“Apple users are allegedly upset because iWork is now free, some complain of missing features,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “They needn’t worry.”
“Apple’s initial focus (other than a complete rewrite of the applications) has been to deliver the features 80 percent of most actual users actually make use of.,” Evans writes. “Apple won’t discuss future products, but it seems to me that to understand Apple’s future plans here it’s probably instructional to look to the evolution of Final Cut Pro X (a new edition of which will ship alongside the new Mac Pro in December). That evolution saw steady, rapid introduction of new features to answer real world user need. The implication is that this is how things will evolve for iWork and iLife.”
“This is a starting point for a much larger future vision of cross device computing,” Evans writes. “The user interface is critical. A user of iWork on an iPhone will be able to use a Mac without figuring out how. Apple seems proud to have reduced the number of controls on iMovie from around 26 to around 11, while still retaining the most used features that made the software useful in the first place. These features will be expanded — however, unlike Microsoft’s Office user interface, Apple wants to ensure users on any of its platforms don’t need to take night classes to find the tools they need within its free solutions.”
Read more in the full article here.
In many ways, this situation is similar to the one with Final Cut Pro X, or move from System 9 to OS X, where features were lost, then gradually added.
In one way, though, this situation differs from the other two: Apple is NOT asking you to PAY for the new iWork with reduced feature set. You can freely download the new iWork apps, test them, play with them, migrate to them or not. If you don’t like the feature set, you can continue to use the old one that you had paid for. Your only cost is the time it took to download and evaluate the new apps. If your hard drive space permits, you can always leave those apps there and eventually, once the feature you need is back, migrate your documents over. Until then, feel free to exercise your right as a customer and complain to Apple. There is no doubt that they are hearing the complaints (much like with Final Cut, which received an unprecedented number of major features as dot-dot releases, from 10.0.0 to 10.0.3, then 10.0.6). Let us see where this goes; meanwhile, continue using the original iWork 09, since it still works as it always has.
I too lost features in Pages. But I still have Pages 09 on my Mac as a separate and distinct app and can use my files in that environment, workflow unchanged. Pages 09 never did play nice with iOS. Pages 13 now it does.
Do you (or anyone else) know if Pages 09 runs under Mavericks? That’s critical to my decision whether to upgrade to OS X 10.9.
Yes, Apple leaves it on your computer.
BUT, Apple doesn’t let you choose it as the default application to open Pages documents. At least it won’t hold that setting on my computers.
So you have to drag the doc to the icon or open from within Pages. Unacceptably clumsy.
So I’ve just deleted Pages 5. Now the old version can be chosen as my default app to open Pages documents.
There’s only one document of mine, that lost a setting due to the upgrade. Everything else looked the same.
Go figure.
Also I kept my old versions, iMovie, iWork, until I am satisfied I haven’t lost anything.
Apple is doing the right thing, they are not stuck in supporting old code. They periodically purge and start over. Ultimately this is much more nimble.
Apple has had 4 years to make substantive changes to iWork. And after 4 years what arrives but a featureless messherald as the next best thing. These apps should be in Beta, available for the user base to try and offer feedback. They certainly were not ready for prime time.
“These features will be expanded”
Fine. I’ll wait for that version that restores the missing features I need now. Today! Meantime, I have no use for an inchoate product. I’ll stick with iWork ’09 until then.
I have graphic/animation intensive keynotes that I use in my meetings at my office. They converted and were left useless.
Now I have to figure out how to make them work again and that takes some time that I already don’t have.
Thanks Apple workers who think you are Apple. You really screwed it up this time. My wife won’t upgrade to ios7 and I hate the new keynote. You’d think that if it’s there to use, it must be being utilized by aomeone — probably a power user and you just screwed me over and I don’t like the feeling. Power users can go screw themselves – is that what I’m hearing here? Oh – wait – you said that it will eventually come back in a few years. Digression for the sake of cross-platform integration is NOT progression.
