Thanks to everyone who wrote in regarding my article, “The Skinny on Pages’ TOC” in last week’s Kibbles & Bytes.
I’ll post some of them here, as well as any response or elaboration I might have.
H. J. Jackson writes,
“Pages is a wonderful program, and iWork is a real bargain. The very best book for learning and using Pages and the other iWork applications, in my opinion is iWork ’09: The Missing Manual by Josh Clark, published by Pogue Press/O’Reilly.
It is the only iWork book that starts teaching Pages before going into the less used Keynote and Numbers, and it provides the practical information you need to get the best results using these programs.”
I agree 100%. I also like the official Apple Training Series book on iWork, certified by Apple.
Paul S. writes,
“Hi Kali, I’m unsure about your statement, ‘and AppleWorks never transitioned into the vibrant OS X Cocoa world.’
I’m using a MacBook Pro and OS 10.6.2 and I use Appleworks’ Word Processor and Spreadsheet regularly although I’m certainly not a heavy user and don’t demand all the features. No slam against Pages, which I use as well, not wanting to be out in the cold when AppleWorks will no longer work.”
Paul, thanks for the email. I was just referring to the fact that AppleWorks was never fully redeveloped into Cocoa, and even though it works in versions of OS X, it’s still considered a Carbon application.
(For more on the difference between Cocoa and Carbon, click here.)
I was surprised to read that you’re using AppleWorks in 10.6, as Apple deemed it incompatible with Snow Leopard (they officially discontinued support for AppleWorks in 2007). So, I did some searching, and found that there are others who use AppleWorks with 10.5 and 10.6, running under Rosetta, and without the full spectrum of features, as you mentioned. Great to know!
For more on this, check out a thread on Apple’s forums here.
Of course, it’s good to know that you’re incorporating Pages into your workflow for when future OSs actually do break the functionality of AppleWorks.
Check out Apple’s support page for AppleWorks.
Cyrus R. writes,
“Thank you for your interesting articles, which I share with members of my user group. But, I think you were unfair in the subject article. First off, I don’t find Word 2004 to be slow and cumbersome. I don’t know what you mean by ‘vibrant Cocoa world,’ but why care about how ‘pretty’ an app appears to be on the screen when it does what is needed?
Now, I will admit that Word and AppleWorks are not good page layout apps. Pages is far superior at that. But Both Word and AW are far superior word-processors, with many convenient features not offered in Pages (especially when it comes to find-&-replace). Secondly, as for the TOC feature, Word offers a similar feature, with somewhat similar procedures.”
Cyrus, good points! I’m a tad biased, because as a designer by trade, I get hung up on user interface and the overall look and feel of things. (I’ve been known to refuse to use an app on my iPhone because the icon is ugly. Seriously, I’m that ridiculous.)
I’ve been drawn to the post OS 9 Mac OSs because they’re crisp, clear and all laid out in a way that my brain understands—when I used a PC, I always felt that things were counter-intuitive, and I think Word carried that feeling over for me. However, you’re right that it’s just as important for an application to do what it needs to do!
(It should be noted here that Cyrus is the Chairman of an Apple User Group, so he’s an unbiased, bipartisan contributor!)
Thanks again for all the responses—there are a lot of Pages fans out there! As for those who were not mentioned here, I’ll be getting back to you directly to hopefully help with the ins and outs of Pages!