Impressions of iWork 05

[Jason_Bryan]

Having just got back from a great trip I thought I would tell you what my first impressions of iWork are. I own my own Training and Development Consultancy and so I produce at least 1 presentation a week for clients. I invested in Keynote but found it was limited but I supported it it as I hoped Apple would improve it. Well it took a while but they have done an excellent job with it. The most annoying aspect for me in Keynote was the lack of ability to link build in and build out of different objects. That has now been fixed. I only played with keynote 2 for about 15 mins, but was very impressed.
I spent about 30 mins on Pages. I have been waiting for a program like this for a long time. Is it a simple to use program, yes and no. It is better than I hoped for a first version but it is not as intuitive as it could be. Many of the options in the inspector panels seem to be in the wrong place. For example if you want to change the thickness or colour of the outlines of cells in a table you have to go from the table inspector to the graphic inspector. If you want to move an object around the page you have to go from the graphic inspector to the wrap inspector and check the 'fixed on page box'. I couldn't check how well it formated documents created in Word, and I know that will be very import to a lot of people. So is it worth the money in my opinion, yes, I ordered my copy straight away. For those people who may say I would have ordered it if it didn't do what I needed it to do just because it is an Apple product, I just smile and say I won't be buying a iPod shuffle.

 

[angelneo]

I was hoping to get a copy from my reseller by next week as I have a major presentation coming up... keeping my finger crossed. hoping for the best.

 

[Badradio]

When working in Pages, have you had chance to use the spellchecker? Are there any reference tools in there as well? I'd like to move to a simpler word processor than Word 2004, but I really like the tools in that and think I'd miss them.

 

[Jason_Bryan]

I think the spell checker is the one built into OS X it's self. It looks like the one that all the native apps use. I didn't check to see if there was a thesaurus, but after the demo of dashboard SJ did in the keynote, he demo'd a spell checker/thesaurus I don't think there will be a thesaurus in Pages it's self.

 

[Badradio]

That's a shame, but I wasn't expecting too much. I think they're pushing the presentation functionality more than content creation. I spend most of my day working in Word and wanted something friendlier to use in the evenings. Just have to make do with Microsoft for a bit longer.

 

[Jason_Bryan]

I spend a great deal of time designing Workbooks / sheets for the programmes I develop. When I switched to the mac platform I felt I had little option but to use MS Word, inDesign ect go well beyond what I need. I soon discovered I could get better results from using Text Edit and omnigraffle. I also started to use Sherlock for the first time. the dictionary and thesaurus modules of Sherlock have held me in good stead as long as I have had an internet connection, and when I don't i just fire up Word.

 

[Sky Blue]

The spell checker can be set to check as you type, or at intervals.
The exporting to Word is utter crap though.

 

[mkrishnan]

The exporting to Word is utter crap though.

Really? Based on what? Do you mean that Pages documents that used advanced typesetting features that are part of its aim to have intermediate functionality between something like Word and somethiing like PM don't convert well, or do you mean that a document you could have 100% made to look the same if you had written it in Word from the ground up, doesn't look very similar upon translation? I guess this is enough to say I wouldn't use it, if you mean the latter.... But then again Word.X mostly addresses my needs. I don't even see that much of a burning need to get Office 2004. Just that !%#$&* stupid long file name issue and the lack of unicode to a lesser extent.

 

[Sky Blue]

I opened a Family Newsletter template, like the one used at the Keynote, changed some text and pics, converted it Word...and everything was all screwed up.

 

[Sky Blue]

I tried to upload some examples but they were too big

 

[bellis1]

Tried it today...

I really needed a better keynote and thought pages would be a nice addition and that I could swap Mellel for it. I gave up on word almost 2 years ago and only use it when co-workers use it and prefers I use the revisions/comments option in word. Anyhow, I am a scientist and need a simple unbloated wp but I need to add lots of references. Unfortunately, it only includes the option to use footnotes and not endnotes. I gave up on endnote also about two years ago and have been using bookends. Unfortunately, they are not working well together even using basic .rtf. I hope they can figure out how to integrate the two. The other thing that has miffed me is that if there are graphics/template in the file it gets changed from an rtf to an rtfd? I don't really understand what this is. But if I manually change it to an rtf it changes the file into a folder with an rtf.txt and images I think in tif format. And one more gripe, now that I have a 20" monitor I prefer to have more than one page up at a time but pages will only let you go 2 wide. Why not 3 or 4? Otherwise it is a simple app and very good at what it was intended in terms of the template and page layout, picture-text-wrapping-columns. I just wish I had more of a use for it.

 

[dav]

Great program, made a brochure with it last night..

Any insight on how to remove a page once you add it? This is rediculous