Apple Updates iWork for iOS/Mac With Bug Fixes and Stability Improvements

Better yet, Apple should revert to the Pages '09 layout. I refuse to update from my iWork '09 until they fix the GUI in the newer ones.

It isn't just the interface, it's the features. Yosemite is beginning to scare me. If the new OS breaks iWork '09, I will be unable to buy any new Macs, maybe ever, as I am highly dependent on Pages 4.1, and it looks like feature parity is pretty much a lost cause.

What's got you stuck on an old version of iWork?

All of the functions that are missing from the current version. There are long lists of functions and features that are missing from the latest version. Something as simple as linked text boxes in Pages is gone. What was once something that could easily replace MS Word & Publisher for most people has been gutted out to be little more than MS WordPad.

Sracer is right. iWork was a powerful, albeit dated, software package. I simply loved Pages '09 (4.3). I used it for publishing needs, graduated work, and undergraduate research proposals. True, MS Word had more features and better integration with third party software like Endnote, but it was never that user friendly and I was able to be more efficient in Pages due to its simply interface, but powerful feature set (Inspector). I never bothered to learn Nimbers since I would use Excel in accounting so much.

iWork was a niche Office contender. I was so hoping that Apple would finally bring it up to date, but instead they rebuilt it with iOS in mind and took away several of the Mac features. Don't get me wrong, compatibly and consistent feature set with iOS is very nice, but Apple again played to the general consumer. They created what looks like a tablet app on the desktop. I hate the large, obnoxious sidebar that only shows "relevant" tools instead of all features like the old Inspector. But I would bend to the new UI if some of the features (even basic ones like showing two pages at the same time) were gone. AND it "updated" Pages 09 documents and lost backward compatibility. What's even sadder is that Microsoft managed to bring office to the iPad without taking away desktop features. They will build the tablet versions up instead of tearing the desktop versions down.

The fact that Apple kept the old versions in an update shows that they knew how old users would feel, that just isn't something Apple usually does. And like some one on this forum said, I don't think Apple ever intended to match its predecessor and add back new features. They only announced that intent after so much outcry. I sincerely hope Word 2014/2015 is a fluid piece of software. If it matches Word and Excel for windows I will most like leave iwork 09 behind. It was great software, but is dead now. This just the new Apple. I don't fault them for appealing to the masses, that's where they make most of their money, but Apple was a niche company for so long and now they moving to a masses only company. Killing Aperture, iWork, all the Facebook and Twitter in your face in both of their OSes, hiding the Library folder. *sigh*

I just want a Pages '09 Yosemite update. Probably won't happen, though.

Better yet, Apple should revert to the Pages '09 layout. I refuse to update from my iWork '09 until they fix the GUI in the newer ones.

Apple is awesome... to get free OS upgrades and productivity apps for life after purchasing their totally reasonable and high quality hardware. You bet my next computer will also be a Mac :cool:

Be forewarned. Their "updates" are not always upgrades.

I just want a Pages '09 Yosemite update. Probably won't happen, though.

Pages is still a joke. Until it can do everything Word can then it will never beat it. I could not use pages for work as it simply lacks functionality. Apple promised loads of updated features the end of last year but have not delivered so far.

I'm likely going to be jumped on for saying this....

Pages is no Word, doesn't have all the features, but it is one of the best simple Word Processors I have ever used. For my needs, it's become more than enough (as I don't need to have the cool paper-writing features of Office anymore).

That's fair, although inside I am gutted for you really. Converting the few .pages files I had when Pages was downgraded was a pain and I couldn't imagine being on any other format than .doc or .docx. Anything else seems to be asking for trouble nowadays, either the software becomes abandonware (and then eventually obsolete and lacking in new features) or Apple decided to yank features from their office software. But whatever works for you I guess.
(Can I ask why you hate Word though? Just out of sheer curiosity. I write for a living and I can't imagine writing in anything else now Pages' functionality has been reduced to that of MS Wordpad.)

The problem with converting files from Pages (old) to Pages (new) is that the feature set of Pages (new) is reduced from the previous version. I had migrated from Pages 1.0 to Pages 4.x without any issues. I wasn't asking for trouble and did not have any until 5.0. And I don't know how I could be more clear in saying that this does not work for me.

From Day One, the entire design philosophy Microsoft has used for Word was to cram as many features into it as possible, with little regard for how important those features are to the core functions of a word processor, or for how well they were implemented. This is how you get awful concepts like the ribbon bar. At one point in the evolution of Word, these bars took up about a quarter of the screen real estate. This is the result of nobody taking charge of UI design.

I constantly see the results in Word documents. Apparently almost nobody who uses Word has the first clue about how to style paragraphs or text, for example. This is because Microsoft's consistently poor implementation of this core feature of a word processor. In fact a great many people would be better off using WordPad. They are trying to drive a semi-tractor to the supermarket.

I also write for a living. Most of my raw writing is actually done in in TextEdit, which I find to be perfect for this purpose. Final documents are completed in Pages, which until the recent downgrade, was pretty close to perfect for that purpose.

