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Apple iWork Screenshots
applextrent submitted a story with a bunch of screen shots of Apple's new iWork package, including Keynote 2 and Pages, the new Apple word processor. Nothing particularly surprising here.
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Apple is gay.
... in my pants.
If the former, *sigh*
"Nothing particularly surprising here."
... slow day then?
Where's the "Stuff that matters"?
no-news-sunday: news at eleven!
BOW DOWN, HEATHEN!
that sucks, 10 am on a Sunday, only 2 posts andI can't access it already.
Why don't we also hear about MS Word, Excel, and other office application updates? Oh yeah, because we don't care. Apple is updating their office software.. this is important news?
A little bird told me that Apple posted their own screenshots. http://www.apple.com/iwork/
So is the "Nothing really surprising" about the screenshots or on the fact that the site is already slashdotted?
...Apple's new high-speed, high-resolution, high-capacity porn delivery appliance:
The iBall.
And their plastic girlfriend that hooks up to it for hours of synthetic pleasure - but is only available in territories between Canada and Mexico:
The American iDoll.
And the new package Apple designed to automatically track and repair software bugs:
the iPatch.
No, wait! I have more! Don't run away!
iWork is not an update. It's an entirely new software package, that was announced at the MacWorld expo. Would you care to tell me what package is being "updated" by iWorks?
Sure, it "replaces" AppleWorks - but is by no means an AppleWorks update, as you might have been able to tell by the completely different name. It's all new code, new interface, etc. etc.
It seems IDontWorkAnymore; /. effect ?
> Nothing particularly surprising here.
Are you crazy? You must have missed the 'i' in front of iWorks- These screenshots are nothing less than spectacular!
What is this Apple-X site? And why aren't we getting links directly to apple.com?
Does anyone know?
Is the document format for Pages open or proprietary?
Logic is the light of the digital age.
why apple dont you push openoffice more upfront
why apple dont you push mozilla more upfront
why apple dont you push a native and complete workable FTP client more upfront with UTF-8 character set support!!!
Im tired of telling my fellow co-workers designers to use something like mozilla, because safari miserably fails to complay with w3c standards, fail to run properly javascript, fail to run properly flash apllications, etcetc
came on apple you can do better, btw why but why in the world you dont PAY FULL CAsH to MAcromedia or at least give some of your knowledge to pull out a better flash plugin!!
i know its a architectural problema, but why in the world we dont see you supporting a better plugin for your own system? That in the end will benefit all of us at unix world!!! (x86 included)
ricardo
So far, still nobody has been able to answer the question wether Apple's iWork suite will be using OASIS-compliant file formats or not.
And even if hot: will iWork at least be able to import from and/or export to OASIS?
Both OpenOffice and KOffice will be supporting OASIS and bringing Apple aboard will probably be crucial in order to establish a serious alternative to the Microsoft file format hegemony.
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
I don't have the 80-column card!
The coolest voice ever.
I just realised how crappy the usual wordprocessing-templates are. :-)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Also I am a bit surprised that Apple didn't go with an existing software base for their Office suite. It is obvious that what they are doing is a defensive maneouvre against the possibility that MS will drop Apple support for Office, like they did with IE. Apple had to have some non-IE backup plan and they chose to take Konqueror and turn it into Safari. Good choice Apple. But they could have done the same thing with iWorks. There are two code bases they could have picked: the obvious OpenOffice, and also KOffice. Actually KOffice is quite good, considering that it's a "small" project. And if they liked Konqueror then maybe KOffice would have also been appealing to them.
One interesting thing about this is that it is indicating that office software is becoming a commodity. There are currently half a dozen office suites out there (MS Office, iWorks, OOo, SoftMaker, KingSoft, KOffice and probably a few more I'm not remembering right now). I actually hope that iWorks is also ported to Linux, but that seems very very unlikely.
Looks like adding a photo to a page of text will be very easy in Pages, with the text adapting automatically.
;-)
If that is indeed the case, it's great - one of my pet peeves with Word is how annoying adding a photo+legend to a page of text is. You basically have to redo the layout every time you change the text.
BTW, if I am wrong and there is a way to include a picture and its legend in text with the text flow being auto-adjusted, please reply with explanations on how to do it instead of modding me as a troll
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Do people think this is because we have evolved to the design to something which is useful and "optimal", or because people are no longer willing to change a paradigm which may alienate new users? Are there any word processor suites (or stand alones) that differ significantly?
Whatever the next version of office will come out, I think MS will copy some of the features and look and feel (as much as they can and get away with it) of iLife '05.
It looks like Apple did a beautiful job. Now I'm starting to think that getting a MAC would be a good idea.
....predicting gloom and doom again eh? Didnt learn from your iPod errors yet did you?
Why am I not particularily surprised.
I've got to say that the templates for pages look rather fine indeed - better than the design quality of stuff included in most word processors. It seems to be more suited to DTP than other WP's.
