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From:Apple , Apple Computer ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#2066 |
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9 of 10 customers found the following review helpful:
 iWork's Pages may be what you need..., 2005-03-07
Could this be the end to AppleWorks? For those of you who are not already vested in Adobe's InDesign, Quark's XPress, or the aging PageMaker or Ready-Set Go, Apple's new Pages could be a breath of fresh air! Before you plunk down three-digit amounts for any word processing or DTP software -- or their upgrades -- get Pages. You might discover you no longer need them.
Pages is a quick-to-learn, easy-to-use, "lite" page layout and desktop publishing program that ships with an array of starter templates making production of great pages a snap. Yes there are some problems -- but if you don't know what's missing you really won't care.
I'm the editor for the User Group Network and it's always a pleasure to encounter new software that really does something new for a change. What Pages does is make complicated DTP operations uncomplicated. You simply type or drag and drop your images.
The collection of templates is pretty good -- offering a full spectrum of finished publications from simple stationery to full-blown newsletters. If you want to customize, the Help files are excellent and you'll have no problem. If you want to originate all new templates with your own branding look, it's as easy as dragging some guide rules.
You can find my full review at www.user-groups.net, but seriously folks, for the price, if you're a Macintosh user, you owe it to yourself to try Pages. Even if you own and use those others mentioned above (like I do) with Pages, you'll be asking yourself if you really need to send them another fat upgrade check.
Good day!
21 of 22 customers found the following review helpful:
Two Fantastic Apps (for a great price too), 2005-02-24
I use Word and Powerpoint every day, and I still do use them both everyday for many things. However, I picked up iWork for two reasons: 1) both have great export capability, and 2) I was very tired of trying to do a basic newsletter in Word. The frustration of trying to basic desktop publishing in Word was actually what drove me to take a $79 gamble and buy iWork.
I have not been disappointed.
Styles and Templates:
Keynote and Pages are good (great actually) at creating very professional looking documents, from standard sales presentations to highly animated pseudo-movies to basic word processing files to complex brochures and newsletters. There's just something about the way each application handles styles that makes the end result beautiful. The included templates are brilliant also, for those that dont want to delve into styles of their own.
Image Handling:
Both applications handle images one zillion times better than any MS Office application. The only file format that I haven't been able to drag directly into a document is a raw .eps file. iWork displays images well, doesn't mess with the files (meaning you can copy/paste them back out of iWork and have them still be useable) and honors transparencies. In fact, both apps can wrap text around and through an image based on the alpha index. Very powerful. You can paste a picture of a donut into pages, and have text wrap around the curved edges AND in the donut hole. Cool.
Interface:
The inspector is very easy to figure out, and places many features at your command without taking up a lot of screen space. The only thing that seems odd to me is that "Font" and "Text" are two separate items - and only one (text) is available in the inspector. That is, the way text is handled in terms of spacing, wrapping, bullets, etc. is in the inspector, but the actual font, font size, etc. is in a separate Font palette. It works, but just seems disjointed somehow. However, the inspector is very intuitive.
Price:
$79 bucks. 'nuff said. It's cheap enough that you can use it as a supplement--not a replacement--for other suites. Which leads to...
Compatibility:
You can import or export from PowerPoint and Word, you can import just about any graphics file (including photoshop files!), you can export to jpeg, png, or tiff, quicktime and flash. Some work better than others. The two that are of most concern are the Office apps, so I'll start there.
I still use PowerPoint, but I also use Keynote now. I use it every day, in fact. Because it handles images and transitions so well, I create all complex technical diagrams and animations using Keynote. I then either a) export directly to Powerpoint, b) export to quicktime and embed the movie in powerpoint, or c) export to quicktime for direct online posting. I've had ZERO trouble exporting to quicktime. The flash export worked horrible the first time, but after playing with and learning some of its quirks, I've been able to produce fairly reliable .swf files as well. This feature is so important and powerful that I'm willing to go through some pain to try and get it right, but Apple could make some improvements here to save me the trouble.
I use Pages as a mini-PageMaker more than I use it for word processing. It opened my basic word files (whitepapers, resumes, letters) flawlessly, and saved those documents as word files with little to no errors. Complex desktop-publishing-type documents weren't flawless; my newsletter, for example, required some serious tweaking after the import from Word. I eventually gave up and created it anew in Pages, and was pleased because it looked much better after being pages-born. This new version, when saved as a .doc, had a few errors still.
HTML Export:
Didn't even try it. I'm an html purist. If you want web design, study html, xhtml, xml, css, etc. and then buy BBEdit.
