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Apple Announces Upcoming Features for iWork Mac Apps Following Criticism

At least I feel that the feedback I sent, the emails I sent and the posts I made here and elsewhere have had some impact.

However, I am sad that Pages '09 is likely never going to be optimised for Mavericks as I find the interface so much quicker to use than a dynamic interface that tries to anticipate what you want to do and moves around with every window. I know the MS-inspired ribbon concept probably is better for newbs, but what about those that already know their way around? Must they be punished for their learning and muscle memory?

Also, Pages 5 was truly destroyed in terms of features. There's a lot of things they didn't mention like facing pages, linked text frames, styles, etc. I just worry that the progress is going to be completely limited by how quickly (or how feasibly) they can add these to the new unified file format and the iOS app. I own a Mac to be productive, not to be compatible. I'm in a minority and I'm going to suffer I fear.
 
Thank god...

I came here to tear out my hair and vent my frustration, as well as ask if anybody had found a way to somehow restore any of the, to me, lost functions.

I let out a sigh of relief when I found this post. What they did to pages truly is astoundingly stupid. From the perspective of a student who used Pages to write essays, the word count feature (symbols with with spaces included - Not entirely sure how to translate it from Danish) was vital.

Hope they fix it asap.
 
I use iWork exclusively. I also use the software across OS X and iOS devices. After using the new version for a while now I find the consistency of interface and increased ease of use to be a major advance. Apple is right to make apps consistent across devices and add features over time. They now exactly what they are doing.
 
Glad to hear the backlash was so strong they had to release a road map.

There is NO REASON this shouldn't have been released day one...they learned nothing from the FCP X launch.
 
Let's just hope that "customise toolbar" includes adding a second formatting bar with fonts, styles (bold, italic, underline), indent and bullet point numbering.

I shouldn't need a massive inspector pane occupying so much screen estate for that.

Also while they're at it, please make the new inspector detachable!
 
Screenplay template?

Does anyone know if there is still a screenplay template? I haven't used Pages since the update...
 
MacHiavelli said:
If you're writing reports or academic papers, you really want something like Scrivener.

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

Word and Pages are efficient but low-level clerical tools for elementary office tasks. They are not professional writing tools.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. After looking at their website, I see two possible issues with using Scrivener instead of Word.
1) I use Mendeley for reference tracking, but there's no integration with Scrivener. How do you track references?
2) In the office where I work we usually pass documents around as Word files and mark them up with tracked changes. When you need to collaborate, do you export from Scrivener to Word?

Of course, the above two concerns are in comparison with Word. Pages isn't even a serious consideration.
 
I went back to iWork 09, not switching to the new version until it can at least match the old one.

Why has Apple been letting so many half-assed projects leave the campus lately?
 
boss.king said:
I went back to iWork 09, not switching to the new version until it can at least match the old one.

Why has Apple been letting so many half-assed projects leave the campus lately?
Click to expand...

They pick their poison on it. In the case of iWork they decided to shoot for ubiquity first and foremost across all platforms rather than focusing on feature rich apps. For the mainstream consumer, which is generally Apple's target audience these days, the versions of iWork apps that they released are more than sufficient. It's once you get to business related users and folks working with AppleScript that you start to see some issues.

I think you're probably going to start seeing this model from Apple as they re-engineer their software line. Re-build the app from the ground up and then update with new features as they are ready. Its what they did/are doing with FinalCut, it's what they are now saying they will do with iWork and I would imagine when they eventually drop Aperture X it will also be missing stuff that is there in Aperture 3.
 
mattking said:
Let's just hope that "customise toolbar" includes adding a second formatting bar with fonts, styles (bold, italic, underline), indent and bullet point numbering.

I shouldn't need a massive inspector pane occupying so much screen estate for that.

Also while they're at it, please make the new inspector detachable!
Click to expand...

I agree, the new inspector is terrible. Hopefully they will continue to tweak the interface, it's really bad in other areas as well (sharing requires more clicks now. And the word count UI...WTF.)
 
TrashCanBin said:
Doesn't take a genius to realise that reduces funcionality will leave a lot of users angry.
Click to expand...

But Apple are masters of spin. They delete, then see if users scream. If no sound, they bury the body silently.

Look at anti-glare screens. They're gone, in spite of the protests. Apple cares only about money.

In order to focus on money, they focus their products on the dumb masses.

What does it take to have an expert setting in the software - where we can un-hide the settings needed by a smaller number of people. Why must Apple's software and hardware be dumbed-down? Money, of course. To target the masses who can bring in most profits.

I hate it when Apple discards people who don't want dumbed-down products.
 
New Pages won't even read Pages '08 documents!

Check my math, but 5 years apart and I paid for them both and I can't open my hundreds of old documents with new version of Pages. Less than useless. Apple support is completely unresponsive. I've been a Mac user since 1985. "Customer care" is a thing of the past at Apple.
 
jacg said:
I own a Mac to be productive, not to be compatible. I'm in a minority and I'm going to suffer I fear.
Click to expand...

This.

Meanwhile, funny that everyone is shouting "hallelujah" to the heavens after being told that, in six months, a small portion of what has been torn out of Pages 4.3 will be restored.

I'm not so sanguine. What guarantee do we have that other crucial features will ever be a part of Pages again?

I won't let Pages 5.0 anywhere near any of my computers until Export to .rtf is supported. I fail to see that this feature is somehow less important than the ones they've restored.

Meanwhile, Apple apologists are falling all over themselves saying "I told you so" — while conveniently ignoring any post that asks "Why couldn't they have simply TOLD us this from the start?"

In case anyone wonders where I'm coming from, I've used Macs exclusively since 1988, and have proselytized endlessly on their behalf throughout those years.

But right now, between this and the Save As debacle (which by the way was only put right after months and months of loud and sustained complaining) — frankly, I'm really pissed.
 
AustinIllini said:
At least this Tim Cook version of Apple is willing to admit they are wrong.
Click to expand...

Even i thought they were wrong, but later, going through some blogs/news which concluded that since they wanted to unify the iCloud the iOS and the Mac version iWork to make them all functions the same, they had to axe certain feature. From now on they will add features, simultaneously to all 3 versions.

Hope those blogs are correct.
 
iWork for dummies

Of course Apple has there eye on iPads and iPhones, then they release software that has a chance to attract iPad users that want an easy software for writing etc.

By that they are willing to sacrifice the lojal Mac users (where they make less money).

I would have hoped that they had to sets of software.
iWork on Mac for power users (an evolutionary iWork 09) , and then an entry level iWork for Dummies (the current iWork13).



ps.
However I would be happy to run some of my Keynote presentations on an iPhone/iPad IF apple would make it possible to use a clicker to advance slides (no I do not want to use the clumsy interface of Keynote Remote on an iPhone). But as it seems, Apple is scarifying power uses for the iPad mass market.
Thats a shame!
 
Still No Update for Older Version

They will update fixes to the new product when people complain, but still won't allow a free update for users of 2008 version? It's not a free update for all previous versions until it's actually for all previous versions.
 
Really hope they do vertical margins for ios and icloud. Will be brilliant.

Only features I need now is better border placment and to be able to shrink the size of dropped lines between text without having to enter something on the line and make it smaller then deleting it.

Do this and Pages will replace Word for my work use.
 
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