And I'm looking forward to using Keynote to create Flash animations - while probably not as good as MacroMedia's stuff, it is a cheap alternative, and knowing Apple probably works just fine.
You must be new here.
I am reconsidering buying that Mac Mini now. The thing keeping me from having a mac was the price and lack of a reason to just do everything in Word on a PC. Apple has outdone itself.
Yeah, I think they hang out at Apple Message Boards and send out "go to slashdot and do the the canned propaganda thing". Pure astroturfing.
Real geeks loved Apple up until about 1982. The Apple II was open and geeks loved it. Steve Jobs closed the Machintosh shut. No information : just plug and live with what we give you was his motto. Apple died when Woz got kicked out and the marketing droids took over. Wanna develop for Apple? Lock-in city: it only works on Apple.
If you buy Apple, you are buying fluff.
It is not the "GUI" pioneer. It is not "the fastest PC". It's closed source GUI is a complete anathema to geeks.
Apple is for the digital illiterati.
In case the good people at /. missed it, there already is a site called macslash.org.
/. with stories that have no news worth whatsoever.
Seriously, didn't we have enough stories about new Apple products lately? Don't get me wrong, I think some of the stuff Apple is putting out these days is really amazing, however that's not reason enough to spam
Please, if there are exciting new Apple things, keep us informed, if there isn't any news, please don't post news stories.
Thanks.
One thing I hate about "templates" and "wizards" is you end up with the same document.. just your data.
It seems like over 50% of companies use the same MS Word Fax Cover sheet. etc. etc.
I wish someone would come up with some machine logic so that you design a template through a wizard, not just insert data.
So your end product, is unique, catered to you, but still meets the objective.
I know it wouldn't be easy... but please, no more cookie cutter wizards.
This gets posted and my story about Wil Wheaton being at Macworld doesn't? Not that my story was particularly earth-shattering, but come on. Mine was more newsworthy than this.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
During the keynote, Steve Jobs said the Pages templates would be filled with greek text. I thought, what if you speak greek? Well now that I see the templates...It looks like latin to me! Can't he tell the difference?
Does anyone know if there's inline PDF in keynote as well? (Add an image of some sort, and the text flows around it)
This is a really important capability to the more mathematically inclined among us, who would like to have inline equations. The number of hours I have spent moving my equations around when I change the text is really disturbing.
(Actually, if this works in any presentation software that runs on a mac besides LaTeX, I'd love to know about it. Especially if I can save slides as PPT for my advisor.)
I wonder if Apple would take it well if I called them up and offered them a bunch of money in exchange for this feature.
Lea
Great, another proprietary Office format to keep track of.
Sigh......
i think i will just make some custom templates for OpenOffice and let people download em free, maybe make a website for sharing templates to people can both upload and download templates...
of course it would all be free and GPLed templates...
Without Clippy, Pages just doesn't seem as user-friendly.
I switched to Mac about 3 years ago and really for the first 6 months, Apple Works 6 did just about everything I needed. Then I started getting to where PowerPoint was a must have for presentations and the spreadsheet would export data to excel but not the equations. So I bought Office V.x and frankly was plesantly surpised with an MS product that worked.
I work as a consultant and being able to share information with clients is a must! While we can debate the goods/evils of file formats etc. here in the world of geekdom, in the real world communication is key to me being able to put food on my table.
If apple supported OASIS, all the better, but until people are actually using the format it's not going do very much. It is a chicken or the egg arugement.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Without a spreadsheet, I will not bother using this tool set. It is apparent that their marketing groups is focussing on a very specific group of individuals: Managers and marketers and their immediate reports. Any real grinding work is acomplished in a spreadsheet app.
:p
Apple probably skipped the spreadsheet so they don't step on Microsofts feet with Office-X by leaving Excel the "real"* only choice for OSX.
* - Besides using NeoOffice-J or OOO via X11
Note to Steve Jobs: Plesae expand your reseach in the area of native OOO support. Keeping Microsoft happy is keeping many Linux users (ex-microsoft users) from switching to OSX! If you support a native Open Office you will open the door for millions of switchers from Linux and Windows to OSX. And these users are very vocal - they will open the door for all their families and friends to switch over too. Just with my family alone, I have about 20 computes that I know of that I am telling the owners to wait for native OOO on OSX.
BTW - Probably best to leave out the marketing reps when you have such cost to benefit analysis done though! OOO is the future of office apps. PERIOD.
JsD
[Use FireFox or Die!]
I'll try to explain, but I have the Swedish version so I don't know what the English names are...
The document format is XML and the schema for it should be posted sometime after the release. How SOON after the release I'm not sure. Just FYI, the Keynote schema that's currently posted on Apple's site is for version 1. V2 can read V1 docs, but cannot save to a V1 format. V1 of course, cannot open a V2 presentation.
Umm did they drop these modules or just no screenhots?
