XIAOPANGZI  OBSERVATIONS:

• Pages ’09 is now viable as a full-time replacement of Microsoft Word, as long as Find & Replace functionality is significantly expanded with a downloadable update in the very near future.

• Unable to search for bold, italic, underlined, subscript, superscript, or highlighted text, or text with specific fonts, colors, etc., within documents in which the original writer did not define styles (did not use a style sheet).

• Unable to use clipboard content for Replace All, such as when replacing all instances of “CO2” with the equivalent that contains the proper subscript number.

• Unable to specifically search for only one-byte or two-byte characters within a document, unlike the Japanese version of Word (or with Japanese enabled via Microsoft Language Register).

• Unable to automatically convert double-byte characters to their single-byte equivalents or vice versa.

• Unable to search upward.

• Unable to search for combinations of unspecified numbers and letters or use any other wildcard searches.

• Unable to search for unspecified uppercase letters or combinations of uppercase and lowercase letters.

• Unable to highlight text if the desired color is already selected in the Apple, Developer, Crayons, and Web Safe Colors subpalettes in the Show Colors formatting palette, so a different neighboring color has to be temporarily selected before reselecting the desired color to be applied to the current text selection.

• Difficult to identify the applied highlight color of selected text, as the System Preference’s default Highlight Color is still used even for highlighted text instead of Pages using a color that directly contrasts with the applied highlight color, as is standard in Word.

• Word files with first line indentation lose most of their indentation when opened in Pages.

• Have encountered a couple of Word files that crash every time Pages attempts to open them until finally giving up.

DESIRES:

• An option in Preferences that enables certain Views—especially Show Invisibles—by default for all documents, whether newly created or imported from Word format

• Access to the Inspector via the pointer while inputting search (and replace) criteria in the fields of the Find & Replace dialog box, as most documents do not have styles defined by the original author

• Ability to search across all open documents and search upward to find the previous instance of any criteria

• Fullest possible regular expression search via the Find & Replace dialog box but preferably selectable from a pulldown menu with natural user-friendly language.

• Ability to apply the currently selected color in the Show Colors palette as highlighting for any selected text via a single click (without having to deselect the desired color first) and then have immediate visual feedback that the highlighting has been successful by displaying the text selection highlight in a color that directly contrasts with the applied highlight color.

ADDENDUM:

Cannot see which text is selected when the character background fill is the same color as the systemÂ’s default highlight color for selected text.

Cannot see the punctuation even when View Final is selected during an editing session with Track Changes enabled when text has been deleted in front of a comma, semicolon, or period, as the black triangles remain and conceal that portion of the sentence. It would be preferable to hide the deletion indicator black triangles in Final View (and even in View Markup Without Deletions) similarly to how the underlined added text and strike-through deleted text appear as normal text in Final View. An alternative may be to make the black triangles a more transparent color, possibly the same as the color used for the added and deleted text.

Spacing between words becomes sporadic even with View Final selected during an editing session with Track Changes enabled, particularly with wider spaces appearing between words where text has been deleted. It is preferable for the View Final mode to display text exactly as it would appear after all changes have been accepted, such as with normalized spacing, without having to actually accept all changes first.  
(Version 09)

WEBMOTIVA.COM  Why not 64-bit?  
(Version 9.0.3)

MYSTERY TRAMP  I use Pages and Numbers regularly and find them to be robust apps, able to perform all the tasks I've asked of them.

Folks who are considering Microsoft Office should ponder if the extra features are necessary. If you need them, great. But if you're only buying the Microsoft name, you could be wasting your money.

While Excel snobs might be able to point to a range of functions MS can do that iWork can't, I think they'd be very surprised at just how much Numbers can accomplish.

And I use Word at work. It can do a great many things, 99 percent of which I'll never do. Having a word processor like Pages that's slim, trim and works like a charm would be a great asset.

mt  
(Version 9.0.3)

ANON BUD  Still lovin' it! I said bye-bye to Office when iWork '08 came in and I've never looked back!  
(Version 9.0.3)

PUNKISH  Pages '09 4.0.1 (build 746) has a major bug. Its entire Endnote integration is missing. I have verified this with Apple, filed a bug report, and they have "escalated" the report, whatever that means. If your life depends on Pages+Endnote integration, do not, DO NOT, upgrade to the latest iWork update.  
(Version 9.0.1)

153957PHOTOGRAPHY  Ah, very helpful and informative description (what's new)

Isnt there some kbase article which more specifically tells us what's new?  
(Version 9.0.1)

APPLEDOGX  iWork 09 is a good upgrade to the iWork suite. I find myself using Pages more than anything. It's easier than ever to share with Word users, though I find that the email as a Word document is not adding the file extension that Windows users need, even though I select to do so for saving the documents. Pages is easier to use than Word, and very flexible. It still cannot do footnotes in a table for some reason and Apple has not responded to add this feature from the previous version.

