mfacey said:
I think that Apple was probably aiming to make Pages into a desktop publishing program but then found halfway through that most of the features added in were pretty similar to what word has. Maybe that's why Jobs decided to put it head to head with Word?
Pages is a resurrected application from more than 10 years ago. It's feature set and implementation are pretty much the same, just as the reaction of both the media and users.
Pages was never designed to be a page layout replacement. It is designed to be a step above the standard word processor layout aimed squarely at people who know nothing about page layout. This has been (in it's original form) and currently is a template driven application.
What is so amazing is that people are reacting the same way now as they did before. Always thinking that it'll become more than it currently is. This application has had more than 10 years to be rethought out and improved. If it was aiming for page layout, there was plenty of time to move it in that direction.
Pages is to page layout what
painting by numbers is to art. Anyone expecting the freedom that a page layout program offers has missed what this is about. It isn't about freedom, it is about empowering people with little or no experience to produce quality documents.
The only reason Pages has been resurrected is that it was an application that Steve Jobs really liked and thought had a place even if it didn't fit into any defined category.
Steve Jobs, 1993: Pages is a stunning product, and I believe it will become a major mainstream product on NEXTSTEP.
Pages could be a good product... as soon as people start taking it for what it is rather than projecting what they want it to be onto it.
Lets look at a 1992 description of Pages from NeXTWorld:
The flip side of PasteUp's carte-blanche approach to page design is a layout program from Pages Software, which after several years in the making is close to release under the name Pages by Pages. It guides users to produce well-designed business documents by limiting their choices to a preset range provided in a companion "design model."
Pages by Pages will ship with seven design models, most aimed at corporate design (other models will be available separately from Pages and third parties). A separate program, the Pages Designer Edition, is used to create models.
Each model contains rules for typeface control, column layout, headline styling, and other elements that make up a page design. The idea is that an organization will use the product to standardize on a common look for all its documents. The constrained approach also allows users to create attractive designs easily, with a fairly flat learning curve.
The Pages user interface groups 26 page elements under six basic palettes. All elements are dragged and dropped on the page, and they interact appropriately. For example, a subhead will know that it lives in a column, so it scales to the column width.
Once users are comfortable with a design model, they have several ways to expand or change it. Every element has an inspector with controls to adjust the behavior of the element. Users may also alter a design model by overriding one or more rules, and then saving it as a style sheet. They can also create a design model from scratch with the Designer Edition.
Pages believes it has hit on a fundamentally new ap-proach to page design. It is aimed squarely at business publishing, leaving the graphic-design market to other products.
Does any of this sound familiar?
weldon said:
The first week Pages was out a lot of people were crowing about a new "Word-killer" and I really felt that was offbase because the better comparison really is to Microsoft Publisher. It reminds me of a light version of Pagemaker from 10 years ago.
Pages was compared with PageMaker during it's original run also.
PageMaker was a very powerful application 10 years ago, I should know, I have PageMaker 1.0-6.5 (and still use Aldus PageMaker 5.0a on my PowerBook 2300c today).
Trying to compare Pages to PageMaker does both a disservice. Pages wasn't attempting to be like PageMaker and PageMaker was never as limiting as Pages.
As for the comparison to Publisher... that I don't know about.
I, personally, don't have a need for Pages. TextEdit (with the help of services from other apps) does most of what I need and when I need more than that I have Create. But even though it is not a product I would want, I know people whom this product would be great for.
The best thing to do is to stop comparing it and give it a fair chance based on what it does. If it fills a need for you, great. If it doesn't, then move to what does.