And yes i have RTFA... as well as Apple's pages, but they arent overly informative on features ( unless the feature list really has dwindled to 2 modules )..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
One of the few I could run on my Apple II+ and still get lowercase letters! I think you had to do something wacky like Ctrl+Shift to switch between uppercase and lowercase.
My favorite, though, was always FrEdwriter.
I know this method which works rather well - but I do not know how to add a caption using it (except by adding the caption to the picture in a graphic editor, which is a pain). Any trick I'm missing?
:)
Anyway, thanks for the help
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Looking at this image: http://apple-x.net/images/iwork_images/pages/01_te mplates.jpg/, does anybody notice what the "Non-Profit" newsletter is called? ;)
Whenever a new version of Word comes out, I'm always stunned that they haven't fixed basic failures like this one, in favor of more singing, dancing, flashing text. It's not intended as a desktop publishing tool, but just including a decent way to get illustrations to lay out properly in a multi-page document doesn't seem too much to ask.
Then again, I haven't had much better luck with OpenOffice. I can't help but suspect that their primary goal is Word compatability, and that costs them the flexibility to re-think certain problems to come up with a better solution.
I use OOo exclusively because while it's no better than Word, it's not really any worse, and the price is sure right.
OO is huge and cluttered. It's hard to change it's features to smoothly fit into Apples GUI-concept. It's UI is still stuck at the beginning of the 90s.
why apple dont you push mozilla more upfront
Konquerer hat the cleaner code. So Safari was based on KHTML and it was a good choice. Using Safari is bliss (but not ignorance).
why apple dont you push a native and complete workable FTP client more upfront with UTF-8 character set support!!!
Mainly because Apple belives that FTP does not have much of a future. Their Web-DAV support is much better. There are a few good 3rd party products for FTP though.
really hate to sound like a troll and all, but if 98% of the business world continues to use MS formated documents, MS formats will remain the defacto standard. Being able to communicate is critical in today's world.
What you are forgetting is that many organisations, including government organisations, are required to use standardised formats where possible. Office formats aren't standardised. OpenOffice formats are in the process of being standardised by OASIS and multiple vendors are in the middle of implementing them.
If apple supported OASIS, all the better, but until people are actually using the format it's not going do very much.
People are using them today. The OASIS standard formats are based upon the OpenOffice formats.
So, there are lots of questions. Like, what kinds of formats is it using? XML? SVG? The to-be-standardized OOo format? MathML? Does it have LaTeX import/export? Does it support mathematics? LaTeX notation? MathML export/import? Apple's page (apple.com/iwork) shows lots of pretty pictures but has little technical details, other than that it imports/exports Word and can generate PDF.
You're kind of missing the point. iWork, like other word processors, can export/import DOC (more or less). But it also has its own, native format. That could be yet another messy, proprietary format, or it could be a standard XML-based format like OASIS. Well, which is it?
If apple supported OASIS, all the better, but until people are actually using the format it's not going do very much.
It would be doing a great deal: the documents you create in iWork would then be accessible as standard XML documents, and they would rely on standards like SVG and MathML.
Creative Computing, Vol. 9, No. 6, June 1983
;)
But what are we to do? Teach seven-year-olds to use WordStar? That's simply not feasible. Fortunately, another package has recently appeared; it is so simple, accessible, forthright, and consistent, that kids are begging to write "What I Did on my Summer Vacation' on it, even in the off-season. It is Bank Street Writer, from Broderbund Software.
Developed in conjunction with a research and design team from the Bank Street College of Education in Chicago, Bank Street Writer was designed to embody the word simplicity, and it does so quite admirably. Selecting from screen-based menus with the keys , and the spacebar, the user chooses whether to enter or correct, manipulate, delete or save text.
And although it has been designed for ease of use by children, Bank Street Writer is quite capable of producing professional results with any short document. I wouldn't want to use it for a novel, but for ten- or twelve-page reports, it does just fine. Up to 2300 words can be stored in any single text file. Of course, files can be linked, so that larger documents can be stored.
The top of the Bank Street Writer screen always displays the choices which are available to the user. Among these are options to delete or undelete, move blocks of text, find and replace character strings, save, kill, rename, or print files. All of these modes can be selected straightforwardly by moving the highlighted bar to the desired choice, then hitting RETURN. It is that simple, and it becomes second nature very quickly.
Below the menu bars is a text box, in which your text appears. Entering text is as simple as, well, entering text. Full cursor control is available using the arrow keys on the Atari, and the I, J, K, and M keys on the Apple. Lowercase is generated through software in the Apple version.
Ah, back when lowercase was a luxury on some systems...
Special cursor control keys are also provided, to move to the beginning or to the end of a text file, or in jumps of 12 lines in either direction.
In addition, other keys allow for centering of lines and indenting of paragraphs, and indicate how much RAM storage space remains. You can even protect personal files with a password, so that others will not be able to access them from Bank Street Writer. (Because text resides in conventional DOS files, however, it is not too secure, and perhaps that is good, because kids have a way of forgetting passwords.)
