I'm curious how you, as a power user, handle the lack of linked text boxes in the new Pages?
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Apple Updates iWork for iOS/Mac With Bug Fixes and Stability Improvements
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I'm curious how you, as a power user, handle the lack of linked text boxes in the new Pages?
Or how they can go without basic features like side by side pages or more flexible format compatibility.
Deleting key features does not promote efficiency in any way that I can imagine. If you didn't use them, fine. But don't tell me that losing them makes the application better for "power users," because it seems utterly obvious to me that just the opposite is the case.
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I'm curious how you, as a power user, handle the lack of linked text boxes in the new Pages?
This.
But do you think it is wise to to depend so much on an "obsolete" software product? I understand completely that it's a huge blow to the gut since I loved Pages and used it for everything, but I am trying to adapt to different software.
You won't be able to hang on to Pages 4.1 (was that for snow leopard?) forever and I doubt it Pages will ever be what it was. It may pay off to start looking into other, more well kept, word processors and publisher tools.
With something like seven years worth of documents produced in Pages, and having it so fully integrated into my work flow, I have no choice but to stick with it for as long as possible. Switching to something else at this point would be hellish, and a step backwards besides. A better bet is to buy new Macs to replace the old ones before Yosemite becomes the installed OS, assuming Pages 4.1 will break on Yosemite.
Apple abruptly made the product obsolete, so I don't see where my wisdom is at issue. I do question their wisdom.
I didn't mean it as an insult to you. I also question Apple's wisdom. I'm glad my 2011 Mac broke down because I got a 2013 retina replacement that came with Mavericks. Now I have a system that should last for several years and I may keep it on Mavericks for a while. Though I'd like iCloud drive, I don't trust its stability and everything is stable on Mavericks right now (iWork, Scriviener, iTunes, general system), but I'm still trying to find a good Pages replacement. If only Office would update with an acceptable version of Word. Word and Excel right now lag so bad.
Continuity is so difficult to achieve. Over the past 30 years I've used something like seven different word processing apps. You find something you like, you settle on it, then the rug gets yanked out. It really sucks.
Actually no. If you install Yosemite over mavericks, the recovery option only allows you to reinstall Yosemite. The workaround was making a Mavericks install USB and installing it from there.
So true. I have 100's if not 1000's of files in .cwk (ClarisWorks for Windows) format. THAT was an amazing piece of software.
LibreOffice
I switched to LibreOffice when the new iWork was introduced last year. The integration with OSX is not as good of course, but the user interface is very (very!) productive, and not wasting screen space as much as the new iWork or MS Office.
I keep an eye on how iWork evolved since last year but there are still features that are missing for me. I have serious doubts about the continued existence of iWork, as Apple has shown in the past that they are not afraid of killing products people use and love.
I didn't convert my old documents but all new ones are created with LibreOffice. In term of continuity it opens the door to other operating systems in the future if Apple continues like that.
I also made sure the new iWork never changes my old files with a good old "chmod a-x" on these apps ;-)
PS: I'm mostly a spreadsheet user, barely using the word processor, and never using any other app in LibreOffice.
I switched to LibreOffice when the new iWork was introduced last year. The integration with OSX is not as good of course, but the user interface is very (very!) productive, and not wasting screen space as much as the new iWork or MS Office.
I keep an eye on how iWork evolved since last year but there are still features that are missing for me. I have serious doubts about the continued existence of iWork, as Apple has shown in the past that they are not afraid of killing products people use and love.
I didn't convert my old documents but all new ones are created with LibreOffice. In term of continuity it opens the door to other operating systems in the future if Apple continues like that.
I also made sure the new iWork never changes my old files with a good old "chmod a-x" on these apps ;-)
PS: I'm mostly a spreadsheet user, barely using the word processor, and never using any other app in LibreOffice.
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I'm using Office 2011 on both of my Macs. Sure, it's a little dated looking and has that silly ribbon but you can do real things with it. iWork went from being a contender to looking (and working) like some iPad freebee crapware.
Numbers has all the trappings of "we're different" Apple software. Nothing is where a worker would expect it to be but by golly it's got rubber-banding when you slap it around. Yet another reason why serious workplaces would not want to use a Mac. I love mine at home but at work it's Windows 7 and MS Office all the way.
This includes the iPad versions of MS Office from Microsoft. I was hoping I could use that, but it screws up the formatting on some Word documents that have to use for work.
Office-iOS is new. It'll get better. And it is sure as hell more compatible than any of the alternatives.
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Guessing you've never used Office then? It's had the same format two formats for an eternity. Even the older versions can open the new format with the XML converter plugin.
Apple used to really care about its software: The detail. The functionality. The versatility that enabled Apple software and Windows software to connect (on Apple's side, of course). I remember when an acquaintance was having great trouble opening an old Word file on his PC. None of his PC friends could help him out. I asked my PC friends and no luck either. Then I figured, what the heck, his software is from the same era as my PowerPC gear and Apple was always good that way. So I slipped that floppy into the drive and bingo: what would you like today, sir? In fact all my Apple machines could open that previously stubborn Word PC file.
The reason? Steve Jobs' Apple (he was by now back at the helm and the 'new' iMacs were well established). The company was again focused on detail and trying to compensate for its 'tiny fish in a big pond' market share, and for the generally bemused perception of the majority. So when a Windows friend would say, "Oh, you can't get any software for those weird Mac things," there was in fact a vibrant market for third-party Mac-compatible software, and Apple's own software had to be first-rate and as Windows-friendly as it could be.
