We Mac users who iWork
On Tuesday (the 6th), Philip Schiller set out to deliver the last Apple keynote at MacWorld. Internet coverage was more than ample, from AppleInsider to Gizmodo, though some problems occurred (the live feed by MacRumors was hijacked by 4chan hackers, for example).
I had an exam the following day, and a power cut right when Phil Schiller was on stage, so I was unable to follow it immediately. However, when I did read up about it, I was surprised by the reaction of some of those large websites who covered the event.
First, one should mention what was announced by Phil Schiller: updates to the iLife and iWork software suites, and an updated 17-inch MacBook Pro, along with an announcement relating to iTunes. Schiller explained in detail, too much perhaps, the main new features of the software updates, and the effect was a much more technical and detailed keynote than the ones Steve Jobs had done in the previous years.
In their live feeds, Engadget and Gizmodo had many comments, by those covering the event, relating to how boring the many iWork announcements were. One of the people involved kept on writing “updates” such as “wake me up at the next announcement”.
In the main articles that followed the keynote, many plainly stated that the MacWorld announcements were “underwhelming”, disappointing and whatnot. Many comments posted in reply to these articles mocked Phil Schiller for delivering a keynote which would be forgotten sooner than any of the previous ones.
Well, I’d like to pitch in.
I am one of those Mac users who does not have a massive photo collection. I am one of those who doesn’t ever create home movies. If I record music, I create my own, and don’t create a track based on pre-defined loops. iLife is therefore not a suite I use a lot (the only application I use among iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iWeb and Garageband is Garageband, and only to record a few songs per year).
On the other hand, since iWork ’08 came out in the summer of 2007, I have been using Pages every single day at university and at home. It’s a word processing application that does almost everything I want it to do, and it does it in a very pleasant way. It’s fast, and it’s simple. I don’t get frustrated using it, unlike Microsoft Word.
I don’t use Keynote, because I never have to do any presentations (though that will most probably change as soon as I start to work), but I’ve found that I use Numbers more and more.
All in all, I’m certainly more of an iWork user than an iLife user.
And with a MacBook which is not even two years old, I’m not in the market for a new machine. I don’t care much about the availability of a new MacBook Pro with a 17-inch screen, and I certainly wouldn’t care either about a new MacMini or iMac, or even an iPhone Nano (I’m happy with my iPod touch ).
No, I didn’t want a keynote about awesome new machines. I wanted one about software.
So, how did this keynote go?
After Phil and the developer behind iMovie had talked about three of the iLife applications in great detail, and after many details concerning Keynote, I was extremely disappointed to see that Pages had been mentioned for only a short time, just to say that it has a cool new “full-screen” feature (great to write without distraction), lots of new templates (I don’t really care for those, because I tend to build my documents from scratch) and integration with Numbers (very nifty feature, which I’m sure I’ll be using in the future). Come on, Phil! I was hoping for some more detail on my most-used productivity application!
Still, word processing is not many people’s idea of “fun”, despite the ease at which one can make great looking documents in Pages. Which is probably at least partly the reason why iWork didn’t get as huge an update as it should have (I know there are a couple of bugs I’ve been reporting to Apple for a year that still haven’t been fixed, despite their absolute necessity for professional papers).
I guess I’m a little annoyed at Apple and at Mac users in general. It seems that Apple’s stereotype of the Mac user is true (the Mac user only cares about “fun stuff”, like “nice photos” and “cool home movies”), and Apple hasn’t yet realised that there are power-users of the iWork suite who would like Apple to iron out some bugs rather than pour all its software resources into the iPhone and the impressive but less “professional” iLife suite.
Well, here’s to hoping that at some point Apple wakes up to hear the voices of those Mac users out there who truly use iWork and would love to see it become better. After all, they’re the ones who will bring the Mac among the white collars and suits.
I guess I must applaud Apple for even mentioning iWork, despite the audience which was far too oriented towards gadgets and “cool” stuff. But really, there’s still so much to be done.
Now, will it please fix the footnote and table of contents issues?
9 January 2009 at 18:08
IMHO the most awaited things were an upgraded iMac (which tends to become outdated), a Tablet Mac, and a renewed Mac Mini. A new Mini would have been a nice announcement since its hardware is getting so old…
9 January 2009 at 18:16
True, but can you see them as being as important to you in the short term than iWork (if you use iWork
)?
