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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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AppleNova is hosting my reviews of iWork and iLife. Check out the front page for some hands-on reviews of Apple's new software suites.
http://www.applenova.com/ Hopefully the review helps someone who's unsure about the new software, as I tried to answer some popular questions about major issues in the apps. Enjoy! "We are reviewing some 9,000 recent UNHCR referrals from Syria. We are receiving roughly a thousand new ones each month, and we expect admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond." - Anne C. Richard, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration |
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Passing by
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: London, Europe
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Appreciated the comments on Keynote. Think I'm decided - I need to get it.
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Multi-touch Piñata
Join Date: May 2004
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In as much as it helped Franz, kudos. Last edited by johnq : 2005-01-23 at 07:56. |
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Fro Productions(tm)
Join Date: May 2004
Location: London Town
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Thank you for your time and effort Messiahtosh. Do you have any more criticisms of the various software? Or maybe a wish-list of things that you wish had been added? (I am dying for the source pane in iTunes to get nested folders for example...) I think your reviews give a fine overview of how you found the new apps, of course a more measured and in-depth review would take too long. We can wait for the print media for that though...
 bouncy bouncy |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NY
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Not even one word on testing Pages compatibility with any Word documents (referring to opening them, not exporting out)?
Questions - Is Pages capable of generating a Table of Contents from a document, if headings are all in one style? Keynote now has export to Flash. What kind of size files are generated via that, and can you manage it via mouse-clicking, or is it an uncontrolled presentation? Personally, I thought the reviews were largely just a MWSF keynote rehash, not much additional content. Still appreciated though. |
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Less than Stellar Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Durham, NC
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So Chris, how about some REAL info and not just all the positive stuff? Keynote to Powerpoint 2004 comparisons. Pages ability to export to HTML and Word. What's the file format of Pages? How's speed?
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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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I answered a lot of these questions already. Pages seems to be the app people are most curious about, so here's some more regarding it.
•Pages has the ability to save the document with movies and audio in it. •The extension is .pages I exported a template to see how big it would be in the various file types, here's what I found... I exported to PDF first, a one-page document took just seconds to export, and weighed in at 2.1 MB. Exporting to Word took just a bit longer, it looked just like the Pages file but some text was in need of being re-organized. Same file size of 2.1 MB. Exporting to HTML took seconds, 4 KB in size, was in bad shape. It needed to be completely realligned and straightened up. "We are reviewing some 9,000 recent UNHCR referrals from Syria. We are receiving roughly a thousand new ones each month, and we expect admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond." - Anne C. Richard, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration |
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Less than Stellar Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Durham, NC
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An example of the exports would be great. Maybe you can get a mod to attach them to a post? |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Our SQL server has a 1024 KiB limit on attachments sent via vB. M'tosh, if you want to e-mail me (brad@applenova.com) some screenshots of the various conversions and other features, though, I'll scale them and post them.
The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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Less than Stellar Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Durham, NC
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Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: kansas city, missouri
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It was nice to see any kind of review since I am still waiting to receive my copy of iWork.
However, I am really looking for an in-depth review. Maybe Monday will bring one of those somewhere on the net. Until then... |
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Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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Hell, even a review thread doesn't go over well for this guy.
 Relax people...he's not Christopher fuckin' Breen. Just a casual review by a new user, what do you want? Wait until the next issue of Macworld to get all your hardcore questions answered. Or, better yet, scrounge up $79 and buy it yourself so you can give it a thorough, proper going-over.  |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NY
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No one said it had to be anywhere near as good as a journalist's review. His review helped someone, and that's great. It could stand to be a little more detailed; i.e. a statement like "The new text animation is really cool" for Keynote is slightly vague. More details on Pages<-->Word compatibility would be nice as well, but I'm sure reviews elsewhere will cover that.
I'm actually surprised that I haven't seen a more thorough review anywhere yet, but still plan on buying it soon - trying to figure out the cheapest item of at least $1 to my order to avoid shipping costs (edu order). Anyone with any suggestions on that would be greatly appreciated |
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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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"We are reviewing some 9,000 recent UNHCR referrals from Syria. We are receiving roughly a thousand new ones each month, and we expect admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond." - Anne C. Richard, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration |
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Making sawdust
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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odd. messing around w/ pages, i opened a word doc in it (my resume) and it does a worse job of importing than text edit does. alot of the spacing and formatting is screwey.
