iLife '05 and iWork '05

[Zaty]

My order is on its way, finally!

 

[wdlove]

Yes, I can get it to work now, thanks. And it's in Basildon! Only the same bloody county as me! Never mind, it says next working day delivery so it should hopefully be here tomorrow morning. My brother's iBook and iPod turned up at 9am on a Monday morning, so here's hoping...

Any update on your delivery? Hope that it did indeed arrive prior to 2pm. Imagine that you are busy testing out software. If not could you pick it up prior to leaving for you trip or arrange for them to hold it until your return?

 

[notjustjay]

Still waiting for my copy of iWork, ordered the night of the Keynote. Come on, come on!

 

[RealDeal]

Pages .. not bad

had some time to play with Pages.. worst Pages problem is a MS word glitch ignoring images in tables ( a great side-step to layout images without the anchor-mess in Word).

Other wise pretty solid- will try and save legacy gazillion Word docs as somethign else that may work better in the import...

feeling free-er from MS $-game

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Any update on your delivery? Hope that it did indeed arrive prior to 2pm. Imagine that you are busy testing out software. If not could you pick it up prior to leaving for you trip or arrange for them to hold it until your return?

Sorry to bring up the thread again - but I'm back! And my iLife and iWork both arrived on the Monday (31 Jan)! Although it turned up while I was at work, they delivered to next door, who picked it up instead, so I was ok! However, it meant I was late packing for my trip around the country (interview in Bristol, England, reunion dinner in Durham, England) because I was playing about with it!

I've only just returned and had to go to work for two days (12 hour days) so have still spent relatively little time with the packages. I love the new GarageBand and my midi cable (works like a charm) and I've burnt my first iDVD 5 DVD (lovely status screens, no problems!).

iPhoto is pretty good - still getting to grips with it. Hardly touched iMovie yet. A little disappointed with Pages - mainly on performance issues - but the Word import has so far been immaculate, even on my massive graphics-rich report. Keynote though is superb - pity I don't really need to do any presentations any time soon, but I won't be using PowerPoint again!

So a happy ending!

 

[Switcher2001]

.pages file format

I noticed something odd about Pages. I have my iDisk mirrored on my Desktop, and have it set to automatically syncronize. When I save a Pages document, the Finder window shows me that it is not synchronizing one file, but 8 or 9 files! In other words, the .pages file format is just like the .rtfd file format, in that it is really a folder that contains multiple files, and each file contains different elements of the document, such as text, thumbnails, graphics, and whatever else.

I found it disturbing a couple of years ago when I noticed that Apple was using a folder to enclose the same information as Microsoft encloses in one file; viz., Apple's TextEdit (and now Pages) save documents with rich text and photos in the RFTD format (which is really a folder) yet Microsoft Word (and WordPad) save the same documents in just one file. For that matter, I think WordPerfect saves rich text with graphics in just one file as well.

Why did Apple choose to go this way? I don't understand the benefits or efficiency of such a design. I suppose Apple's way might be better, but I would be very interested to know why. Does anyone know about this who can enlighten me on the subject?

 

[quidire]

I noticed something odd about Pages. I have my iDisk mirrored on my Desktop, and have it set to automatically syncronize. When I save a Pages document, the Finder window shows me that it is not synchronizing one file, but 8 or 9 files! In other words, the .pages file format is just like the .rtfd file format, in that it is really a folder that contains multiple files, and each file contains different elements of the document, such as text, thumbnails, graphics, and whatever else.

I found it disturbing a couple of years ago when I noticed that Apple was using a folder to enclose the same information as Microsoft encloses in one file; viz., Apple's TextEdit (and now Pages) save documents with rich text and photos in the RFTD format (which is really a folder) yet Microsoft Word (and WordPad) save the same documents in just one file. For that matter, I think WordPerfect saves rich text with graphics in just one file as well.

Why did Apple choose to go this way? I don't understand the benefits or efficiency of such a design. I suppose Apple's way might be better, but I would be very interested to know why. Does anyone know about this who can enlighten me on the subject?

The benefit is severalfold; you have to understand the difference. To fold multiple types of data into one file requires an internal content seperation mechanism. In other words the directory is simulated inside the file, but in a proprietary fashion. That is why Word documents are one file.

Apple a while back decided (with its app bundles among other things) that it is better to be able to distribute documents, programs, etc, as one "file" but have the contents accessible using traditional file access tools. This means other programs can enter these bundles without having to implement some proprietary pseudo-filesystem protocol.

Further this means you can always get to pieces of the bundle; you can extract the pictures out of a newsletter simply by copying the file out of the bundle.

All in all it is a good thing. All the inconvenience it implies is that one should put a .pages or .rftd file into a disk image (.dmg) before sending it out via email. They could make it easier than having to use Disk Utility, but it is hardly difficult.

-RS