Apple Updates Pages and Keynote

[Dark Horse]

Update doesn't seem to have done a huge amount. I think what Pages is good for over and above Word is designing documents where the layout and design is important. Word is infuriating with it's tendency to put a picture half a centimetre above or below where you want it to be.

What Pages needs tho, to continue in this vein of dominance, is native support for creating booklets (of the form where you fold A4 sheets in half to get A5 booklet). With 3rd party CocoaBooklet this is perfectly easy, but would be nicer if Pages supported it itself.

 

[Blurg]

I love the new thumbnail navigation panel in Pages, it's exactly what I was waiting for. This panel is one reason why I like Keynote so much.

 

[BLW]

Is it possible?

My wife is about starting to work on a presentation and I thought to help her do it in Keynote (instead of a PC running powerpoint) but one thing I don't know is if the Keynote presentation can be run on a PC. No?

 

[Angrist]

My wife is about starting to work on a presentation and I thought to help her do it in Keynote (instead of a PC running powerpoint) but one thing I don't know is if the Keynote presentation can be run on a PC. No?

I havn't personally tried it yet .... but Keynote will export a Powerpoint file that should be playable on a PC. But I'd recommend testing it out beforehand ... sometimes funny things happen when converting file formats.

 

[Frisco]

My wife is about starting to work on a presentation and I thought to help her do it in Keynote (instead of a PC running powerpoint) but one thing I don't know is if the Keynote presentation can be run on a PC. No?

In Keynote you can export your presentation to PowerPoint. After you export it--open it up in PowerPoint to make sure things are the same and make adjustments if necessary.

If you want to test this do this:
In Keynote go to Help>iWork Tutorial
then
File>Export>PowerPoint

 

[Yvan256]

My wife is about starting to work on a presentation and I thought to help her do it in Keynote (instead of a PC running powerpoint) but one thing I don't know is if the Keynote presentation can be run on a PC. No?

You can export in a lot of formats. There is a PowerPoint export option, but I don't know how compatible it really is. There's also Flash, PDF and Images export options.

But my best bet would be Quicktime. You won't lose any effects, text/image anti-aliasing, etc. And the playback will even wait for a keyboard/mouse/etc button, even on Quicktime.

 

[ChrisFromCanada]

lol this update adds another help menu in pages!

But the Thumbnail view is exactly what Pages needed. Awesome Apple!

 

[fabsgwu]

lol this update adds another help menu in pages!

But the Thumbnail view is exactly what Pages needed. Awesome Apple!

I've seen other people report duplicate menu items in Tiger for the finder and other programs... It may be an OS bug.

I've also encountered some problems with my Macally trackball; some of the modifier keys for the extra buttons don't work consistently in the finder. Could be the driver tho...

 

[IJ Reilly]

Everyday Pages user here. In my office it replaced AppleWorks almost immediately. Pages main strength is in the way it handles styles (almost as good as the late, great WriteNow, if anybody remember that one).

The Word file translator is pretty good, but not perfect (it can't be perfect when Microsoft's file formats are proprietary). It doesn't import "character shading" from Word. Whatever that is.

I'm an occasional presenter who wouldn't touch PowerPoint with a bargepole. People notice Keynote presentations. They look so much nicer all around than PowerPoint.

 

[Montserrat]

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

Hmm,

I kinda agree with both of your points. The best presentations I've given have used some of the nice features of Keynote, but have used them subtly. Unfortunately the cube is cool, but not subtle. I've found that you can only use it once in a presentation without risking saturation. I really like fading slides into each other - keeping the title static and the same whilst changing the content. I can see a time where products like Keynote and motion converge - more and more I'm using Keynote with effects that make the presentation more like something you might see on TV news than dramatic rotating cubes. I suppose the analogy would be where people's home videos use the OTT spinning transitions while TV and movie editors use more subtle, but watchable effects.

