they number things.
1) Auto-save. Implement something simple. My guess is that Apple wants this feature included, but wants to implement multiple revisions, "time machine" like document management. That would be great, but for now... give us something. Pressing Command-S isn't that hard, though... but do it often.
2) Keyboard shortcut for footnotes. This continues to bother me. Just include it, for goodness sake!
Pages is a great application. Try it out and give it a fair chance on its own terms. Unless you really need some of the "more powerful" features of Word, I don't see any reason to not use Pages for word processing.
http://www.apple.com/iwork/trial/
