Pages feedback

[colinet]

Is there anywhere we can post feedback about iWorks Pages that will actually get read by someone at Apple?

I love the program and am delighted to be able to kick out all my Microsoft software ( except Excel, but no doubt Apple are working on that) I am a professional author and illustrator - http://www.colinthompson.com - writing stuff from a few hundred words to 80,000 word novels. I'm using Pages on a short children's novel and there are two thing particularly I miss from Word. The main one is be able to create abbreviations that auto expand - 'ss' becomes 'said' for example. Also I'd like to see word count on the toolbar plus more icons available to customise the toolbar (spelling etc) The print icon is greyed out but I can print fine from the menu. There are various little bugs too, but so far none that have crashed. I know you can have live word count on the little info panel. A thesaurus would be good too and also change default language easier.

Brilliant first version, but it still has a bit of a beta feel to it.

 

[Bear]

Provide Pages Feedback to Apple

 

[colinet]

Thanks

 

[wordmunger]

Great to see another writer here at MR. How would you say Pages compares to Word for composing? I have problems with MS Word lagging behind my keystrokes -- tends to be very annoying. It's also slow for scrolling around a document. Also, fonts are not particularly readable on my iBook screen: text displays much more crisply using NeoOffice. If Pages does these things better than MS Word, they may have a new user. I don't use the abbreviation thing in Word, so that's not an issue for me.

 

[colinet]

Well, all I can say is try it. It's not like it's expensive. I think it will grow into something really good, and I'm using it for everything now inspite of the abbreviation thing. I'll just have to learn to type better.

I don't have a problem with Word lagging behind on my iBook (G4 800) and certainly not on my dual G5

Pages has an elewgant uncluttered interface unilke Word.

 

[Bear]

I find that while pages still needs more features, Apple has done a good job for the first version.

Pages 1.0 takes care of all my major gripes about the "word processor" part of Apple Works. And yes, I too have been providing suggestions to Apple.

 

[DavidLeblond]

It'd be nice if they would ship the thing without Keynote. I'll never have a use for Keynote, but everyone (well most people) need a Word Processor.

Maybe $50 for Pages, $50 for Keynote, and get both for $80 (a savings of $20)

 

[Bear]

It'd be nice if they would ship the thing without Keynote. I'll never have a use for Keynote, but everyone (well most people) need a Word Processor.

Maybe $50 for Pages, $50 for Keynote, and get both for $80 (a savings of $20)

Well I see a few things bad about this idea. The first is I hope that they keep the price the same after they add the spreadsheet program,

And the second is that each product they have to carry costs them money. Also, it requires more shelf space in the stores and the warehouses and more time to check over and package.

So between the two of those, I think it's a bad idea. If you don't have a use for keynote, jusy don't install it.

 

[dolphin842]

I have problems with MS Word lagging behind my keystrokes -- tends to be very annoying. It's also slow for scrolling around a document. Also, fonts are not particularly readable on my iBook screen: text displays much more crisply using NeoOffice.

I concur w/ all three points, and I'm on a PB 12" 1.33 GHz. As for the fonts, have you tried the utility that cleans the font cache (the name escapes me...). I used to have really bad letter spacing problems in Word but cleaning the cache seem to smooth out most of that.

Just a word of caution w/ NeoOffice: save often! I once had an inexplicable crash and lost some work (not terribly tragic, thankfully).

Come to think of it, Word too has crashed twice in the past week when cutting text, but at least there's a recovery mechanism.