Numbers is quite usable now. It is the most improved of the three applications for iWork 09. I hate the odd implementation of the new transpose function, though. You have to combine it with index for it to be useful. This is one thing that Excel definitely does better. For the most part, Numbers is very easy to use, and developing a Numbers based mindset and forgetting the way you work with other spreadsheets, opens you to its great possibilities.

Keynote's magic move is great, but when you have transparency in a magic moved photo, the magic seems to disappear. It becomes tiny, moves and then springs back to size. This magician needs some serious bug fixing. Flash export is also gone, but all in all, Keynote is easy to use and makes superior presentations to the competition.

I upgraded from iWork 08, and I'm glad I did. The changes were worth the outlay.  
(Version 09)

DONMONTALVO  Maturing nicely. Still a way to go before we displace NeoOffice. :)

Don Montalvo, NYC  
(Version 09)

TSARKON  (Note: I am only going to review Pages 09. iWork includes Numbers and Keynote as well).

If you have the need for a word processor to open, print and save text-only documents, you will be fine with free alternatives from other developers: OpenOffice, Bean, TextEdit (Mac OS X built-in) or any other great word processor application.

On the other hand, if you're looking for an easy-to-use and visually pleasing and productive word processor you do not need to look any further. Pages simplifies formatting of text and still adds several features to make the document look more appealing to the eye. It's compatible with several text document formats, even though you might need a complementary word processor to support them all.

Pages started out as a page layout application. You can do beautiful page layout with it, because the application comes bundled with ready-to-use templates. They make it easy for just about anyone to accomplish nice looking page layouts. Adding photos to your page layout document is easy, especially if you're using a template since they are built for drag and drop in mind.

There are however some things Apple need to work on in terms of features to make their suite better:

- Print layout view (something which Microsoft Word users take for granted)

- Support for more document formats, even the slight obscure ones

- Add the capability to make your own, proper layout for a book or magazine. Integrate it with iPhoto in iLife.

All in all, while Pages 09 accomplishes most things that people want to do with their layout and word processing, it still isn't the best choice for every user. iWork 09 is a capable page layout application and word processor for the private household, but advanced office users and people who are paid to work with layout full-time need to look for Microsoft and Adobe products respectively.  
(Version 9.0.3)

THATSTHEWAY  A few words about Keynote...

Yes, Keynote does have some really great features and impressive effects. Name another application that has the wonderful new transitions introduced in iWork 09. The application is also fairly easy to use. Having said that, the program doesn't have an ounce of stability.

I've been using Keynote to produce presentations for my employer since iWork 08. There were quite a few bugs in '08 that have yet to be addressed in '09. For a while, I was working on one of the older white MacBooks (2,1). Upon pressing the 'Play' button to view my project, my computer would often restart. This would cause me to lose any unsaved changes, and quite frankly, that is just a huge pain to deal with. Luckily, I'm not on a powerful, new MacBook Pro and don't have that problem anymore, as that bug is only MacBook specific.

The other problem with the program is the timing. With Keynote, ten seconds is not ten seconds. But that is fairly easy to get around with a little trial and error. I can deal with that, right?

What I cannot deal with is the fact that the same project played several times produces results of different links. As an experiment, I recently took one project and played it three times. I captured each one with ScreenFlow to compare. The project was three minutes long. Up to the 30-second mark, everything was in-sync. From there it was just downhill, as nothing lined up. One ended at 2:57, another at 2:58, and the last at a whopping 3:00. This can create real problems if you creating your soundtrack after gathering the project, as nothing lines up. Using a weak computer could explain this, but Apple, I'm using one of your new MacBook Pros.

Ok, so maybe that isn't so bad, right? I mean, a few seconds can be made up for with some third-party editing tools. But what about when your project is in the final stages and you realize that you need to change the timing of the transition between slides one and two? Well, changing the transition time between one and two may make slide six stay onscreen for more of less time. I've often changed the timing of a transition only to find that another slide stays onscreen for up to ten seconds less! And then, when you fix the timing on slide six, you have to fix the timing between slides two and three again.

Sorry, Apple, but you guys are losing my trust. I can't believe you released a new version of this buggy program without fixing these major bugs. We understand that you have a lot on your hands, but don't forget that for many of your users, iWork is a part of their work. And believe me, we also have a lot on our hands.

Keynote just does not cut it.   
(Version 9.0.3)