Anybody else find Pages horrible?

[alexf]

Is is just me, or is Pages one of the worst apps that Apple has put forth recently?

Designing a newsletter has proven to be one of the worst computing catastophes that I have had in recent years. Pages erased my work multiple times, even after I had saved it. Also, the way the program formats is terrible; Apple has caught the Word syndrome of trying to help you so much with Word processing - guessing what you want to do and doing it for you - that it makes you want to pull your hair out. I also find the interface very counter-intuitive (highly surprising for an Apple app)

Sorry for the rant, but I just lost a lot of money and time because of this half-baked program, and I have to let it out. I had high hopes for Pages and am sorely disappointed. And I thought that only Microsoft could push my buttons like this...

 

[miloblithe]

I too was very unimpressed, although I gave up pretty quickly.

 

[Daveway]

I also find Pages very unimpressive. I haven't used it more than 20 mins. and that's because I didn't like it. I find Pages uses to much processor resources for a publishing program. I think that may be because of it's RT capabilities.

For the most part I believe the team that designes the UI for Pages and Keynote are not very skilled. I Hate the UI for the 2 apps.

 

[Horrortaxi]

I'm sorry you had problems but Pages is a 1.0 release and you're an early adopter. That can be a hard road if you choose to take it.

 

[Daveway]

I'm sorry you had problems but Pages is a 1.0 release and you're an early adopter. That can be a hard road if you choose to take it.

*caugh, caugh* It's 1.0.1. Also, It's not so much that it has bugs are anything, I think it UI is horrible.

 

[Xtremehkr]

It has the underpinnings of a great program. The UI is a little unfriendly and could be more intuitive. Hopefully it progresses faster than .Mac has in improving.

 

[MacNoobie]

I'm debating on Pages personally, its too much like a word processor and tries to play a desktop publishing program all in one. I dont mind the UI with my 30" Apple display but it seems too hard to use if you want to start out with a blank document and create anything like they have in the pre-done templates. I was impressed with the demo at MacWorld 2005 that you could have an image and it would automatically wrap text around it and the templates look nice but all in all its very hard to use it to design anything useful.

Pages should stick to either being a desktop publishing program or a word processor.. not both.

There will always be Illustrator and InDesign.

 

[alexf]

*caugh, caugh* It's 1.0.1. Also, It's not so much that it has bugs are anything, I think it UI is horrible.

Yes, I think the UI is aweful too.

I'm glad I'm not alone in my feelings!

 

[Phat_Pat]

I don't like it much either.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I don't think Pages is horrible. It's not great, but it isn't quite as bad for me as everyone else finds it. I don't use it all that much (Keynote gets used far more than Pages does).

 

[jamdr]

The main problem with the UI I think is that it is too hard to access things that you want to do all the time. Everything is in that annoying palette with all those buttons, when instead Apple should move some things to the toolbar. I want to be able to change fonts and styles and justification with the click of a button. Also, it needs an equation editor. Until Apple fixes these things, I'm sticking with AppleWorks. Fortunately, I don't feel like I got ripped off because of Keynote 2.

 

[Bibulous]

If you have been using a computer for the last 20 years, there is no question that Word currently is the way to go, it seems to be perfected.

The future for Pages is much brighter then for Word, bit of a learning curve, but looking forward to Pages 2 (and Apple getting another $79)

 

[mfacey]

If you have been using a computer for the last 20 years, there is no question that Word currently is the way to go, it seems to be perfected.

The future for Pages is much brighter then for Word, bit of a learning curve, but looking forward to Pages 2 (and Apple getting another $79)

I have to agree with most here that Pages didn't live up to my expectations. However, I can't agree with you that Word has been perfected. Word is complete nightmare in certain situations. Its non-intuitive and not very user friendly in many cases (especially the windows version!). I do prefer it to Pages, but its by no means the best that can be done.

Keynote on the other hand is fantastic, and considerably easier to use and prettier than Powerpoint.

 

[alexf]

I have to agree with most here that Pages didn't live up to my expectations. However, I can't agree with you that Word has been perfected. Word is complete nightmare in certain situations. Its non-intuitive and not very user friendly in many cases (especially the windows version!). I do prefer it to Pages, but its by no means the best that can be done.

Keynote on the other hand is fantastic, and considerably easier to use and prettier than Powerpoint.

Yes, Word is truly nightmarish in certain situations...

But why can't Apple come out with something that can actually compete with this age-old word processing app, which many of us Mac users seem to have a love / hate relationship with?