Let's take a closer look at the estimable friendliness of the program.
Check out what was apparently considered hot shit for moving text:
I have decided, for an example, to move a block of text from one place to another. How to do it? First I move the selector on the top menu portion of the screen to "move.' I do that using the , or spacebar. Then I press RETURN. I have now entered the move screen. It prompts me to place the cursor at the beginning of the text to be moved. I do so, then press RETURN again. The move menu prompts me to move the cursor to the end of the block to be moved. I do so, and the text that will be moved is immediately highlighted. The screen prompts me to hit RETURN. I do so, and am prompted to move the cursor to the desired location of the transplanted text block. I do so, then hit RETURN. The text is moved there, and I am asked, "Is it OK to move text here?' If I say no, it will put everything back the way it was. If I say yes, it will effect the move. Even then, I can put things back by using "moveback.' Now that's friendly.
And that's all!
If you hold down ESCAPE while the program is loading, the utility program will boot up instead of the word processor. Through this, special disk drive or printer configurations can be custom-tailored. Even optional keyclick is offered, though I can't imagine why you would want it.
D
Absolutely, Microsoft file formats are the standards. They are a bad standard for many reasons. So people don't like this and what to change it. Getting Apple on board with the new standard would help a lot.
his isn't an update to an old application, it's a new word processor from Microsoft's only desktop competitor, THAT'S why we're hearing about it.
That's the usual Macintosh arrogance. Get used to it: Gnome and KDE are serious competitors to Windows and Macintosh on the desktop.
It's a big world... with at least 24 time-zones.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Anyone remember this program? My sis and I liked it a lot on our //e, even better than AppleWorks for some things.
Well you could, but that would be worse than microsofts shipping practice. Apple is not member of OASIS, so they didn't define what would go into the standard and didn't know how many changes to the draft would be made.
I bet that iWorks will have its own file-format, but will not lose more information than necessary, when saving as doc, rtf, ClarisWorks or pdf-document. StarOffice descendants will be able to import at least two of these Formats without much loss.
Keynote 2 seems to have far more efficient workflow than what I am accustomed to when working in MS PowerPoint. The visual qualitys are far better than what I am accustomed to seeing with Windows computers (edges, aliasing, effects, color, etc.). /. discussions.) OK, back on topic.
Pages is a word processing and limited, albeit very powerful, page layout application. Pages is excellent for writting papers, making small multi-page brochures, menus, etc. It is not a Quark / InDesign replacement and was not intended to be, as one of the UI designers stated to me at the exhibit ( I think he is telling the truth, as I did study at Uni with him and he has always been very truthful). Pages is not Word, there are several features currently absent from Word (as previously stated in this thread) that professional writers would need, version tracking is one of those features.
Notice that there isn't a Spreadsheet application in the iWorks suite? Me too. However, Appleworks 6.x still has this functionality, and it imports most MS Excel docs, plus it is much cheaper than Excel (US$49.00, I think).
By the way, there are several word processing applications available for Mac OS X: TextEdit (Apple), AppleWorks (Apple), Pages (Apple), Mariner Write (Mariner), Abiword, MS Word, and 2 applications by Nissus (there main App is feature rich / high end, the other very basic, more features than TextEdit). These are what I am aware of, please add to the list if I have not listed all.
There are several Spreadsheet applications as well, Mariner Calc, a few from open source, AppleWorks (as listed earlier), and that MS Excel Application. Again, if there are any I have left out, please add these in.
I do know that there is a java Office Suite applicaion available, I just don't remember it by name. The "open" office suite application that I have read about (sorry, I forgot its techy name)
is not really an application for most Apple users, as it requires a rather cryptic installation process, not very apple-like, and so I would refer to it as a kind of prototype software, not ready for non-techys (I am refering to the majority of computer users out there who need to do work with their computers, not get their computers to work) those people who do not have the time or interest in learning how to make a computer work. These are the
same people who do not upgrade thier refridgerators, TVs, washing machines, toilet, or water heater, unless they are broken, or want to re-model the house, these are the same people who buy software by the way. These same people are
also the ones who fix that broken plumbing, electrical, and so
on. ( Sorry had to rant a bit their as I read so much elitist garble
on
It seems as though Mac OS X will have nearly as many USEABLE (whatever this really means I am not sure) office productivity applications as are available for MS WIndows users. Is this the same situation as well, where 95% of people use the dominant application and the remaining applications fight for market share scraps?
I think variety is a very good thing, as is competition, so hopefully, these applications will find their respective niches and only have overlap in reading each others formats and basic features.
Cheers!
OpenOffice.org or something new?
