[skaderly]

Is there no comparison of macro features because Word 2008 did away with macros? It'd be nice to know whether Pages had any macro features, and if it did, that would perhaps give it one major advantage over Word. I do not have Pages yet, but I'd consider it if someone could tell me whether it supported macros, and if it does, whether that feature works decently. I'm stuck on Word 2004 until a decent alternative arrives. Maybe in my kids lifetime will that happen. WordPerfect???

[bonesb]

About Word vs. Pages in one element vexing me about Word - I am still very surprised that Word continues to lack a functional tabling mechanism outside of linking to Excel. The tabling metaphor should be, in my mind, completely addressed by now in what is Word v. 10; the way Apple's Pages application handles live tables is what I would expect out of a word processor.
Charting data is a task I'm also charged with from time to time. Having to create a chart in Word, only to have Excel launch in the background for data entry, surprises me a little. The embedded data editor built into Pages for charting is pretty elegant, however, it's what I would expect of a version-10 application.

[bynkii]

skaderly said:

Is there no comparison of macro features because Word 2008 did away with macros? It'd be nice to know whether Pages had any macro features, and if it did, that would perhaps give it one major advantage over Word. I do not have Pages yet, but I'd consider it if someone could tell me whether it supported macros, and if it does, whether that feature works decently. I'm stuck on Word 2004 until a decent alternative arrives. Maybe in my kids lifetime will that happen. WordPerfect???

Misconception. Word 2008 did not do away with Macros/Automation. What it doesn't support is VBA. Both support AppleScript, and rather nicely.

[DanofNJ]

I have to add this important aspect to this discussion. Microsoft Office 2008 has been plagued with update problems. I tried to update it on an iMac and it would not do so because it could not find the "volume" on the harddrive, therefore, it could not be updated. If you search this issue on Mactopia, it is rampant. Calls to Microsoft blamed OS X until they finally admitted that there was a problem. Disgraceful.... So...buyer beware.
Dan

[DanofNJ]

PS...I have asked MacWorld to investigate this issue..three weeks ago, and it seems that they will not do so... I received no response to several emails to this site.
I wish that this issue would be brought out into the light of day, and Microsoft pressured to do the right thing and fix it.

[bynkii]

DanofNJ said:

PS...I have asked MacWorld to investigate this issue..three weeks ago, and it seems that they will not do so... I received no response to several emails to this site.

I wish that this issue would be brought out into the light of day, and Microsoft pressured to do the right thing and fix it.

Well, that could be because not everyone's seen it. I've yet to see it in quite a few installs of Office 2008. Updates have worked with no problems, including custom configured installer packages.

Intermittent bugs are somewhat hard to fix.

[MacTel]

The best features of Pages are its price, templates, and ability to open Word documents.
One gripe I have though is that the "Save As" and "Export" really should be merged together. Maybe that just my Windows mentality showing through.

[Frankenstein]

I have to admit that I am really disappointed by this article. In what is marketed as a detailed comparison of word processors, the author does not mention any of the advanced word processing features, such as footnotes, cross-references, indices etc. but focuses mostly on the DTP features that, even though they are included in Word and Pages, cannot strictly speaking be qualified as word processing functionality. I would love to see an in-depth review of word processors from an academic point of view: how do the various applications out there handle long documents, which features do they provide for that task, which text rendering engine is used etc.
That being said, here are a couple of observations: you can also make manual formatting changes to styled text in Word and then add these changes to the style definition, similar to the way Pages handles styles. To do that, format some text which already has a style applied to it, then click on the arrow next to the style's name in the Styles section of the Formatting Palette and choose "Update to match selection".
The author also mentions that he prefers Word's handling of styles; while it is true that Word offers more features, it should be mentioned that navigating through the various modular windows is a nightmare, highly deterrent to anyone other than an advanced/professional Word user. Pages' approach, though less powerful, is far more user-friendly, and my guess is that this article's target audience will probably prefer Pages' easily accessible styles (when it comes to setting up a newsletter or working with templates) over Word's complicated myriad of menus and styles.

[Fixx]

Right, I too need a writing tool, layout is done in InDesign. I need sleek interface that does not hinder writing process, spelling and grammar checkers (that are usually missing in my native tongue) and synonym dictionaries (also a rarity).
I like Mariner Write but is has not been updated in ages and has some persistent bugs, like disappearing en-dashes in imported word documents.