And again, I am not defending Apple's decision to reduce the feature set in Pages. Far from it. Some of the features that were most important to me, and unique to Pages, are now gone. I understand why Apple did this, but I still think it was a very poorly considered decision.

What are you missing ? I can say that I really enjoy the new interface an work a lot now in Numbers and Pages.

What makes me kind of angry with Apple is the fact that new versions do not open document I saved with Pages and Numbers from 2008. I just recently found this. Basically I have to install 09 again to bring the document to format 09 and then the latest versions are again able to open the docs.

What could happen if you wait to long and another new versions comes along you are forever stuck in Pages 09

Just about everything that made it superior to the competition. Lists of the dozens of deleted Pages features can be found easily, but the ones that matter to me the most are linked text boxes and creating templates with section insertions. But the very worst thing about Apple's downgrading of Pages is that opening older documents in the new version autosaves them in the new version, permanently destroying the original formatting.

I am already stuck in Pages '09. Apple turned the most dedicated users of this product into orphans.

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Pages is still a joke. Until it can do everything Word can then it will never beat it. I could not use pages for work as it simply lacks functionality. Apple promised loads of updated features the end of last year but have not delivered so far.

No, it is a joke now. Before this latest version it was a very powerful and useful product. The fact that not a lot of people made the effort to find out what it could do does not make them informed judges.

Apple used to really care about its software: The detail. The functionality. The versatility that enabled Apple software and Windows software to connect (on Apple's side, of course). I remember when an acquaintance was having great trouble opening an old Word file on his PC. None of his PC friends could help him out. I asked my PC friends and no luck either. Then I figured, what the heck, his software is from the same era as my PowerPC gear and Apple was always good that way. So I slipped that floppy into the drive and bingo: what would you like today, sir? In fact all my Apple machines could open that previously stubborn Word PC file.

The reason? Steve Jobs' Apple (he was by now back at the helm and the 'new' iMacs were well established). The company was again focused on detail and trying to compensate for its 'tiny fish in a big pond' market share, and for the generally bemused perception of the majority. So when a Windows friend would say, "Oh, you can't get any software for those weird Mac things," there was in fact a vibrant market for third-party Mac-compatible software, and Apple's own software had to be first-rate – and as Windows-friendly as it could be.

As an earlier poster on this thread commented, ClarisWorks was a great bundle of software – Apple's elegant version of Microsoft Works. The word processor was clean, simple and efficient. AppleWorks followed, eventually, and it was excellent too. But by the time of Pages, Apple had bigger targets in its sights: after waking people up to Apple with iMacs, the company's iPods, iPhones and iPads were converting non-Mac people in their millions. It was a fantastic vision, but the software-functionality ball was also in the process of being dropped even despite the wizzy new OSs and software suites.

Steve is no longer there, getting people to push their respective envelopes, and while iWork should have lived up to its potential all along the way, instead here I am using iWork 09 (bugs and all). I haven't even decided just how I'm going to start using my new MacBook Air.

Where Apple has come from to where it's at now is remarkable. But I wish there was a Steve there, fixating about everything and ensuring that when something was dropped (floppies, chip architecture, aspects of hardware and software), my Mac would ultimately be the better for it.

Rose-tinted spectacles? Undoubtedly. But some truth, too.

Without getting too deeply into software design philosophy, I see the ribbon bar as a perfect example of what a software designer does to accommodate feature cram, when they can't or won't prioritize features based on their importance. Yes, I know you can get used to it, and also that the bar can be customized. If you ask me, clutter should never be needed. And the fact remains, most people won't bother editing their ribbon bars, and will continue to turn out poorly-formatted documents because the tools for formatting a document in Word are not as easily accessible as they ought to be. They never have been.

This feature in particular is one of the reasons I liked Pages from the start. It provides the most accessible formatting tools I have seen since WriteNow. The sad part is I often have to explain to Word users why formatting paragraph and character styles is such a powerful and important feature of a word processor, presumably because so few Word users ever figure out how Microsoft would have them do it.

As a freelance editor I receive a great number of Word files (mainly from Windows users). The majority of these submissions lead me to conclude that the originators have almost no idea how to use Word. Formats are usually default. And when I ask people to activate smart quotes they have no idea what I'm asking for. Even a writer who'd worked as a regular contributor for a regional newspaper, and for some years, responded blankly regarding my smart quotes request. I was left merely scratching my head in bemusement.

I agree with IJ Reilly. The philosophy and psychology of software design and use is certainly relevant. For example, I have enjoyed using Apple's word processing software since the 90s because of its clean, simple and elegant solutions – aesthetically and in productivity terms – to my work requirements. It's why I use Macs, in fact: for Apple's invariably elegant solutions. Word is most certainly not that, and I don't need the seemingly excess of options that it places inelegantly onto my desktop.

Of course, with the current Pages, Apple has dropped the ball somewhat.