I have MS Office on my PC, and I've got to say that MS Word is far too complex for the occasional users. A nice simple and pleasant to use alternative with rapid and good looking results, that is capable of most of what MS word is, and for only $79? Count me in. And no, Open Office isn't the answer. It's no easier or more pleasant to use than (Windows) MS Office.
OASIS isn't even finished today! It's just the second draft. So you can't possibly offer any software that is truely using OASIS-Office as a document standard.
I am waiting for Apple to include iSue in there iWork package before I buy. Imagine the ability to serve litigation notices in a straightforward interface that resembles iTunes. Apparently Apple has it on internal beta and been testing it with ThinkSecret.
Both KOffice and Pages seem to be blurring the line between a simple (not feature bloated like MS-Word) wordprocessor and a simple (not "professional" like Quark / InDesign) publishing application. I think this represents a markedly different approach than MS-Word or its "clones" such as WordPerfect and OpenOffice.
Other than that... there's always EMACS and LaTeX.
That's why I use Open Office. If I used MS Office, I could only sent MS documents, which doesn't help when a publisher is on a Mac.
"Something unknown is doing we don't know what." - Sir Arthur Eddington
It seems to me that Apple has to tread very carefully with an office productivity suite, so as not to piss off Microsoft. Witness the step-by-step introduction of a browser (Safari), presentation app (Keynote), and now a word processor (Pages). The missing pieces of the puzzle of course, are a spreadsheet and database. I'm willing to bet that they're already working on a spreadsheet with the features and capabilities of Improv which I've heard described as the best spreadsheet ever. It's also not a stretch for them to introduce a "Lite" version of FileMaker (which is owned by Apple) as a database module. Users needing more capabilities would be able to upgrade to the full-featured version of FileMaker, in much the same way that they can move from iMovie/iDVD to Final Cut Pro/DVD Studio Pro.
Apparently this says it all about an Aqua port. NeoOffice/J works pretty well and I'm sure it'll just get better. So looks like that's the only version of OOo for Mac for the forseeable future.
As far as OOo being the future of office apps, I dunno. There's something to be said about simplicity and OOo inherits all of M$'s bad habits, specifically more is more. I do agree witht he open file format approach tho.
Frankly, I'd like some office apps with core functionality and that's it. That's why I like Keynote so much over PP - besides the fact that it looks a million times better.
take his comments with a grain of salt:
Keynote 2 seems to finally be able to compete with PowerPoint on a number of new levels, especially now that it has, for example, presenter display.
Keynote 1 had this and did it quite well (better than PowerPoint X and about on par with 2004).
Honestly, I found that using keynote was a delight to work with when compared to powerpoint once you got accustomed to the way it worked and the minimalistic interface which I've come to love. Palettes are much easier to work with than toolbars. Despite having an interface which is FAR less cluttered than powerpoint, I have yet to come across a feature powerpoint had that keynote 1 didn't.
As Icing on the cake, keynote will import or export to just about anything. And, as with any OS X application, PDF Export works by default. I particularly liked the Quicktime Export feature, and Flash export should prove to be interesting.
To rave just a bit more about keynote, the templates are simply beautiful and the transitions are very smooth and look beautiful (although they're by no means distracting/annoyinh like those in powerpoint).
Other awesome features -- snap-to centering both for the slide and the content pane. Transparency, rotation, and cropping work for virtually all image types. Tables actually look nice, and charts are also pleasant to look at.
I'm looking forward to the new animation tools in Keynote 2. The first version is one of apple's best kept secrets.
Presentations are all about looks and.... presentation. I've never understood how powerpoint was able to be successful while producing some of the ugliest presentations i've ever seen.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
"...MS formats will remain the defacto standard..."
I think their secret, proprietary file format is only a standard in terms of end-use and only a standard to the paying members of Microsoft's club.
Take a gander- http://http//www.redlers.com/mellel.html/
I like it for non-business writing. Smooth 'n simple, years beyond TextEdit and way better for "just writing" than MS word. Also, it's multilingual.
If I remember correctly, the European Union is considering making OpenOffice XML an ISO standard. Sun is really pushing this, of course. With a population easily larger than that of the U.S., we're talking about one very, very big egg. Apple would be stupid not to support it, as it is free.
But then we all know that Apple doesn't do too well when it comes to including free standards, don't we: Those iPod still don't have Ogg Vorbis support. Rio and a bunch of other people have it, so it can't be rocket science. Some times, I just don't get Apple. This is on my duh list right up there with non-activated spanning on the iBook.
As for iWorks: We have three operating systems at home: Mac OS X, Linux und Win XP. So: If it doesn't support OASIS, it's not going to fly here. I always thought that Apple would be better off doing a Safari when it comes to office packages: Admit they can't compete on their own, and put their people behind the OpenOffice project. Now we're going to have to wait for OOo 2.0, and then how many months?
Transmit from the good people at Panic
Buy it and enjoy it.
Only one question: does Pages have a live wordcount? 'Cause if not, well, maybe I'll wait for iLife '06...
