“The new versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers mainly bring updates to support new OS X 10.10 and iOS 8 features while tossing in some user interface improvements,” Iljitsch van Beijnum writes for Ars Technica.
“As such, you’re still going to like the app/platform combinations you liked before, and you’ll still stay away from the ones you didn’t like before,” van Beijnum writes. “Apple did bring back some features that were excised from the initial iWork ’13 release over the course of the year, but it doesn’t look like it’s full steam ahead on that revisionary front.”
van Beijnum writes, “For Keynote and Numbers that’s fine: Keynote remains best in its class while Numbers has no such pretensions but serves users with modest needs well. Pages, on the other hand, leaves too wide a gap between vision and execution.”
Much more in the full article here.
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I hope that the IBM relationship and the push into the Corporate market results in the beefing up of Pages and Numbers so that they are suitable for more than the creation of pretty, but simple, documents.
In the meantime I have found it necessary to subscribe to MS Office, which really goes against the grain.
Pages has been dumbed down for compatibility with iCloud and iOS, but Numbers has never grown up.
Try ‘Bean’ instead of Pages.
Honestly none of them are even worth fooling around with in iOS. I keep going back to them every couple of months hoping that they might be useful on my iPad, but sorry, the touch interface just isn’t suited to any kind of serious use. It’s fine for very simple interfaces on large screens but only if you have the finger size of a 3 month old child in something like a spread sheet. And the interface of Pages has been so simplified that its of no use, except for maybe a cut and paste of a document that you need to show someone. And hopefully you won’t have to do more than ultra simple edits, best to go back to an OSX machine. Even then…..
The damning thing about the new, fly-weight Pages is that I must continue with the older version because the new one does not have a feature I need. So, using my iPad and iCloud are pointless as I cannot sync the documents. I cannot help but seeing this as a really stupid move from Apple. What’s the point to having Yosemite’s Continuity feature if the apps aren’t usable for my purposes?
Dumbing down is not thinking different. It’s what our society produces and the people at apple, despite their posturing don’t have anyone forcing them into excellence on performance. Even under Jobs software has never been great, it just worked. Now it barely does that. But it’s dumbed down so it just works.
One of the more serious mistakes made by Apple. Apple had great momentum two years ago. Small businesses needed to upgrade from Windows XP and the Mac was more familiar to users than Windows 8. A first class office suite would have moved a huge percentage of the small business market to Apple.
As it is now Apple has gained Phone and iPad small business customers and lost potential Mac business for another five years.
Come on Apple, make iWork a great suite!
I must be living in a different World where Mac are increasing market share then. I would also prefer a simpler product that works well and consistently across your platforms than a complex one with features you rarely if ever need that sync poorly as you get with Office. Get the basics right and you can consistently and logically add and enhance the software rather than adding features that are effectively useless in reality. If people need that sort of thing they can use Office and suffer the dreadful I terrace and frustrations of that software be it on a Mac, iOS or PC.
I used to live in a world where I and hundreds of other folks could use Pages to produce newsletters for fun and profit. Pages 1.0 and following were heavily promoted by Apple as suitable for moderately complex page layout… and it was. Lots of people and businesses built critical workflows based on that representation. With each new version until last year, the page layout functions were improved and extended.
Then Apple announced a new version to be released last year with Mavericks. They did not warn anyone that opening an existing Pages file would convert it into a new file format that stripped out most of the page layout data.
When the affected parties started screaming, we were subjected to some rather intense online abuse. People profanely told us that the ability to start a story on page 1 of a newsletter and continue it on page 3 (or, for sidebars, even on page 2) was a bizarre obscure feature that nobody ever used. Alternatively, we were told that text links would be back momentarily.
Over a year later, they aren’t back and neither are many other features from version 1.0. Pages is probably great for people who need a word processor that runs on a 3.5-inch screen as well as on a 27-inch screen, but I’m not that person. I don’t need a lot of collaboration features, including the ability to exchange Word files while only losing SOME of the formatting. I just want the ability to produce newsletters that Apple promised me in 2005.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been a regular user of Apple equipment since I bought my first Macintosh in March 1984. The elimination of page layout capability from Pages ranks in the Top 10 of bone-headed decisions since I’ve been a customer. I have a newsletter that I need to prepare again next month and I have no idea how I’m going to do it. Hopefully I’ll be able to find a 3rd party page layout program that is not expensive and has a very fast learning curve. C’mon, Apple–get it together here.
Indeed.
The implicit promise is software is (I think!) that abilities INCREASE with versions.
For your newsletter, lownotela, installing Pages 5 did not delete the previous. If you don’t have it, perhaps you can find some nice friend with an old install disc.
As Mr. Smith notes, the old Pages is still on our computers. Most of the functions still work with Yosemite, but the ability to use the media browser will end if we “upgrade” to Photos when it replaces iPhoto in a few months. Other functions will gradually drop out with every successive OS upgrade. Because the Pages file formats have always been proprietary, there is no possibility of third-party software ever being able to read our hundreds or thousands of existing files.
It would be foolish to create any more of these dead end files. You cannot run a business with old software that requires an old OS that requires an old computer. That may be acceptable for a hobbyist, but many loyal Apple customers are professionals who need to keep their equipment and other software current.
We have no practical choice other than to save our existing documents as PDFs for archival purposes and move to a new program.
It’s been the lack of mail merge functionality that’s held me back. If I have to use word for my advanced tasks, I may as well use it for the simple ones too.
Voice of reason !
Basic Apple philosophy…
Never the less I believe apple can polish up their software and apps a bit ..
Too many little inconsistencies.. And idiosyncrasies…
Pages has improved enormously since its regression, Keynote was always good, but Number still has some glaring quirks:
• Option-Left Arrow doesn’t move left one word (like every spreadsheet and WP) but creates a new column on the left. Just use Insert Column!
• Command-Up(or Down) Arrow doesn’t jump to the next break in the list (like every spreadsheet) but jumps to the end of the list. Just use the End key!
• No mailmerge with Pages (Grrrr…)
Other than that I love it!
Apple’s iWork efforts have largely been to have its own product in its back pocket for people who don’t want MS Office. However, the number of years that have passed without bringing Pages and Numbers up to even close to par with Word and Excel are simply not acceptable. Apple is losing out on a big opportunity to banish MS Office from the mobile space, like many of us have been saying for several years.
Will Pages ’14 read RTF files?