Existing users, 
I have tried so hard to like Pages. There is probably no program I have worked harder at trying get it do what it is supposed to do.
Unfortunately it is Apple's muddled shot at a DTP program, sort of, oh and a Word Processor, sort of. As in the movie "The Fly" the two seem to have had the worst of each others DNA fused. Full of bone headed ideas about user interaction which go to show why no-one else is reinventing the wheel to put several corners on it. All poorly support by useless Help and a really poorly written User Guide.
At face value it looks OK. Nice looking interface with <i>very</i> good templates. Scratch the surface and try to do real work and you find the mess beneath.
It has a crazy split between "Word Processing mode" and "Layout mode" because the Apple programmers didn't have a clue how to just get it to do both. Odd unannounced functions fail in one or the other. Strangest of all the Word Processor has the somewhat primitive Master Pages and Layout has none. The Layout mode is the more shambolic of the 2 with so many things that don't work it would be hard to list them all.
The Spelling checker in both has to be one of the worst implemented of any program I have ever seen. It is constantly confounding users and seems mostly to just not work. Period.
WARNING TIM ROBINSON: Do not take anything produced from this to a commercial printer. This is strictly for your desktop printer.
WARNING: Do not believe Apple's assurances of compatibility with Ms Office. To give this its technical definition, that is largely a lie. So much does not work either opening or saving to Word that it is just better avoided and only used as a last resort.
WARNING: Be prepared to spend a lot of time finding out how to do things and what has gone wrong. Again! The documentation and Help plain suck.
As this is a review of iWork I have to say that Keynote and Numbers are both great products.
Pity Pages lets the suite down and leaves Apple users still without a decent Word Processor or Database since Apple terminated AppleWorks.
Apple iWork 09
Productivity suite: Pages, Keynote, Numbers
Version: 9.0.3
Keynote & Numbers -good Pages - bleh.
Feedback Type: Review
Contributed by: rubaiyat Wednesday, May 20 2009 @ 10:52 PM PDT
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: Over One Year
Recommend Product: NO
Overall Rating:
Ease of Use:
Support:
Features:
Quality / Stability:
Price:
Comments
Keynote & Numbers -good Pages - bleh. - Bueller_007
Agreed. Pages is much easier to use than Word (esp. Word 2008), and the results look great.Thursday, May 28 2009 @ 02:48 PM PDT
Keynote & Numbers -good Pages - bleh. - Brass Hammer
I strongly disagree with these comments. I am an attorney, and because of that I require a word processor that is second to none. Pages fits the bill. I find Apple's Pages to be far superior to Microsoft Word. As far as I can tell, Apple's Pages does everything, and I mean everything, that Microsoft Word does that is of any value. I understand that there are some idiosyncratic, weird, "features" in Word that are not included in Pages. However, I've never known anyone to actually use them. The one thing missing from Apple's Pages, at least for an attorney, is the ability to create a tables of authority. However, I live without that because I find Microsoft Word is a bloated, buggy, unstable piece of junk. Pages on the other hand, does most things in a very exceptional way. I will say this however - if you're expecting to move from Microsoft Word to Apple Pages, and you think that everything you learned in Word is applicable to Pages, you are in for a rude awakening. Apple's pages does do things differently than Word. However, after using Pages for a while I found that Pages is superior. The only person I have ever known, and I mean the only person, who did not like Pages and instead preferred Word was someone who was simply unwilling to learn a new system, and instead insisted on Pages being a Word knock off. Thankfully, that is not the case.Friday, May 29 2009 @ 08:02 AM PDT
Keynote & Numbers -good Pages - bleh. - ManikGrafik
It's such a shame you see it this way. You, obviously, were never a Quark 3.1 (the best version EVER by the way) user. This mimics EXACTLY the properties of Quark 3.1. I'm just trying to decide if you really have no concept of a page layout program, or you just really LOVE MS Word and are completely and are frustrated by the infinite possibilities capable with this product.Tuesday, September 29 2009 @ 03:07 AM PDT
Keynote & Numbers -good Pages - bleh. - Doug Miner
Wow. I think you are missing something. I used Word for years. I find it bloated, slow and completely unintuitive. Pages, on the other hand is rock solid and does exactly what I want it to do with great accuracy and little or no hassle. I work in an MS Office environment and everyone comments on how great my docs look. To each his own.Reply to This
Thursday, May 28 2009 @ 02:20 PM PDT