I’d love to see a Tablet Mac. But it’s so far out of my budget that I’d only have one in a few years’ time, if ever.
10 January 2009 at 11:20
Oh yeah! I’ve just noticed that Pages now checks my grammar in French as well. I don’t seem to recall it doing that beforehand…
10 January 2009 at 13:24
Well, the MacWorld events are fit for big news. As you know well, the very first iMac was introduced during a keynote (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHPtoTctDY) in 1998.
The same for the iPod & the iPhone.
Not only hardware but software too, like Mac OS X in 2000.
As the last Macworld event of its kind, it is sad that nothing short of minor upgrades was shown.
Apple will probably be present at future CES events.
I don’t use Pages, I’m good at NeoOffice and I have difficulties trying to figure out how to make lists in Pages as easily as in NeoOffice.
I looked for a manual to learn a bit more how to use Pages, but I didn’t find any.
10 January 2009 at 13:50
True, it was not a major event. I guess we’ll see in a few months if Apple backing out of future keynotes in January and releasing its products according to its own schedule will be any better.
Regarding Pages, there are a few handy guides out there.
The main source of information is the Pages User Guide, in which even advanced users can find new stuff with which to play. It’s a long read though…
I know a friend who started using Débuter Sur Mac, which has many videos and written tutorials in French, notably a few about Pages, though I don’t know if they show any advanced stuff.
I’m sure that there are many other tutorial websites
Edit: by the way, I see your guide on “Débuter Facilement sous Mac” should be updated to reflect OpenOffice 3 and the fact that NeoOffice will be continuing (though, as I said here, I still haven’t found a version of either that I enjoy using).
10 January 2009 at 22:36
Thanks for searching the Web for me
I actually looked around in FNAC and the likes, not in the cyberspace because I wanted a full, coherent book to begin with Pages. But I’ll take a closer look to your links, they will certainly teach me one thing or two !
I should definitely update that manual. Not only to reflect the changes that occured since its last revision, but also to change the style.
When I think about it, I never found the perfect word processor for me.
I told you about Latex (x which is not a “x” but a greek “chi”, I learned recently) in the train. But the cost of opportunity is too high for the sole purpose of writing a memoir. And, more importantly, the correction is very hard because of the codes (markups) included in the text itself. There’s no corrector, you have to spot the mistakes on the final rendering, then go back to the code and so forth. Plus, it may be VERY hard to spot the code syntax/code grammar errors when your text doesn’t want to compile.
I used to write my docs with Word 2000 on Windows XP. Very good, launched in 2 seconds. Crashed when you needed it not to.
NeoOffice, known interface, but takes ages to launch. Not for short writing sessions.
Pages. I would have used it if its format wasn’t proprietary. I NEED to be able to read my texts if my Mac dies. I need to read the format on Windows computers.
Here’s an important point for Apple, I think.
Have you noticed how popular Apple became the day it started to embrace common standards such as VGA/DVI, Intel, USB (ok for the latter, Apple launched it but it is a standard anyway)…
I can see a different move nowadays. Apple seems to slowly go back to its bad tradition of closed products. See the new connectors for the last Apple Cinema Display, see how locked the iPhone is (no use of bluetooth to turn it into a modem, no copy/paste, no blacklist, no multitasking), see the unremovable batteries for the iPhone and the 17″ MBP, see the proprietary dock connector for iPods and the exclusive use of iTunes…
The closed file formats are part of it (why not use XML?).
And that keep people from using Apple tools, including myself.
That’s a pity, because the product are good.
Wrote way too much than I thought…
By the way, I’m heading for Namur next week, where I’ll study ITC law. Seems we have a common interest there.
10 January 2009 at 22:38
Correction : heading for Namur… next year.
First get the paper in june !
10 January 2009 at 23:09
I must agree. I’m sure I’ve sent feedback to Apple on the absence of ODF support in iWork, but I’ll re-do it tomorrow just in case. Who knows, if enough people tell Apple that it’s about time it took these things seriously again, we might have ODF support added in a minor update to iWork ’09…
Namur next year? Nice! But yes, first we have to get these papers done