You must think in Russian.
No OCR. Not as many features as OpenOffice. Lame.
in the real world communication is key
Your ideas intrigue me and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
This is...
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Actually, I look at it in the same light as iPhoto and the other killer Apple apps, offensive.
.doc most of the time but for things I develop for myself I'll probably use whichever processor "just works". I don't know which one will work better, but I think the odds on Pages being more friendly are pretty good.
Apple looked at Word and said "Wow, this application sucks. They've added features for over a decade, but not once have they made it easier to use." I'm excited to try out pages and use it. I'd like to see how it works out. Granted, I'll still be stuck using
Price the whole thing at $99-$149 and release a couple more versions - people will be switching from Office in droves.
Apple recognizes the threat here - if MSFT withdraws their Office from Mac software market Mac as a platform will suddenly become a lot less desirable for tons and tons of users. All they need to do to lessen the impact is release their own office suite with 20-30% of features of competing office suite that customers use 95% of the time and most importantly get their import/export from PP/Word/Excel just right. And make it look nice (this is one of the things Open Office failed miserably at).
There you go, one less dependency.
Looking over the formatted text in column, all I can say is that it's missing hyphenation big time. This full justification without hyphenation just look hideous.
Pages was done in by:
- being vapourware and _very_ late to market
- never providing a promised interactive/visual design tool
- the implosion of the NeXT market and the shift to custom / vertical apps
- Altsys Virtuoso (developed by the people who'd done FreeHand) getting page layout features
- Glenn Reid writing PasteUp.app in his basement over the course of a summer
All of the above wasn't helped by Ted Shelton's company ITS being shafted on the Enterprise Object Frameworks license over their web-app development software (to give NeXT a leg-up w/ Web Objects).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
One of the major failings of Pages by Pages for NEXTSTEP was that you had to go back to the Pages company to purchase a new document template. Not only was the software non-free (in the sense of software freedom), but only Pages had the software to do this job. Is Apple keeping this going too?
In any event, I don't see how porting or updating Pages is a benefit of Apple purchasing NeXT. As I recall, Pages was just another third-party developer, not a part of NeXT. Hence, NeXT didn't hold the copyright to Pages.
This made me think that Apple's Pages is just similarly named to Pages by Pages, but not at all an update of the code.
Digital Citizen
iWork Pages has a menu item: Save as Template, so you can author your own.
There's no direct relationship between the two similarly named applications.
It's interesting that this happens at the same time that OpenOffice.org announces that due to, among other reasons, legal issues, there won't be any more work on a native version of OpenOffice for the Mac.
There's no evidence that there's any relationship. But one is left wondering.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Mesa is a native Aqua spreadsheet, that has roots going back to the NeXT days.
It's selling price these days is only $34. Even added onto iWork's price, the combination price is still far less than Microsoft Office.
http://www.plsys.co.uk/mesa.htm
A trial download is available on your iDisk's Applications folder.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
I'm really interested to see if Pages will automatically handle typographical ligatures. I see a comment about them in Apple's information (Pages' "free-form graphic canvas" blurb). But it will be great if character combinations like "fi", "ff", etc. are automatically changed to their ligature versions.
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I noticed recently that QuickTime Pro will display ligatures automatically (when creating text titles from a plaintext file), so I have high hopes that Pages will be able to do it as well.
Typographical ligatures are a big plus for professional-looking documents. Of course you can also get them automatically in TeX. I don't know how to get MS-Word to do them.
Ligatures info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(typography
I love how Apple seems to have magical powers here on /.
It is like, you make a comment about how litigious they are, post it anonymously, and it will magically disappear.
Apple: why don't you find another 20 year old to sue so you can get even more free press. You are sick and very much not cool at all.
When looking at the templates of resumes and letters, ask yourself: "Would I hire someone who used these templates for their resume and cover letter?"
With Microsoft's templates, the answer is a definite, resounding, NO.
How about with Apple's?
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
If Pages can make documents look at least as good as (La)TeX, I'll go buy a Mac Mini next week. All I want is great text processing under the slick interface... which means "fi" and "ff" and "fl" are ligatures; kerning, justification, and hyphenation are automated beautifully with the whole paragraph in mind.
I don't have a need for advanced typographical tools (such as InDesign), but I do want my research papers to look good on paper (which is why I use (La)TeX instead of OOo or any of the other alternatives). If Pages can pull this off, Apple will have snagged a new customer away from the FS/OSS world.
Uhm ... well, I guess everyone has an opinion. Actually being there when the doors closed on the company I have a slightly different perspective. Like, maybe it had a bit more to do VC interaction on the board ... and the fact that the NeXT market never materialized (Steve's reality distortion field at work in marketing). The engineering team actually had a skunkworks Windows effort underway; it had to be because it wasn't condoned.
Still, lots of the technology went on via Digital Style Inc., purchased by Netscape, then purchased by AOL. You'll find a whole lot of DOM and XML contributions came from Pages. I think that's where it's had it's biggest effect.
