Ok, I've had enough: PAGES s_cks!!!

[mherz]

I have had a lot of patience with this piece of software and I really wanted to get rid of MS word, but I have finally given up. Really, Pages is NOT A GOOD PIECE OF SOFTWARE!!!!!!

I know, everybody tells me, that it is not meant as a replacement for Word, rather a mixture between layout and text-edit, or something like this.

But come on, get real folks. If you want to do layout, buy indesign, which is great. If you want to do simple writing tasks or note-taking use Textedit, which is lean and fast. And for writing, I will go back to word.

My biggest complaint: It is SLOW! And I mean REALLLLLYYYYY SLOW!!!! I am using a almost new PB G4, and typing on it is like working yourself through chewing gum.

Hey, this is word processing! Not 3d modelling, rendering, or complex photoshop filters. It is unacceptable, that the characters lag behind when you are just typing in some words!!!! And it is rediculous that you are required to have the latest, fastest machine, just to do text editing.

The other thing which made me really annoyed is the claim of the new 'version'. Hey, sure, we can now crop images in a variety of ways, but to claim that by adding new templates to a software (which is the biggest change) you are upgrading it, is redicoulous. That is as if TV manufacturers would be claiming their TVs are getting better when there are more chanels to choses from. There are soooo many things still missing, and soooo many things of the user interface are complicated (like this idiotic split between the fonts palette and the pargraph formatting) und not usefull.

Apple should seriously rework this piece of software, clean it up, or trash it. It is SLOW, un-natural in use and bad!!!!

I really wanted it to work out well, but now, off it goes, from my hard drive.

MHerz

 

[eva01]

isn't slow on my powerbook or powermac.

I love pages, does everything that i need for my classes, and the things that it can't (spreadsheets) i just use neoOffice

 

[ke2000]

i support you. The bigges let donw is no auto saving. I can't remember how many times I lost my work on pages. Plus it is slower than previous version. I am not impressed.

 

[Chappers]

Did repair permissions after installing. I've been surprised how often a repair of permissions could improve things and run some maintenance scripts - that helps too.

Maybe you can turn on spelling as well in macosx - edit menu - spelling

 

[mherz]

yeah, the missing auto-saving is ridiculous. How difficult can it be to implement something like this? As if this were something extravagant. It seems like the programmers just got lazy and stopped before finishing their homework.

The other thing which is really badly implemented is the numbering and bulleting function. It always gets mixed up with the bullets being editable characters, the indent and so on.
Well, I guess many people will not mind that, but all in all, it is many little defects, which add up to it being a BAD programme.

 

[Chappers]

Did repair permissions after installing. I've been surprised how often a repair of permissions could improve things and run some maintenance scripts - that helps too.

Maybe you can turn on spelling as well in macosx - edit menu - spelling

I wish it picked up my crap grammar mistakes

 

[IJ Reilly]

I don't like autosave, so I'm certainly not unhappy that it wasn't included in Pages. When I open and edit a document, I like to be able to decide whether I'm going to save the changes or save as a new document. Autosave makes that decision for you. I don't see how anyone could lose changes in a Pages document without blowing through the save dialog box. I've been using it daily for over a year, and it hasn't crashed once.

That said, Pages does need to be sped up. I doesn't lag in a distracting way for me, but then I'm not the world's fastest typist, either. If Pages get really draggy, it helps to quit and restart it.

 

[mwpeters8182]

I believe (not 100% sure though), if you have autosave turned on, and you save as a new document, the old one reverts back to what it was prior to editing.

If i'm saving as a new doc, i usually do a save as right away, so i don't make the mistake of overwriting my file.

On the topic of Pages, I've used it, but I don't really like it. I'll stick with Word/OOWriter

 

[Mord]

then dont use it....


what it is good for is school work, if it could integrate a good diagram drawing program (atm i use appleworks-draw) then it would be perfect, but as it is it makes pretty kick ass home/classwork it fills a hole, but obviously not one you need filling

 

[flyfish29]

pages zips for me on my iBook. I don't like the separate windows for fonts, etc- I would rather have some menu bars- although not near as many as Word can have- pretty soon I think we will be right back to the two lines of text typewriters like those old Brother things we used to use if M$ keeps putting in more menu bars.

I think Pages has a ways to go, but it is a good idea for the person that wants to do more media type documents.

 

[Mr Skills]

Funny, as long as I'm not doing anything too heavy Pages zips along for me on my ancient G3 ibook (which is way,way below the minimum spec).

As for Autosaving, I hate the type which just saves over the document (like pressing Apple-S automatically), but I love the model ProTools uses. This is where there is a separate folder called 'backups' and it saves a copy in there every 5 minutes or whatever. You can set it so it only has 1, or 10 or however many backups (so the oldest get deleted).

 

[chris.d]

haven't had any worries with the speed or layout of pages. what does annoy me is the fact that you cannot do specific word counts within a document.

 

[IJ Reilly]

haven't had any worries with the speed or layout of pages. what does annoy me is the fact that you cannot do specific word counts within a document.

I've long used WordService for this, so I suppose I never noticed it was missing from Pages.

BTW, for those who gripe about the font pane in Pages -- the font pane is standard in OSX for all Cocoa applications, and has been from the very start. So if you don't like the font pane, then you don't really like OSX.

 

[chicagdan]

After reading these posts I don't know any more about the pros and cons of Pages, but I do know this much -- all of you need massive spelling and grammar checking help. The lot of you are just barely literate, I'm embarrassed for you. Unless word processing software gets to the point where it plugs into your brain and translates your thoughts into understandable English, I think you'd be advised to step away from the computer and take some remedial language courses.