Anyhow, I'm very happy with Keynote and I haven't done a presentation yet where someone hasn't come up to me afterwards asking how I did it. My advice to them always starts with the words "First, you need to buy a Mac..."

 

[macmax77]

My wife is about starting to work on a presentation and I thought to help her do it in Keynote (instead of a PC running powerpoint) but one thing I don't know is if the Keynote presentation can be run on a PC. No?

you will loose lots of the effects since powerpoint can not handle them, for example, many will be awful, i hate powerpoint, i love Keynote

 

[itsa]

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 keynotes everyday. Pages is still too buggy.

 

[mchendricks]

My wife is about starting to work on a presentation and I thought to help her do it in Keynote (instead of a PC running powerpoint) but one thing I don't know is if the Keynote presentation can be run on a PC. No?

The biggest problem that I have is the file size of Keynote presentations that I convert to PowerPoint. I create all my presentations in Keynote, but I have to use PPT for class presentations. Some of the effects don't work properly, but if I keep them simple then they work okay.

 

[jayb2000]

grammar

... Unless you're making sales presentations, the resolution and transition effects (affects?, I allways get those confused, blonde roots)
~iGuy

effects.

Affect means to influence - The rain affected our day.
Effect means to bring about some kind of result - Rain is the effect of moisture in the clouds.

I can AFFECT the EFFECT.

Generally speaking, affect is a verb, effect is a noun, but as with most English grammar rules, there are exceptions.

 

[iGuy]

greatly appreciated

effects.

Affect means to influence - The rain affected our day.
Effect means to bring about some kind of result - Rain is the effect of moisture in the clouds.

I can AFFECT the EFFECT.

Generally speaking, affect is a verb, effect is a noun, but as with most English grammar rules, there are exceptions.

Thanks,

~iGuy

 

[IJ Reilly]

I use keynotes everyday. Pages is still too buggy.

What bugs? I haven't found any.

 

[Zaty]

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

Yes I did (in February!), and so did other users of Pages, but to no avail.

 

[Zaty]

What bugs? I haven't found any.

E.g the "TOC bug" as described in post no 41

 

[jcrowe]

Apple's iWorks...Ready for primetime?

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...

That's interesting. I find Word 2003 at work absurdly inadequate for technical documentation partly because its numbering is painfully atrocious. Further, application of styles happens in an illogical manner and essentially everything about Word gets in my way. I had previously used Framemaker for technical documents and it was much better suited for that style of document. OTOH, back in the late 80s/early 90s, I helped co-author a 750 page course document using Word 2 or 4 (can't remember) on a 128K 9 inch screen B&W Mac. Word has gone from fairly simple to almost useless in the meantime.


As far as Pages goes, I tried it briefly as it came with Tiger as a trial. It stuck me as a different class of WP that Word attempts to be....more like a competitor to Microsoft Works (talk about an oxymoron) or a successor to Appleworks. I'd like to play with it more once I get a chance. I am hoping that there's a way to make menu choices stick on the screen because I don't like going to a menu/submenu to choose fill and text color and style changes. In any case, I'm glad that Apple has an entry in this area. Now if we could get some of the other Appleworks functionality, like spreadsheet, drawing, simple database etc. iWork would really rock. As to price, Apple could charge $150 IMO for the whole lot of the functionality and it would still provide good value in the space it plays in...much cheaper than MS Office and probably >80% of the functionality.



JC

 

[ioinc]

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...

Strange how different people have such different perspectives on things.

I think Word is horrible to use (which is explains why I dont use it often).

And in my opinion the feature that epitomizes words problems is its numbering feature.

Excel, on the other hand is an amazing program. Apple will have to come out with something very nifty if they want to get excel users to switch.

 

[bryanc]

I'm a Keynote fan as well

I use Keynote 2 for giving presentations at scientific conferences, departmental seminars, job talks and for teaching undergraduates. It's very well suited to all of these jobs, and I'm very happy to see Apple working on improving it, and keeping it well ahead of PowerPoint.