Sven
There was no software to create document templates, which is why it was never released. Design models were rolled by hand. Yes, a design model editor would have been an improvement, and was certainly part of the intended path.
Pages was an ISV, not owned by NeXT or Apple. However, the codebase was purchased (Lighthouse?) and it was also being used for production templates at some Wall Street firms.
Yes, Pages does correct ligatures automatically. It also does correct kerning. The full justification algorithm is superior to Word's implementation. (For correct typography, the number of physical spaces you end a sentence with shouldn't matter. In Word, if you end a sentence with a single space, the justification algorithm works correctly, but the inter-sentence spacing is off. If you end a sentence with two spaces, the inter-sentence spacing is better, though a little too large, but the justification algorithm then creates huge, ugly whitespace rivers, especially in two column documents.) Hyphenation is also automatically supported.
I doubt Pages has a TeX-style multiline composer, and it almost certainly doesn't have the awesome InDesign paragraph composer, but if hyphenation and justification are handled correctly, a single line composer is surprisingly hard to detect visually.
I also doubt Pages will have the advanced typographer-style "hanging punctuation" that InDesign offers, but even TeX does not have this. (You can implement this behavior using complex TeX macros, but it tends to screw up LaTeX.) This would be a truly killer feature for us typography nuts, but hardly necessary. InDesign still has a purpose.
On the plus side, it will undoubtedly be easy to use different fonts, including expert sets, in Pages. Installing a complete font, including small caps and expert sets, in TeX and having it work automatically with proper kerning is something I have always found to be exceedingly difficult, even with the automated font installer utility. I have never succeeded, for instance, in installing Minion and getting correct kerning. Don't underestimate how much a good choice of font can help in making your document look professional. It is worth more than a multiline composer, in my view.
At any rate, this typography nut is excited about Pages!
I upload a lot as a web designer and having to switch to the terminal to upload a file sucks. Ok, I keep repeating myself... but that's because it has bugged me for as long as I have used a Mac (since 1989)... I have used Fetch, Interarchy, Transmit, Cyber duck, you name it, if it is free, it sucks and/or is unstable, and if it is nice, well, you gotta cough up $$ to use something that should be just built in the system... I do echo your Safari comments, anyone who thinks Safari is not the best browser doesn't use it... it does fully support standards, so any page that does not display or work correctly means the developer/designer didn't follow the standards (or they used activeHex from MS) in creating the page. However, Safari does have a little problem dealing with SSL certificates... that is, as a developer/designer, it would be nice to be able to check the certificate... and there doesn't seem to be a way to do that with Safari... so nothing is perfect... but Safari comes pretty close.
RMS, who started the GNU project, would disagree with you. In a recent interview with Jeremy Andrews of KernelTrap.org, RMS was quite clear that "freedom is the main goal" for free software. RMS wants to give as many people software freedom as possible. But it's clear that you're not questioning that, you're really challenging the notion of freedom as though anything short of absolute freedom is insufficient.
Placing a program in the public domain does make that program free software, but it "doesn't protect the freedom of all users. It allows middlemen to make the software proprietary, which means they distribute the software to others but without the freedom." (quoted from an interview with Federico Biancuzzi where he was referring to the new BSD license, but the same thing applies to software in the public domain). RMS isn't just thinking about the freedom of the users of the program, but the freedom of the users of derivative works as well. We can't have all possible freedoms, some of them conflict. So we have to make a choice between which freedoms we want to preserve and which freedoms we're willing to trade away. The FSF describes this situation with regard to the GPL and to driving (which I've summarized elsewhere on this site).
Placing software in the public domain is insufficient if one argues from the angle of absolutism because, in some countries, computer programming is regulated by patent law as well. A public domain program may have implemented a patented idea, ironically restricting what people are allowed to do with that program.
Finally, there is no requirement to "release software only under a restrictive license" (you're undoubtedly talking about the GNU General Public License), because the GPL doesn't compel distribution of verbatim or modified programs. Distributing complete source code to the GPL-covered program only kicks in for those who distribute the covered program. Compared to the default of copyright (which is to say "no" to virtually everything it regulates), the GPL is quite permissive. The GPL grants rights copyright otherwise withheld by default. Those who advocate for free software recognize a variety of free software licenses and placing the work in the public domain as ways to increase user's freedom. The question is who's freedom is being increased and can we do more to increase other user's freedom too.
Digital Citizen
Works is positioned as a "castrated" version of Office "for the poor". Even those who don't use much of the functionality in Office don't want a "castrated" version. They also don't want to be associated with the products "for the poor".
Now Apple could change that with iWork. Watch it unfold, man. They'll add spreadsheet app. They'll closely integrate the pieces and make import/export a breeze. They'll polish the heck out of it. Then they'll price it well below $200 and tell their fanbase that they don't need Office anymore. And the fanbase will have an orgasm yet again.