Strange how Apple can make an ingeniously simple and easy-to-use interface for a video editing program like iMovie, but cannot with something as simple as a Word processor!

There is something very wrong with the fact that, without any previous video editing experience I could learn iMovie in a day or so, yet with 15 years (or more) of word processing experience I am still struggling with Pages after a week...

 

[NeoMayhem]

I think its a great application, I use it for basic layouts and word processing. Its not quite as good as keynote, but it is still a solid program with only a few things that bother me.

 

[Horrortaxi]

If you have been using a computer for the last 20 years, there is no question that Word currently is the way to go, it seems to be perfected.

Word was perfected at least 12 years ago. Since then it's been a steady slide into very non-perfect bloatware. When you can't add any more useful features you have to add gimmicks I guess.

 

[bousozoku]

I like Pages but it's definitely crude at the moment. They should have gone more for a desktop publishing application than a word processor with desktop publishing features. If they'd included a slide sorter for the pages, it would make so much more sense.

As far as MS Word goes, it was great at version 4, so-so at version 5, really bad at version 6, and it continues to slide downhill. Feature bloat is a problem with most software releases now. One application does not have to do it all, including Pages.

 

[thequicksilver]

Apple are, in my mind, guilty of misrepresenting this. During the MWSF keynote, Jobs called this 'Word processing with an amazing sense of style', indicating that it's a word processor à la Word. It's not. It's a basic DTP application, in the realm of Microsoft Publisher, as Schiller's demo went on to show.

If they'd just have said this from day one, it would have been much better received. To use the term word processor seriously misrepresents it: Pages is very good at what it does, but that ain't word processing. If all you want is to write letters, essays, that kind of thing, you still want Word.

I bought it hoping for a basic word processor hoping to replace Word - which is unbearably slow - with a few fancy features on top. It quickly became clear though that on a 1024x768 screen Pages is pretty much unusable with all the palettes. Finding basic tasks is difficult with just the little buttons on the Inspector to find stuff, and I find myself wasting time when trying to do tiny things like accessing the word count.

If I'd paid money for just Pages, I'd have been more than a little disgruntled. Just as well Keynote is everything I'd hoped for.

 

[ExoticFish]

i think it's been cool for the couple of "design" documents i've done with it. i made a fake newspaper and a form for work. i'm happy with it but i'm not trying to do anything too complex either.

 

[Pismo]

I like Pages. I haven't had any problems with it. I haven't used all of the features though. I mostly use it for printing envelopes which works great. It will only get better and I'm sure Apple will add more features like spread sheets and maybe a GUI front-end for SQL.

 

[iGary]

I haven't used it yet either, but I plan on giving it a go for my first newsletter for my burgeoning photo biz.

I have played around with it a bit, but really can't comment yet.

I like Word for one thing: typing. I'm a writer (not trying to sound egotistical) and I hate it when an application tries to tell me how do do something TOTALLY WRONG. (And yes, I know I can turn that off.)

</rant>

 

[Horrortaxi]

I like Word for one thing: typing. I'm a writer (not trying to sound egotistical) and I hate it when an application tries to tell me how do do something TOTALLY WRONG. (And yes, I know I can turn that off.)

You don't like to be told how do do things the wrong way but you like Word?

 

[minesgeek]

I like Pages. I haven't had any problems with it. I haven't used all of the features though. I mostly use it for printing envelopes which works great. It will only get better and I'm sure Apple will add more features like spread sheets and maybe a GUI front-end for SQL.

just for the record, i have had a pretty good experience making a couple of flyers and whatnot. yeah, it would be better with some additional features but i think that it is aimed at the less advanced in the publishing world. and on that note, i think it has done pretty well especially with a wide range of templates. i swear those things are a godsend for the non-creative such as myself.

especially when being used on a nice 17" or larger screen, i think that all of the options would be great if they were laid out so they can be viewed at the same time (like on photoshop). this would probably take away a lot of the frustration. It is not like it is devoid of useful features for me, the less advanced.

i have run across a few little bugs but that is to be expected of even a *cough, cough, ahem, ahem* 1.0.1 version application

 

[Daveway]

Stop dogging on Word. Word and Powerpoint are GREAT apps. But only when on a mac. The Windows versions are horrid. When It comes to value, I think Office is better with the education version. I haven't been as comfortable with Keynote as I have with Powerpoint. To everyone his own, but Word is a GREAT app.

 

[Darwin]

I have been using Pages and its not that bad

I haved used Word for ages and have since been testing out Pages to see out well it works out

So far I agree that some things need tweaking but apart from that its not bad at all