weldon said:
Great post. I've heard of Pages by Pages, but I didn't think that Apple's Pages was a direct descendant. While I took programming classes in college on a NeXT box, I never used the app and thought it was more of a classic word processor.
A lot of people didn't give Pages a try back then... it was a little expensive ($795), and I was using FrameMaker for papers on NeXT systems back then.
As for the rest of the discussion about comparing Pages to other apps...
I think it's absolutely fair to compare Pages to what else is out there...
What I see Pages as trying to do (again) is to define a new category.
I've seen the same thing happen with Create. When people try to do a toe-to-toe line up on some other app's specialty area, it is going to fall short. Compare Create to Illustrator in doing illustration and Illustrator wins... But it should, after all it is a dedicated illustration app, while Create is not. Compare Create to InDesign or QuarkXPress for page layout and those other apps win... But they should, after all they are dedicated layout apps. Further, all those dedicated apps cost far more than Create.
The problem is that most people hold up what is new to what they know. I think that if something like Create was held up to QuarkXPress looking at both apps illustration abilities, that would be just as fair. It is when we restrict these newer (to most people) apps to categories that they are not attempting to compete in directly that the comparisons fall far short.
I truly believe that apps like Pages and Create fill voids that exist in the software industry today. First, they don't cost as much as high end solutions. Second, they address some ranges of users which other companies try to force into high or low end apps. The gulf between the high end and low end has been getting larger over the years.
Pages lets people with little background make quality documents. Create provides a middle ground for people with experience that don't have the money or need for the top of the line professional apps.
Rather than pushing these into other categories, we should embrace these apps for filling these gaps in our (collective) software selection.
As I said, Pages, is not for me... but it is a solution for someone and I recognize that. And I sure don't need (or want) Apple to redefine it around my needs at the expense of those it is design to serve.
🙄
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that just because Pages isn't the app that some people want it to be doesn't make it a bad app or one that doesn't have it's place in the computing world.
