“Dear oh dear. They really have done it, haven’t they?” Pierre Igot writes for Betalogue. “They have taken what had evolved into a rather decent word processor / page layout application and have eliminated so many useful features that it effectively is now a piece of useless junk, and I honestly have no idea for whom this latest version of Pages is intended.”
“It certainly is not intended for people who, like me, appreciated the combination of simplicity and power that was the hallmark of previous versions of Pages,” Igot writes. “I realize that it must be hard to maintain the right balance between simplicity and power when you try to add more features, more customizability, and so on. But Apple’s engineers appear to have chosen to keep the emphasis on ‘simplicity’ at the expense of ‘power.'”
Igot writes, “They have not just neglected to add features to bring the feature set of the application closer to that of a word processor like Microsoft Word. They have actually removed many features for no apparent reason other than to bring the application in line with its iOS counterpart, which is, inevitably, much less powerful… I guess that, for now, I will continue to use Pages ’09 with all the customizations that I have painstakingly created with AppleScript and Keyboard Maestro. But sooner or later, I will have no choice but to switch to something else.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No Pages 5.0 is not an unmitigated disaster. Some guy’s third-party macros no longer work. That’s it in a nutshell. 9 out of 10 Pages users will find Pages 5.0 is an unmitigated triumph!
How brilliant is this?!
I can email myself a Pages 5 document from my iPad to my MBP as a ‘Pages’ document and Pages 4 won’t open it. (I have to open it in Pages 5, then export it as a Pages 4 document to do any serious work on it.)
However, if I email it to myself as a Word document, Pages 4 can open it straight away!
Bonkers!
I’m a teacher with a database of info related to my students; I literally use the mail merge feature between Pages and Numbers every school day. Dropping that function alone will force me to go another route at some point.
If you’re upgrading from Pages/iWork ’08, then there is a cost. You need to purchase the software because there’s no free upgrade path like there is from ’09 and there’s no demo program to test it. What you’ll find is that your “new” software won’t open any of your Pages/iWork ’08 documents, so you run the risk of being out $60 and having 3 programs that are less capable than iWork ’08.
If “layout breaks” are gone from the new version then I’m glad I am not upgrading.
“Pages” almost by definition would imply page layout. When you say “pages,” you aren’t describing a letter or a résumé or a report. Those would mostly be described as documents. The new version, for me, is useless. Sad.
MDN: “9 out of 10 Pages users will find Pages 5.0 is an unmitigated triumph!”
Given the brouhaha on this site and others re Pages 5.0, I wonder if this was tongue-in-cheek by MDN.
It’s driving me nuts!
If I have a style such as HEADING 1, then modify it to a list with numbers – you would think that it would change all text formatted to that style after updating it, to also now be a list with numbers… but sadly no! I cannot go through a 789 page document & manually assign numbers to each heading – I may as well be using a basic .txt editor!
Looks like i’ll grab the older version of pages from time machine & steer clear of 5.+ until they get it right.
“Some guy’s third-party macros no longer work. That’s it in a nutshell. 9 out of 10 Pages users will find Pages 5.0 is an unmitigated triumph!”
That’s FAR from the nutshell. The nutshell is that there’s no more facing pages view. No more re-ordering pages. No more linked text boxes. No more Mail Merge. No more vertical ruler or layout guides. Just to name a few.
With these features stripped, its use-cases are massively narrowed:
No more newsletters, business forms, book or pamphlet layout, business stationary, etc, etc.
It still works as a VERY basic word processor, but it used to be a great DTP platform.
Design and Functionality has allways been the main potential of this company, and since 1987 I’ve been one of those Lemmings following unconditionally.
Until now, where they pissed on one of the main design-principles with this new version of Pages: “Form follows function”.
Time for me to consider “thinking differently”.
The new Pages SUCKS. I am about 80% finished with writing my PhD dissertation, which up until now had been composed entirely in Pages. What happened to all the quick icons at the top (say, for example, superscript)? I put a lot of notes in my documents, and clicking the superscript icon was simple. Now I have to highlight the number, and go dig into pull down menus, which took some time to find. Also, notes/comments no longer reside along the margins–they “float” on top, and disappear when you click back in the main body of text. Yes, Apple, sometimes writers actually want to look at comments *and* the main text at the same time! Totally useless. Sticking with Pages 09. Thanks god it works with Mavericks. Apple’s lost it.
At least they kept one function – “Export to Word”, which is where I’m heading! So long Steve…
I’v never been disappointed by an Apple product.
Until this.
Just now (no lie) out of frustration — and wanting to finally get some work done — I cut open my index finger and wrote with blood on the screen of my new MacBook Air. The new MacBook Air, I will mention, that I bought because an iPad would not allow me to create documents in a way that was satisfactory to me. So tell me, then, why does Apple think I want an iOS word processing application on my laptop?!