As an earlier poster on this thread commented, ClarisWorks was a great bundle of software Apple's elegant version of Microsoft Works. The word processor was clean, simple and efficient. AppleWorks followed, eventually, and it was excellent too. But by the time of Pages, Apple had bigger targets in its sights: after waking people up to Apple with iMacs, the company's iPods, iPhones and iPads were converting non-Mac people in their millions. It was a fantastic vision, but the software-functionality ball was also in the process of being dropped even despite the wizzy new OSs and software suites.
Steve is no longer there, getting people to push their respective envelopes, and while iWork should have lived up to its potential all along the way, instead here I am using iWork 09 (bugs and all). I haven't even decided just how I'm going to start using my new MacBook Air.
Where Apple has come from to where it's at now is remarkable. But I wish there was a Steve there, fixating about everything and ensuring that when something was dropped (floppies, chip architecture, aspects of hardware and software), my Mac would ultimately be the better for it.
Rose-tinted spectacles? Undoubtedly. But some truth, too.
The reason? Steve Jobs' Apple (he was by now back at the helm and the 'new' iMacs were well established). The company was again focused on detail and trying to compensate for its 'tiny fish in a big pond' market share, and for the generally bemused perception of the majority. So when a Windows friend would say, "Oh, you can't get any software for those weird Mac things," there was in fact a vibrant market for third-party Mac-compatible software, and Apple's own software had to be first-rate and as Windows-friendly as it could be.
As an earlier poster on this thread commented, ClarisWorks was a great bundle of software Apple's elegant version of Microsoft Works. The word processor was clean, simple and efficient. AppleWorks followed, eventually, and it was excellent too. But by the time of Pages, Apple had bigger targets in its sights: after waking people up to Apple with iMacs, the company's iPods, iPhones and iPads were converting non-Mac people in their millions. It was a fantastic vision, but the software-functionality ball was also in the process of being dropped even despite the wizzy new OSs and software suites.
Steve is no longer there, getting people to push their respective envelopes, and while iWork should have lived up to its potential all along the way, instead here I am using iWork 09 (bugs and all). I haven't even decided just how I'm going to start using my new MacBook Air.
Where Apple has come from to where it's at now is remarkable. But I wish there was a Steve there, fixating about everything and ensuring that when something was dropped (floppies, chip architecture, aspects of hardware and software), my Mac would ultimately be the better for it.
Rose-tinted spectacles? Undoubtedly. But some truth, too.
Reporting that I have hated Word with a passion from day one.
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I don't see Apple killing off iWork. What they've done, and I suppose could do again, is take it in a new direction that strands the existing user base.
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The word processing gold standard for me is WriteNow. We used it productively for something like seven years. Fast, efficient, and with all the features you really needed implemented well and placed front-and-center. Apple didn't kill that one off; it was orphaned by its last owner. Ironically, WriteNow was originally developed by NeXT, so I suppose it's even possible that some of the code made it into Pages. After that it was Claris/AppleWorks, with an unsuccessful attempt to adapt to WordPerfect in there somewhere.
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I think you are being nostalgic for a time that never really existed. Apple neglected the iWork suite during Steve's tenure too. It is actually less neglected now. The real problem some of us are having with it is the new direction, which is leaving iWork users previous to that time stranded.
That's true, iWork was neglected but at least when they weren't paying attention to it they weren't over-enthusiastically pruning it. When a teacher friend who uses Pages as a very basic word processor upgraded his from the 09 version, he couldn't understand why there was no Save As. Made no sense to him he'd always had a Save As option ever since his first computer.
And yet I can do Save As by clicking and holding option while on the "File" drop menu.
As I'm still on Pages 09 I'm not especially au fait with subsequent versions but I do recall animated discussions on these boards at the time about the merits of changes such as the 'disappearing' Save As option. That and various other heated reactions convinced me to stick with 09.
I'm just telling you that right now, the new version has it if you do what I said.
Okay, thanks. Before too long I'm sure I'll be experiencing the full Mavericks learning curve, so I appreciate your Pages heads up.
Yeah, I've come to the realization that the closest one is going to come to continuity and consistency is using Office.
YES! They have changed formatting and changed the file extensions from .doc to .docx and so on, which caused headaches, but overall I think Office has been quite smooth
I'm still able to open documents from Word 2000 in today's Office. Sure, there are some issue, but it generally works. I can't think of any other program that is able to do that (aside from basic .txt files).
The pruning was to create feature parity with the iOS version, which obviously at this stage of computer evolution Apple sees as the growth platform. Hard to argue with the basic logic, but it still sucks that Apple tossed the existing user base overboard to go there. They didn't even think it was important to warn existing users about what would happen if they opened their old documents with the new version.
As for the Save As... this is really a change at the OS level since Snow Leopard. I don't know exactly when it was introduced (having skipped everything in between) but think the new way in Mavericks is far less intuitive.
I'm still able to "open" nearly everything, but if the formatting is hosed then this level of "compatibility" isn't very useful.
The other file format that preserves formatting across numerous word processors is RTF. The amount of formatting preserved is fairly minimal, though. Mostly fonts, tab stops.
But it was ashamed that Apple couldn't bring feature parity by building the tablet apps up, instead of pulling the desktop versions down in the rewrite.
Microsoft managed to bring Office to iPad, and while not as power as the desktops, they are very compatibly and they managed to do this without taking anything away from the desktop set.