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Multi-touch Piñata
Join Date: May 2004
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 The Pages "review" in particular could have been done by reading Apple's Pages…er…pages. Hell, the side of the BOX says as much. Strike that, the box says MORE Literally.Hey, I'm not surprised Chris' review was lacking, fine, he's not a pro writer. I'm more surprised that 'Nova ran it front page. Kinda makes 'Nova look a bit amateur and thrown together. Worse still is if it gets linked to and Chris is somehow a Mac journalist all of a sudden!  Oh the humanity.  Chris, easy on the adjectives. Apple does enough of that. People want details of workflow and capabilities. They can go to Apple for fluff pieces and sell sheets "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." - Albert Einstein |
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Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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Why don't you ever just leave well enough alone? I go and defend you and your review, and then you come out with some goofball comment like this that will only get you completely hammered by your fellow Novans? You don't help yourself, Chris. You might be right - for the moment - only because these other publications are on such a schedule that they can't just write and publish something the day they receive a product (but I'm sure they're hard at work on their reviews and articles). They can't always be first with their reviews, but when they begin to appear in the coming weeks I feel pretty confident they will indeed go "above and beyond" your review. Why, they might even find a few faults and flaws! The horror! Don't crow TOO loudly...as it stands, you've only got them beat in the "timing" department. |
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Multi-touch Piñata
Join Date: May 2004
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Here's my Pages review:
 Introducing Pages. The easiest way to look good on paper. Copyright ©2005 johnq Pages showcases amazing typography and a freeform graphics canvas with 40 easy to use, Apple-designed templates. From letters to invitations, from reports to newsletters, you’ll be building full documents in minutes. Quickly add your favorite photos, movies and music with the built-in media browser. And, of course, share your work by importing and exporting Microsoft Word or by easily creating amazing PDF documents. Streamlined yet Powerful Word Processing Pages includes all the features you need to create letters, to reports including paragraph styles, table of contents, multiple columns, footnotes, headers and footers and more. Pages includes tables and charts that are easy to edit — without leaving the application. Freeform Graphics Canvas When you first open a Pages document, you’ll notice incredibly crisp typography and beautifully rendered graphics. You can change just about anything on the page — resize and rotate images and immediately see text flow around them. Change the number of columns, create floating text boxes, link text boxes with a single flow… no problem. With streamlined, powerful word processing and over 40 Apple-designed templates, Pages lets you create elegant letters, invitations, newsletters, and more. Jump into any project by choosing a template, adding text and inserting photos from your iLife library. Pages helps make the documents you write a pleasure to read.
Bring your words to life with amazing page templates. From school papers to buisness presentations, iWork gives you the tools to express yourself with style. Letters Pages includes templates for your correspondence: personal and business letters, envelopes, memos, invoices and faxes. Journals With an elegant travel, photo or daily journal, you can record all your adventures in words or pictures. Newsletters Spread the news about your family, school, business, or club using one of the newsletter templates.  Tables and Charts Pick a template, and each table and chart you create will automatically match the font, color and design. Pages lets you choose from six different types of charts — they’re accessible via a pull-down menu in the Chart Inspector and offer complete control over formatting.   Styles done right Compatible and convenient Import documents created in Microsoft Word, AppleWorks, RTF. Export to Word, PDF, or HTML to share your work with others. A Perfect Match for iLife The built-in iLife media browser makes it uncommonly easy to preview and import your iPhoto albums, iMovie projects and iTunes playlists or songs. You can even search for a song by its title — right within Pages. Requirements
Score: 8.0/10 p.s. Yes, that's just the box and website text."Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." - Albert Einstein Last edited by johnq : 2005-01-24 at 17:20. |
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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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"We are reviewing some 9,000 recent UNHCR referrals from Syria. We are receiving roughly a thousand new ones each month, and we expect admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond." - Anne C. Richard, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration |
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Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dubuque, IA
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I have two major concerns reguarding iWork.
1. Loss of capability from Appleworks. I used the database and spreadsheet functions quite a bit. AFAIK pages cannot do these. 2. May be overkill for the average user. Pages has a lot of cool features. However, can the average user access those features and are they really necessary? iWork is a great piece of professional software and as a replacement for keynote alone, it is a stuning success. One thing this is not is a replacement for Appleworks. Home users need a basic suite of software that can handle basic word processing, spreadsheet, and database needs. iWork cannot meet that requirement. If anything, releasing this as the basic productivity suite may actually hurt more than it helps. Appleworks 7 is still needed. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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Hell, why do you think Apple is shipping AppleWorks with the Mac mini? |
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Making sawdust
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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you wanna talk overkill, take a look at word. dont know about the database, but from the rumors floating around "Cells" or something like that should fix the lack of spread sheet problem. it was not intedned to be an immediate replacement for appleworks. as soon as the spreadsheet is done, and if they do a database app (dunno on this one personally, 90% of windows users get along fine w/o one), then it will be able to replace the aging appleworks.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NY
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When I said journalist, I was referring to magazine type reviews as opposed to mainstream newspaper reviews. You just really love throwing challenges out there, don't you? At least the USA Today or another newspaper wouldn't say something like "Actally, I haven't used GarageBand enough to warrant any kind of score." in a review of a product. The article was just up and down in terms of detail. Oh yeah - spell check it too before publishing - it's "actually" Chris - I personally would have enjoyed an article on one program that was 7 pages, but detailed and informative (i.e. below reviews), as opposed to 7 pages on 7 different products that had little depth. Just a suggestion for next time. On another note, MacCentral/MacWorld has a first look at Keynote here: http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/news...look/index.php And for Pages, MacTeens has a review here: http://macteens.com/more.php?id=602_0_1_0_C Last edited by MCQ : 2005-01-24 at 11:55. |
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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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Fro Productions(tm)
Join Date: May 2004
Location: London Town
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A coupla things quickly: One—iWork is only the first part of a productivity suite IMO. I am sure that Apple simply decided to focus its energies on getting something (Pages) out the door asap—especially with the momentum that I assume they expect the Mac mini will generate. Two—I generally agree with you Messiahtosh—I think that the average software review, in at least UK Mac mags, is below par. I look forward to a Siracusa article for real depth and insight.
bouncy bouncy |
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
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Location: NY
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