I was at a conference last month, and all but one presentation was given on a Mac. There was also only one computer glitch that disrupted a talk... can anyone guess which one it was?

However, I was the only one to use Keynote... all the other Mac users were using PowerPoint. While most of the questions regarding my presentation were about the content (as they should be) I had several people ask me afterwards how I had made my presentation so much more visually appealing than the others.

I do use the eye candy... especially when teaching undergrads (keeping them awake is half the challenge), but, if used with some subtlety and taste, the 3D transitions and character effects can be very effective without distracting from the content or undermining the credibility of the presentation. You absolutely want your data to speak for itself, but there are legitimate uses for animations and effects.

Cheers

 

[JoeKarame]

I use Keynote 2 for giving presentations at scientific conferences, departmental seminars, job talks and for teaching undergraduates. It's very well suited to all of these jobs, and I'm very happy to see Apple working on improving it, and keeping it well ahead of PowerPoint.

I was at a conference last month, and all but one presentation was given on a Mac. There was also only one computer glitch that disrupted a talk... can anyone guess which one it was?

However, I was the only one to use Keynote... all the other Mac users were using PowerPoint. While most of the questions regarding my presentation were about the content (as they should be) I had several people ask me afterwards how I had made my presentation so much more visually appealing than the others.

I do use the eye candy... especially when teaching undergrads (keeping them awake is half the challenge), but, if used with some subtlety and taste, the 3D transitions and character effects can be very effective without distracting from the content or undermining the credibility of the presentation. You absolutely want your data to speak for itself, but there are legitimate uses for animations and effects.

Cheers

I agree totally. I've found Keynotes an absolute pleasure to use, and quite honestly it's been possibly the best software buy I've made for my mac. I find it incredibly intuitive to create simple stuff, but make it look eye-catching.

I do use Powerpoint to a certain extent, but it's a nightmare in comparison - and I now end up simply exporting Keynote presentations to PP in order to send the document off to various PC based unfortunates...

In comparison, I find Pages slightly more limiting, and usually use Word more often - but the one thing that makes it worthwhile is the image control you have - it's very, very useful to place things anywhere you want nice and easily. I then use Word to tart things up a bit!

However, iWork is incredible value for money, and it's been a hugely pleasurable experience getting to know the thing better.

Now all I need is a 30" monitor as well as my laptop, and I can have a go at that dual-screen function!

 

[magicbbird]

Strange how different people have such different perspectives on things.

I think Word is horrible to use (which is explains why I dont use it often).

And in my opinion the feature that epitomizes words problems is its numbering feature.

Excel, on the other hand is an amazing program. Apple will have to come out with something very nifty if they want to get excel users to switch.

Very true. Probably I am not a power user as many of you. I only need some quick and easy keystrokes to make lots of list. Probably due to familiarity, Word has been fine with my need.

I have used some of the templates in Pages and they are excellent and easy. But most of the time I just open a blank page and type away. Making simple list with numbers become tedius whenever I want to insert a blank line, open a new paragraph, or start a new sequence. Although I think it will be easier if I set up some kind of templates myself, but most of time I have to work with free style depending on contents.

If any of you Pages users can help me make good use of Pages and get rid of Word, I am all ears. Thanks.

 

[diehldun]

I havn't personally tried it yet .... but Keynote will export a Powerpoint file that should be playable on a PC. But I'd recommend testing it out beforehand ... sometimes funny things happen when converting file formats.

So that means no more eye-candy?

I just bought iWork '05, and have been using Word and PowerPoint for a long time; I'm impressed with Keynote (it will replace PowerPoint for me), but not with Pages (I'm just too familiar/used to Word, I like Word just as it is )

Anyways, so if I'm exporting my Keynote presentation to a PowerPoint computer (MacOS 9/Classic @ School, Windows XP @ anywhere else), I'll loose all the visual effects, if not most?

That would NOT be good at all...

 

[swissmann]

I wonder if this iWork will eventually be a viable option out of MS Office. I hope so.