However, Keynotes quicktime export will let you create cool .movs to embed or stream online. The Flash export, once wrinkles are ironed out, will kick some serious buttocks.
Performance:
Neither app is light. On my aging Powerbook G4 (867MHz model), both apps respond a tad slow. Not slow enough to annoy me however. I anticipate that on newer machines (or machines with decent graphics cards) the performance is probably much much better.
Summary:
Very powerful applciations. Compatibility issues were minimal. I imported a 90,000 word manuscript from word and then exported it back to word again -- all with no flaws at all. Issues did occur with more complex .docs or with complex PowerPoint/Keynote layouts. The more complex the file, the more likely there would be an issue. However, the image handling (and in keynote's case, the transitions) are worth it. In short - I still use Office for day to day stuff, but I use iWork for anything that needs to be "cool"
 Pages is a weak word Processor!, 2005-02-17
I'm a teacher and I use these kind of applications all the time, so when Apple released iWorks I was bought it and was greatly disapointed with "Pages." This program is great if your just using it for the ready-made templates, but for straight up word processing power, it sorely lacks. The functions you use the most are missing from the main window (where you need them the most) It felt like a "Micky Mouse-ish" wannabe of "Word" If you want it just for the Templates then get it, but if your serious about word processing then avoid this program, it's got nothin on Microsoft Office 2004 (even AppleWorks is better for simple word processing)
The only good thing about iWorks is Keynotes, this program outdoes PowerPoint.
12 of 12 customers found the following review helpful:
Break the chains that fetters us to Microsoft Office!, 2005-02-14
Fed up with all the bugs and crashes I experienced with Office for Mac I bought iWorks - at least it cannot be worse I figured. Well, was it a pleasant surprise! I have so far only used Pages, but Keynote seems to be very highly rated by all its users already.
As usual, Microsoft is able to make Office appear easy to use, but in reality it is quite complicated. Pages appear more difficult, but when you get up to speed it is actually more easy to work with. The menus are more logical for instance, and you have more freedom in designing your document. Now, we must make one thing clear: Pages is a layout program with wordprocessing added. The layout functions are just amazing, and they are really easy to work with. Microsoft Word is a word processing program, but with some layout functions added. So if you are just writing, Pages have more functions than you need, and less writing utilities. On the other hand, I am not so 100% sure that Word's writing utilities are that useful.
16 of 17 customers found the following review helpful:
 A Word of Caution, 2005-02-14
If you're looking at Pages as a replacement for Word, it isn't -- and wasn't designed to be. As they say at Apple, Think Different. Pages is somewhere between a word processor and a page-layout tool. It has some features from both, but not all of the features you'd want, or need, from products in either of those categories. That Apple has decided to go after this "in-between market" is interesting in its own right. They have a well-earned reputation for this type of thing. Pages will in all likelihood eventually succeed, in no small part due to the platform it's on (OS X) and the ability to integrate it with other software, especially iPhoto. Pages 1.0, though, has some significant weaknesses.
If you're hoping that Page's Export to Word, PDF or HTML features will allow you to use its beautiful designs as a starting point (i.e., you want to design in Pages then export and finish the job), don't buy this 1.0 version. Exports to Word don't work well or, for HTML, at all. It's not just that "things look a little different" in the exported files, the exports are often unusable (except when for the simplest layouts) and often so different as to be unrecognizable. Also, as is typical for any product that makes use of the built-in OS X "export to PDF" capability, be aware that the exported file size will be huge -- an order of magnitude larger than it would be if you created the document with Adobe software.
If you're hoping to make use of Page's "professionally designed" templates, also be aware that as exceptionally well designed as they are, this can be a double-edged sword. Why? Because they're designed as a whole unit, including the "placeholder" photographs. When you replace one of those photos with your own (a process that is very easy to do because of the integration with iPhoto), you will most likely lose a lot of that "professionally designed" advantage unless the colors in your photo are quite similar to those in the placeholder photo it replaced. Put another way, all the surrounding colors in the template were chosen very carefully to match those in the template photo. Change the photo and you're back to square one (okay..., maybe square two) and will have to figure out which new surrounding colors to use on your own. A similar problem occurs if your photo is significantly different in size or shape or if you get "too creative" in your choice of fonts. You can easily weaken or ruin a page's design with a seemingly minor change.
None of the above, except for the PDF export size issue, has anything to do with Keynote which, to the extent I've used it, seems to be a great product completely in line with what one comes to expect from Apple. My impression of what went wrong with Pages is that it got rushed to meet an unrealistic release date. Hopefully Apple will make good on what this product appears to promise in its next release.
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