– Jim
” Apple seems proud to have reduced the number of controls on iMovie from around 26 to around 11…”
You have got to be kidding, Apple. You honestly believe that your users aren’t capable of using a full 26 actions? It seems to me that by second grade, children learn all 26 letters and their uses. What an insult to expect adults not to be happy that you REMOVE the software functionality that users have come to expect, whether they used every function or not.
Pathetic.
Face it, people, software development under Cook has been more misses than hits.
I think Apple needs to fix all of these legitimate issues. I would go nuts if I dependent on iWork. I’ve been using OpenOffice. It does everything MS Office does but is simpler and it is free.
Apple should take note.
The problem with iWork is that Apple killed the product while people were using it for mission-critical work in their business. The anger comes from the sense of betrayal when we wake up one morning and find that our software passed away during the night and was replaced by software with significantly fewer features, minus the ones we need to use today.
This isn’t whining about an optical drive that can easily be replaced by an external one, this is “whining” about not being able to do work, about having one’s files corrupted, about getting a downgrade billed as an upgrade, about having to find, without notice, a replacement word processor by next weekend, and by suddenly needing to scramble for batch converters to convert thousands of files from an abruptly orphaned file format. It’s also about putting up with Software Update’s daily nagging to downdate the software.
One man was in the process of writing a 700-page book, another was caught in the middle of converting his law office to Macs and Pages. A lot of people lost trust in Apple, and not for trivial reasons.
“Apple [AAPL] users are allegedly upset because iWork is now free, some complain of missing features.” Right off the bat, this article begins with misleading information. First of all, there are more than “some” upset users. Second, they are not upset because iWork is now free, they are upset because Apple has dumbed out the apps so much is useless, removing features that users actually liked and used. I have been an Apple user since 1984, and have for the most part, agreed with Apple’s vision. One that I hoped would be put to rest since Steve Jobs’ passing, is the idea of designing for one person (i.e. Jobs) or a small group of people and leaving out the rest. While Apple has introduced some great new concepts, it hasn’t always gotten it right, and the idea that they know better what’s good for the consumer than the consumer himself is pretty down arrogant, considering that the average Apple user (at least before going mainstream) was not your average, run of the mill, idiot that would settle for anything created by Microsoft. If Apple continues to ignore the consumer needs and feedback, they will soon run the same fate as any other company that was once at the top, and they would end up with a bunch of pretty designed products that will appeal to no one besides Apple. I would had gladly paid up for an upgrade of iWork rather than get stuck with its useless upgrade. At the risk of sounding like an old man, I sure miss the old days when Apple was the underdog, and was in touch with its followers. Now, it has become too big and disconnected.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few – or the one.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
I can no longer view my previously created iWorks documents on my iPad. The featureless approach strips away all of the various customizations making those documents useless. And if they are auto-saved (lost 2 documents which I had to retrieve from Time Machine), I can’t view them in IWorks 09. That’s a major PITA as far as effective work flow.
Apple could have been more forthright about what this transition to the new apps would mean, rather than heralding it as the next best thing and leaving it at that. Seems communication has not been Apple’s strong suit of late (FCP, Maps, and now iWorks). 🙁
It makes a lot of sense downgrade a 4 year anticipated upgrade, so that in 4 more years you can upgrade again to get you to where you are today.
I’m really welcoming the “end of the PC era”
If I want limited features I will use TextEdit. From where I’m sitting it looks like it took 4 years to develop a version of Pages equal in its functionality to TextEdit. Thank you, but no thank you. There is a difference between simplified and primitive. Also I cannot use “Notes” for taking down primitive notes of my primitive brain’s ponderations because it creates a copy every stroke of a key. I now have ca. 50+ notes and I’m none the wiser. Greetings from south of Spain, Apple
Apple has succeeded at making a product so bad it’s not worth giving out free.
Open a new document in Pages on the iPad or Mac. Insert a footnote. Now open that document in the web version, The footnote is displayed, but cannot be edited. Feature parity?
Yes, I know, it’s still in beta, yadayadayada. Well, get it out of beta fast if you expect me to retool my workday around it.
For a list of missing features:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1659747
for those who are stuck with converted documents, go to https://cloudconvert.org/ to convert them back to the old format.