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PC Mag Review of Apple iWork '05
sammykrupa writes "PC Mag has a review of Apple's new office suite, iWork '05. iWork '05 includes a word processor, called Pages (though the article refers to it as a cross between a page-layout program and a word processor) and presentation software, called Keynote. They say that iWork '05 is a 'small but significant assault on Fort Microsoft.' The article also explains that the suite is strong in typographic and visual features - the areas where Office is weakest."
The parent post is right on. In fact, I think it barely touches on the differences between Office and Pages (or any other Windows-based software vs. it's Mac counterpart).
For example, look at iPhoto: fairly minimal on features. In fact, when iPhoto was released, I recall hearing all kinds of important sounding people say a bunch of unimpressive things, that iPhoto lacked features, that it didn't have the power, blah blah blah. But what they missed was the simplicity of use. iPhoto is so much easier to use that it absolutely nails 90% of the things you want to do in a perfect, simple package. For the remaining 10% of your photo tasks (advanced editing, for instance), use something else.
Apple's approach in general is to nail the common use cases, and nail 'em to the goddamn wall, whereas the Microsoft approach (and again, a majority of apps on Windows) is to offer you 4,000 features that you can't understand or figure out, so you kinda hobble along with the app, barely able to get your tasks done.
So could Apple have added multiple sub-document support? Yeah, probably. Do I even know what that is, aside from having read someone else's rant that it doesn't exist in Pages? No, I don't, and I don't think I care. I could say the same thing for a lot of the other "features" that are supposedly "missing" from Pages.
The Omni Group also gets this same design principle - do something well, and keep it simple. There's a huge reason why OmniOutliner is an app that I (and thousands of other folks) use on a regular basis, and it's not because it has all kinds of complicated, contrived "features" that some marketing group in Redmond came up with under corporate sales pressure.
"Pages lacks ... the collaboration, tracking, and security features that make Word so excellent in business settings."
Can someone hilight the securuty features in word? I'm not trolling, I'm serious. The only mention of Word and security I know of comes from cases where Word has shown more than it intended.
Moral of the story: Grammar checkers -- when they even work -- perpetuate stupidity.
I second that.
When I wrote my thesis, I had a choice to go with LaTeX or with Word. Being a so-so LaTeX user and seeing that Word supports LaTeX features such as cross-referencing etc., I went with Word, believing that I would save time.
Big mistake. Word kept changing the heading levels, lists, figure placements, widows/orphans. It was not consistent from the point where I saved the document and the next time I opened the document. It corrupted some of my equations (which made the file unsaveable -- had to hunt down the offending equations, open Equation Editor and replace them). And the worst offending problem was Word's automatically starting header numbers not from 1. Sometimes Section 1 became Section 3 and therefore, Section 2 became Section 4 and subsection 1.1 became 3.1.
It was so problematic that I had to spend much time with Word than with writing my thesis. But I already invested much time with it and it'd be foolish to change to LaTeX.
Word's "features" are more likely to be a hindrance than a help and there is nothing to convince Word that we know what we are doing.
Apple doesn't want to replace Office. For a lot of people, Office is the killer app. If MS stopped making Office for Mac, no amount of "switch" campaigns would make up for it.
English is easier said than done.
GOOD. I think that grammar check is a lousy feature. Not because it doesn't work, but because it encourages laziness and encourages people to rely on automated helpers rather than learn their native language. If I'm reading something that someone wrote, I want to know that they wrote it THEMSELVES, that they know how to construct sentences and use language effectively and properly. It is important in making hiring decisions as well. If someone comes off great on paper, but can't make conversation on the same level as their augmented written works, then they will be less effective employees.
How is this different than spell check? Dictionaries have always been readily available to double-check your work, and it is much harder to memorize the exact spelling of every word in a language than it is to master the much fewer rules of sentence structure and the like. Also, in speech, spelling doesn't matter, only pronunciation. So as long as you can form sentences correctly and pronounce words correctly, you don't sound like an ass.
Grammar check is contributing to the dumbing down of culture. If we continue to rely on automation to provide us with the basics of communication, communication will begin to break down and fail more and more often...
However, I suspect that there's another big reason, one that was probably at least as influential in the design of the final product. A lot of the Geek/Linux crowd really DON'T understand Apple's design philosophy.
If you look at Microsoft products, for example (and I'm not trying to start a flame-war, just noting a different design method), and version 1.0 is usually crap. I can't think of an MS program that was even usable before version 3.0, and it's usually not very good until version 4.0. Why?
Microsoft will create a version 1.0 application with 1000 features that barely work, and the program will be a PITA to use. By version 4, they've spent years redesigning, taking things out, putting things in, until it's a patchwork program with 700 useful features.
Apple, on the other hand, will put out a comparable application with version 1.0 having only 500 features, but most of them work decently, and the program is fairly pleasant to work with. It won't do everything the Microsoft version 1.0 program will do, but what it does, it's pretty good at. They use this product as a base, and spend years carefully adding features in places that don't disturb the original design. By version 4, it's a solid program with 700 useful features.
So it gets to be a question of what you think is better-- to throw in all sorts of features all at once spend years sorting it out, or use a smaller set of more targeted features as a base and then build off of that?