However, and this is where we get to things like Ogg Vorbis or OpenOffice XML, Apple has this thing called the "80 Percent Solution" in their software design guide: If it is not used by 80 percent of the users, Apple doesn't do it.
This is actually a very good rule of thumb. However -- and this is where Apple gets into trouble -- like all rules, you have to know when to break it, otherwise you get into the situation that Apple is in now: You can never lead with your features, you always follow, and this annoys a lot of people who demand more for what is a pretty hefty price tag.
Some examples of the "Curse of the 80 Percent Rule":
1. Ogg Vorbis. Ogg is not used by many people, but has been shown to be the best compressed format out there, beating MP3 by a kilometer. Double-blind tests like the big one Germany's "c't" magazine did a while ago have show this pretty well, and so the people who care use Ogg Vorbis, which is why companies like Rio are putting it in their players even if there is a small user base. Apple, however, is sticking to their 80 percent rule, which in this case sends the message that they don't care about those people who care about quality. What do they expect me to do, re-rip my whole CD collection to an inferior format?
2. TLS. Open Mail on Panther and try to set TLS as a transport encryption standard. No go. Of course, TLS is not widespread, and so Apple decided not to support it. Some providers demand it (like mine), because they say it is more secure, and so people like me switch to other products like Thunderbird [I have been told that Apple has included TLS as "SSH", which would be confusing enough and violate their other design rules about letting the user decide at all times, but even so I can't get it to work with my provider].
3. OpenOffice XML (OASIS): The free and open file standard now in use by OpenOffice.org and Koffice and probably soon to be accepted by the European Union as a ISO standard is another victim of the 80 Percent Rule, because not many people use it right now. Given the increasing number of people who are switching to OpenOffice and the potential of all the EU goverments supporting it, this is one risk that Apple should be very willing to take: Be the first commercial vendor after Sun to include it in their products.
In these three cases, the 80 Precent Rule keeps Apple from supporting what is a minority, but a well-thought of solution. In all cases, we are talking about free things that Apple could include with little problems if only their own guildlines weren't in the way.
This is what I ment with Apple not being good at supporting free solutions; I can see, however, that my first post was probably misleading. Sorry.
One more thing then:
Apple is also a hardware company. Not supporting this configuration out of the box provides greater incentive for those who want that functionality to spend several hundred dollars by purchasing a PowerBook.
Fine, except for one small thing: I paid for that hardware. Apple paid ATI for that chip and you'd better believe they passed that cost on to me, but here I am with a chip in my iBook I paid for with functions I paid for but I can't use out of the box. No, this is wrong. I expect the operating system to support the hardware I paid for to the max, not artificially keep me from getting the most of my property.
This really, really pisses me off when I think about it: No other operating system creator around, not Microsoft and certainly not Linux or FreeBSD, would even dream about writing something that
Maybe true, however, a lot of people want to take their document somewhere else to print it, and they really don't want to discover the whole style of the document has changed when they load it into... Microsoft Word.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Wait for Tiger later on this year. It ships with SQLite installed by default. There's bound to be some Apple magic around that either in development, or waiting in the wings to enable you to access SQLite data from the tables in Pages.
Your otherwise good post really stumbled on this one.
Judging from mailing lists and message boards, many of us are leaving Safari for Firefox because the latter is faster, more stable, and far more customizable. Its best feature is its range of extensions (I'm running several that Safari couldn't dream of replicating). These are essentials, really: ad-blocking, dictionary lookup, translation--to name a few. There was a point in time months ago when Safari ran better than the pre-release Firefox; that time is long since past. Apple must now play catch-up.
I hope that's next, and soon!
Sam
My opinion is based on what I read in NeXTWorld and other industry publications, but as the divorce lawyers say, ``There're three sides to every story, his, hers and the truth.'' --- certainly didn't mean to claim that my observations were absolutely authoritative and final, but my understanding based on what I'd read.
I did note ``the implosion of the NeXT market and the shift to custom / vertical apps'' though...
Not sure by what you mean by the ``VC interaction on the board'', but it doesn't sound pleasant.
The skunkworks Windows effort sounds interesting though, and glad to hear that something of it survived in other projects.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Well, it's history anyway.
... losing control of the company when forced to get more cash. The details get murky and are hard to prove, but it appears that VC's killed the Pages effort to take the technology and fund another. That left founders very, very bitter.
I'm not so certain the market imploded as it never materialized. We kept thinking our G2 was wrong compared to NeXT, but a few years into the company we had to restructure and layed off half of Pages employees. That cut hurt efforts to bring the design editor to market, and essentially put Pages into maintenance mode. We did pursue the custom/vertical app space with the PRO Kit (Pages Remote Objects), which was used on Wall St.
The VC story is similar to many startups
Sven
Let's hope it's better designed than the Keynote file format, though I'm not optimistic.