[kabing]

bynkii said:

OpenOffice requires X11 to use, so it's barely a native application. You can run the NeoOffice version, but that's usually behind OpenOffice, and neither have any OS integration or a UI that is even close to one that a Mac user would expect.
Maybe if the Aqua port of OpenOffice ever gets done, and is a decent Mac application, then OO will be a decent contender.

Have you looked at NeoOffice recently? I started using Neo in 2006, and the UI has undergone major improvements since that time. It uses the native file picker and native print dialogs. The menu functions are Mac like for the most part. Quick time video is now supported, and a Media Browser is in beta development.

The developers of NeoOffice are the first to admit that it's not for everyone, but it has certainly been a good fit for me. I was surprised not to see it listed as a WP alternative in the print version of MW when is shows up as a Spreadsheet and Presentation alternative in the series.

When I bought my iBook two years ago, I debated between iWork and NeoOffice. Pages didn't have some of the advanced features I needed. Most particularly it was missing anything parallel to Appleworks text Clippings/Neo's Autotext/MS Word 5.1's Glossaries to let me store frequently used text passages. I opted for Neo and I've never been sorry.



kabing

[bynkii]

[quote name='kabing']
>

bynkii said:

> OpenOffice requires X11 to use, so it's barely a native application. You can run the NeoOffice version, but that's usually behind OpenOffice, and neither have any OS integration or a UI that is even close to one that a Mac user would expect.
> Maybe if the Aqua port of OpenOffice ever gets done, and is a decent Mac application, then OO will be a decent contender.

Have you looked at NeoOffice recently? I started using Neo in 2006, and the UI has undergone major improvements since that time. It uses the native file picker and native print dialogs. The menu functions are Mac like for the most part. Quick time video is now supported, and a Media Browser is in beta development.


The developers of NeoOffice are the first to admit that it's not for everyone, but it has certainly been a good fit for me. I was surprised not to see it listed as a WP alternative in the print version of MW when is shows up as a Spreadsheet and Presentation alternative in the series.


When I bought my iBook two years ago, I debated between iWork and NeoOffice. Pages didn't have some of the advanced features I needed. Most particularly it was missing anything parallel to Appleworks text Clippings/Neo's Autotext/MS Word 5.1's Glossaries to let me store frequently used text passages. I opted for Neo and I've never been sorry.

The UI has gotten less ugly, but it's still a ported Windows UI, not a good Mac UI. The preferences are still as poorly-done as ever, and like almost every UI coming from the Linux world, the UI is bolted on last, not an integral part of the design. "Less Ugly" is not a scintillating recommendation. It also has worse compatibility than Office 2008 for embedded objects, something rather common in the business world. (I get "General OLE Errors" for a docx file with an embedded spreadsheet)

You still can't easily share data with other apps, because it doesn't support AppleScript, so any workflow you'd have using Word or Pages on a Mac would have to be completely rewritten, and that's assuming you could get the python that Neo understands to bridge correctly to AppleScript. Oh, and it can only send documents to Mail.app.

"Prettier" is not all you need.

[bnw]

In your final note you state that Word is the standard for business. This is certainly true for the Windows side of the street; on the sunny side of the street, that is the Mac side, it has to be Pages. Anyone who has used Word and Pages has some serious ties to Windows. I mean, Pages is so far and away superior to Word for the things I do (business correspondence, writing papers and scripts, and story boarding) that the ONLY reason I keep Word around anymore is to share files with the folks back at the office.
Ok, maybe I can think of one other reason. If you don't mind looking out the window while Word loads or does just about anything else http://I have a 9 mo....2 and 4 GB RAM then you'll appreciate Word's lack of speed.
p.s. does anyone know how to make Word's reviewing tool bar stay in the interface? it disappears whenever I close a document. I would like for it to be persistent: once I select it from the view>toolbars menu i'd like for it to stay put.

[Hakeswill]

As much as I like Pages - and I really do - it just isn't powerful enough for me. It's fine for writing letters and stuff, but I write reports that are generally fairly liberally sprinkled with captions and cross-references (Table 3.1 shows...) which Pages can't do. There's lots wrong with Word, but until Pages can do everything the report writer needs (or should need!), I'm sticking with Word.

[rnelsonbyrne]

By the way, Pages offers some nice features such as two columns each of which continues on the next page. In fact, any column or section can continue on any page, very handy.
R. Nelson Byrne