Pages 5.0.1 is the worst thing I’ve put on my computer since the guys and I took those naked pictures of ourselves when we were in Colorado. [You know the ones where you’re naked but you’re holding a snowboard in front of certain places so nothing is visible? Yeah, those.] But the difference is that I never would have taken those photos if I’d had FOUR years to think about it.
I create content on my computer every day. I liked Pages 4; it worked well for me. And I really was excited about the new upgrade. But what improvements are in this thing? Sure there’s simplicity, I guess, which is beautiful in a way. But if I wanted something pretty to look at that was dumber’n a bag of hammers, I’da hired a University of Alabama sorority girl to be my secretary. Instead I got this word processor designed for soccer moms who type their middle school kids’ history papers and then make price tags for baked good sales.
I can’t do work on Pages 5.0.1. But my business partner uses it, and my trusty ol’ Pages 4.3 apparently won’t open any document he’s touched with his “last word in word processing.” Let me tell you… the last word in “word processing” is processing, not word. And — though it’s a quite a process in its own right — I’m going back to pen and paper. That or I’ll switch to dictation. Get me the number for a temp agency in Tuscaloosa.
I just realized how bad Pages5 really is. It really hit me when I was unable to drop images from Preview’s photo list side bar (when Preview has several pics at once) in to a table cell in Pages. Tried changing languages (ion V5 it’s hidden three layers down; in V09, it right in the “more” tab). Tried selecting all text of one style (not obvious or not possible in v5). Got frustrated constantly pulling down V5’s style menu bar; in V09, I just clicked the style to reset default for text. So many other flaws! Talk about shareholder value destruction!
Agree with all the complaints about Pages above. The new Pages app is basically rubbish when compared to Word, which actually works as a proper word processor. I am an Apple convert who got fed up with continual Windows problems but in the particular case of Pages, I think Apple is firmly in the old traditional Windows slot.
Since i got my macbook pro 15 months ago I installed Libreoffice as i used that in windows and linux. Like pages it is also free
Libreoffice is a good word processor application. it is very comparable to MSOffice. It has most of the same features and a few of its own. Libreoffice looks and feels like the old MSOffice interface. Libreoffice integrates into osx nicely. you can even add a sidebar similar to the one in pages.
Since the Upgrade to Mavericks I have made it my goal to migrate to Mac apps over my cross platform ones and it so far pages does all i need. but i still sometimes use libreoffice for doing quick things as i am more familiar with it.
So try out Libreoffice for yourself.
You cant do even a shopping list with new Pages since it eats up all your ram basically jamming up the whole computer.
How do you all find the new pages 5.1 in OSX 10.9, Mavericks
I have not found many problems here. it does seem that pages is a blur between MS word and Publisher. so it have features of both incorporated. so it is great. In life things change, we have to learn to adapt how things are, weather we like it or not, and move forward.
there are other options, MS office mac version was allowed as it was the most popular app in the business and corporate world. so apple allowed the sport..
if you are having problems with pages compatibly between the new and old version of pages, get the other person to export documents as word .doc, .docx or even pdf then you should be able to use it in pages.
these days you need to be cross platform with file formats. so its good that both pages and Libreoffice, apacheoffice etc all have that ability to convert to MS word etc formats.
have fun using what app works for you best and dont complain when thing change. just learn how to adapt.
I agree this is a nightmare. Wish I had never left my PC.
Just bought a new MacBook Pro with Pages 5 installed and it will not open Word docs which people email me. What is the point of that?? Is there any way to open Word docs with Pages 5 that is not obvious to me?
It is also ridiculous that Pages 08 cannot open Pages 5 documents. Insane.
What is a good alternative office suite to iWork which does the basics, ie. open files?!
My beef with this new system is I haves hundreds of layer out documents with multiple pages and linked text boxes. Concerting these seems impossible… Why did they downgrade Pages without providing an option of a version that maintained this key layout feature that made it superior to Word as a hybrid layout/word processing piece of software that was its niche. Now I am not even sure I can recover my documents with this new Maverick upgrade and if I can the time it will take is certainly not appreciated… This is the new Apple? Looks like a Blackberry maneuver to me…
I have upgraded my Mac to 10.10 and of course that meant upgrading Pages as well. I have a document which has been a work in progress over the past year. It is a large formate document with illustrations, a double sided pages requiring the Facing Pages feature. I’ve also need to re-arrange whole groups of pages as the project evolves. The removal of Facing Pages and the ability to re-organize my documents by dragging the thumbnails is a HUGE disaster. WHY would Apple remove such functionalities. WHY? This was a STUPID STUPID STUPID idea. Thanks Apple. You’ve screwed me. Why I remain a Mac Addict i9s beyond me. It may be time to go to the other side.
Hi…
Thanks a lot for such great and informative article. Looking forward to hear more from you at the same medium/blog.