With the much - anticipated release of the fresh iWork , Apple has introduce the first major update to its office cortege in virtually four years , with a focus on bringing feature conservation of parity between the screen background , wandering , and Web - based versions of Pages , Numbers , and Keynote .
to do so , however , the company ended up removing a large bit of feature from the OS tenner variation of the retinue , with both Pages and Numbers sport few capacity and a general deficiency of support for mechanisation and scripting .
Dazed and confused
As was to be carry , the response from across the Web has been mostly negative — and not just from power drug user who put a premium on being able to desegregate iWork in complex workflow .
For deterrent example , anongoing thread on Apple ’s support forumslists nearly two dozen features that have gone miss in Pages — everything from advanced search - and - replace to the ability to customize Pages ’s toolbar are listed , with one user going as far as claiming that a simple public presentation update to the old version would have been a better choice .
Ultimately , user seem to be as puzzled as they are angry : the absence seizure of functionality that had been part of iWork for many year is made worse by the fact that there does n’t seem to be a beneficial intellect why Apple determine to remove it — other than to make the apps compatible across multiple operating systems . “ Having a minimal user interface makes horse sense in Io , where blank is limited , ” read a distinctive comment , “ but in OS X I do n’t see the motivation to strip aside toolbars , sidebars , etc . ”
Power to the user
Among power user , the biggest concerns seem to be centered around a significant departure of script functionality in the new iWork apps . Michael Tsai , developer of the popularSpamSievespam filter , observe on his blogthat Numbers no longer even has an AppleScript lexicon , while most of the automation feature article of Pages are gone .
Betalogue ’s Pierre Igotoffers a distinctive overviewof what ’s amiss with the word processor : “ My result for customizing Pages with a combination of AppleScript hand and Keyboard Maestro has [ … ] become useless . ” He then adds that , even if AppleScript support in Pages ’ 09 was n’t utter , “ it was working to some extent . And bugs and limitation could be worked around . ”
Macworldcontributor David Sparks , writing on his blog MacSparky , offers a curt assessment of the office : “ It ’s concerning to see that this new version of iWork has not only not go frontward on automation but instead backward . ” He then charge out that there is some caustic remark in the fact that Microsoft Office really offersbettersupport for AppleScript than Apple ’s own product : “ In this regard , Microsoft is heads and shoulder above Apple . ”
Modus operandi
Not everybody ’s assessment of the new iWork is completely disconfirming , however . User experience adviser Nigel Warrennotes on his blogthat the alteration are necessary for Apple to push iWork forward on both mobile and screen background : “ The fact that iWork on the Mac has mislay functionality is n’t because Apple is blind to mightiness users . It ’s because they ’re uncoerced to make a short - term forfeiture in functionality so that they can create a foundation that is equal across the Mac , iOS , and web reading . ” He add that “ without all versions of iWork using the same data format , true interoperability is out of the question . In the previous translation of iWork , you would lose some format [ and ] data when moving from Mac to iOS . ”
spell for TechCrunch , Matthew Panzarinooffers a similar legal opinion , drawing parallels with Apple ’s recent reboot of Final Cut Pro : “ If we can ascribe anything to Apple ’s recent effort to get iOS sensitivity to its Mac software , it ’s that it likes to depart extremely tight and soar out as it tot feature back into the mix . ”
at long last , the folk from Cupertino may well have forestall that their option would have met resistance from survive users . AsDaring Fireball’sJohn Gruber puts it , “ [ t]he most telling affair about Apple ’s first moment for this version of iWork : when you upgrade , it leaves your live copies of the iWork 09 apps in place . ”
