iWork (Pages) Really That Good?

[TrenchMouth]

I have been typing a lot more lately, between papers for school and other projects. I have been using OpenOffice, and I really dont have any complaints, it is a good program. However, I was wondering if Pages is really all that great. I would like to be able to do a few more formating odds and ends, and I would also like something that didnt have to work through the x11 interface.

How compatible with MS Office is it? Do you think Apple will continue to support and release new versions in the future or was this just a test run?
Will it run well on a G3 (500Mhz)? The amount of memory and the slowness of OpenOffice is what is getting to me, along with the very un-Mac-like interface.

Any info would be much appreciated.

 

[mfacey]

I have been typing a lot more lately, between papers for school and other projects. I have been using OpenOffice, and I really dont have any complaints, it is a good program. However, I was wondering if Pages is really all that great. I would like to be able to do a few more formating odds and ends, and I would also like something that didnt have to work through the x11 interface.

How compatible with MS Office is it? Do you think Apple will continue to support and release new versions in the future or was this just a test run?
Will it run well on a G3 (500Mhz)? The amount of memory and the slowness of OpenOffice is what is getting to me, along with the very un-Mac-like interface.

Any info would be much appreciated.

Pages is an awful program IMO. It reminds me of MS Publisher for Windows. I haven't tried openoffice but I swear by MS Office for mac. I have run Pages on a 667mhz G4 with 512MB Ram without any problems. It wasn't blazingly fast, but it gets the job done. As far as I know pages is fully compatible with .doc files. So you shouldn't have any problems sharing you files with Windows friends. If you're a student Office is usually available via your school or you can buy the student/teacher edition for a decent price. Definitely worth every cent!

 

[denm316]

I have had Office for some time now. I got iWork for free because my copy of Tiger shipped late. The app is OK, but I would have never got it if I had to pay for it.

 

[ChrisFromCanada]

I love Pages and I use it all the time! I find it uses much less resources than any other text editor I have ever used except for maybe textedit, much less than even MS word. To add that stylish touch to your papers pages' templates are awesome! And the compatibility between word and pages has been fine for me.

mfacey, what do you find so bad about it? You just said it is awful and reminds you of publisher, but you didn't specifically say why it is so bad!

 

[kester]

Pages is an awful program IMO. It reminds me of MS Publisher for Windows.

As much as I wanted to like Pages, I have to say that it's even worse than Publisher. Hopefully they'll improve it.

 

[Apple]

Pages is Awesome!!

It appears so simple and it is.

 

[TrenchMouth]

well i am glad everyone can agree on iWork and Pages. 😀

I am still up in the air on this one. I might just get a copy of MS Office. I will stick with OO for a little longer. And thanks for the heads up on the school getting me a copy, at the very least i can get the edu price.

I would like to see Apple really support iWork, and ultimately include it in future Macs. It really is the only thing missing from makeing a Mac a self contained machine for many people [/rant]

Alright, well I guess I will stop by my local Apple store and check it out for myself, tag a few documents along to try out and stuff. Thanks all.

 

[Fukui]

Page is pretty good.
I've put together some pretty beatiful stuff with it.
That being said, you should check every feature that Pages has
to make sure it supplies what you use already.

If I were a more heavy duty user, I would wait till next year or just use
office for now.

 

[zap2]

pages is good, as good as ms word for my needs

 

[Xtremehkr]

Suits my needs, though I don't need that much.

 

[EJBasile]

Pages for me is just OK. I don't love it. It is good for making pamphlets and such though. But for just basic word typing I would just use MS Word. I know its microsoft but its the biz standard and even though even though you can save pages as word docs, who knows things might change and that can be a pain.

Pages on my 1.5GHz PB and 512mb is slow. Sometimes they you type faster than the program can respond which is very annoying.

Pages really does make beautiful flyers and stuff but just basic typing go with MS word. Word also will have the rest of the office suit including PowerPoint, Excel, etc. iWork lacks the spreadsheet program. Keynote is an awesome program but it seems you can do more with P.P. IMO.

 

[macbaseball]

Pages really does make beautiful flyers and stuff but just basic typing go with MS word.

I agree with that. Pages is great as a publisher, but as a word processor, it sucks. There isn't an easy way to change fonts and sizes, otherwise it would be fine.

I use Pages for school things, like brouchures etc., but when it come down to word processing, I use Word.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I agree with that. Pages is great as a publisher, but as a word processor, it sucks. There isn't an easy way to change fonts and sizes, otherwise it would be fine.

I use Pages for school things, like brouchures etc., but when it come down to word processing, I use Word.

I have never used Pages as a page layout application, only as a word processor. As a word processor, Pages is infinitely simpler to use than Word, or it's clones, such as OpenOffice. Maybe some of us are looking for a better Word clone, but others of us are trying to get as far away from that paradigm as possible. Pages main strength is in the way it handles paragraph and text styles. Its main weakness is the way it gets seriously draggy in big documents. Apple does need to fix that.

Fonts and font sizes in Pages are handled in the standard OSX font box, which is universal to Cocoa applications. So basically, if you don't like the way Pages handles fonts, then you don't like the way OSX handles fonts.