 

[Mord]

After reading these posts I don't know any more about the pros and cons of Pages, but I do know this much -- all of you need massive spelling and grammar checking help. The lot of you are just barely literate, I'm embarrassed for you. Unless word processing software gets to the point where it plugs into your brain and translates your thoughts into understandable English, I think you'd be advised to step away from the computer and take some remedial language courses.

it's a forum not an english class, all these people are legible you need to join a remedial reading class if you cant understand us.

i dread to think what you would think about your typical pc forum, d00d.

 

[mwpeters8182]

After reading these posts I don't know any more about the pros and cons of Pages, but I do know this much -- all of you need massive spelling and grammar checking help. The lot of you are just barely literate, I'm embarrassed for you. Unless word processing software gets to the point where it plugs into your brain and translates your thoughts into understandable English, I think you'd be advised to step away from the computer and take some remedial language courses.

Really, why bother posting something like that at all? It brings nothing to the thread, other than insults that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

 

[chicagdan]

Really, why bother posting something like that at all? It brings nothing to the thread, other than insults that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

People who don't know how to spell ridiculous (not a typo because he spelled it "rediculous" twice) really need to go back to fourth grade instead of debating the merits of WRITING software. What my argument brings to the thread is the obvious fact that writing software development is being fueled by the needs of subliterates, leaving people who do know how to write with awful, bloated, slow programs that have to remedy the ignorance of the users just to keep the corporate wheels greased. So people get more ignorant and sloppy (at least use the built-in Apple dictionary if you have a doubt about a word's spelling), the software gets more bloated and buggy to accommodate it and the world gets just a bit dumber every day. I feel sorry for the Pages development team -- look at the mountain they have to climb.

 

[jblock]

...The lot of you are just barely literate, I'm embarrassed for you...

You forgot a semicolon. You're statement should read: "The lot of you are just barely literate; I'm embarrassed for you."

 

[Mord]

People who don't know how to spell ridiculous (not a typo because he spelled it "rediculous" twice) really need to go back to fourth grade instead of debating the merits of WRITING software. What my argument brings to the thread is the obvious fact that writing software development is being fueled by the needs of subliterates, leaving people who do know how to write with awful, bloated, slow programs that have to remedy the ignorance of the users just to keep the corporate wheels greased. So people get more ignorant and sloppy (at least use the built-in Apple dictionary if you have a doubt about a word's spelling), the software gets more bloated and buggy to accommodate it and the world gets just a bit dumber every day. I feel sorry for the Pages development team -- look at the mountain they have to climb.

maybe it's just the fact that none of us give a **** when we are writing posts on macrumors, no one writes like this at work or for school/college, if you think they do you are a prejudice spelling nazi that needs to step off his plinth.

 

[yoda13]

People who don't know how to spell ridiculous (not a typo because he spelled it "rediculous" twice) really need to go back to fourth grade instead of debating the merits of WRITING software. What my argument brings to the thread is the obvious fact that writing software development is being fueled by the needs of subliterates, leaving people who do know how to write with awful, bloated, slow programs that have to remedy the ignorance of the users just to keep the corporate wheels greased. So people get more ignorant and sloppy (at least use the built-in Apple dictionary if you have a doubt about a word's spelling), the software gets more bloated and buggy to accommodate it and the world gets just a bit dumber every day. I feel sorry for the Pages development team -- look at the mountain they have to climb.

Great, a snob. Some people just can't spell and make natural mistakes like that. Many of us also don't take the time to carefully proofread stuff that we type on here. I don't spell well either and I am an instructor down at my local university. I am sorry that we are not all geniuses such as yourself. If you don't like the way we post, then simply don't read them. Oh yeah, btw, for quite a few folks on this board, English is not even there first or second language. So you should consider that as well.

 

[chicagdan]

You forgot a semicolon. You're statement should read: "The lot of you are just barely literate; I'm embarrassed for you."

No, that's what the pseudogrammarians at Microsoft want you to think. It's just one reason why I hate their grammar checking program, their love of the semicolon.

I'm glad everyone is so angry ... I hit a nerve. I bet a lot of you children get horrible grades on your term papers and don't know why. Must be the spelling and grammar Nazis' fault.

 

[mwpeters8182]

While I agree that the writing skills of the average person in this day and age are pretty horrid, and what chicagdan says is true (though not necessarily about the folks around here), I don't think that forum posts should be used as a marker. For technical writing, the grammar check is nearly useless, except for spacing/punctuation typos.

The best way to proofread something is to print it out. I think spell/grammar check have made people forget how important it is to proofread. Again, not saying that all the folks here don't know how to write, but I do see his point.

I really wish there was a Cocoa version of Openoffice 2.0, it's a fantastic piece of software, considering that it's free. I use all three of the major operating systems on a daily basis (OS X, Windows, Linux), so I find that OO is the best way to go in terms of compatability for me. But Pages is great in terms of layout.

 

[iMeowbot]

iWork is an $80 package. InDesign is $700, Office 2004 Standard is $400. It might help to adjust expectations accordingly.

 

[jeremy.king]

I really wish there was a Cocoa version of Openoffice 2.0, it's a fantastic piece of software, considering that it's free.

NeoOffice is pretty close...They'll get the 2.0 features in someday - but still free.

 

[mwpeters8182]

NeoOffice is pretty close...They'll get the 2.0 features in someday - but still free.

I've been using the X11 OO. It's been working fine for me, I'll probably stick with that. I use enough other X11 apps anyway, so X11 is usually running on my machine. Between pages and openoffice, I find myself using Word less and less (though sometimes I still have to.)