The Business Case for Using Apple's Pages

When we launched the first B-Logs whitepaper it was probably of no surprise to any of you that I designed it from start to finish. What may be surprising is that I used OmniGraffle to do it.

While OmniGraffle obviously can't do what InDesign can, it succeeds in making small projects like the whitepaper happen quickly (especially when yours truly is still trying to fully master the ins and outs of InDesign). The work that OG produces can make any fledgling information architect look like a seasoned professional, and I've been using it for awhile now just because it's intuitive and does exactly what I need. I've used it for lab reports, proposals, workflows, IA diagrams, UI prototypes, wireframes, network diagrams (!!!), quick use-case diagrams, and illustrations, and it does its job beautifully. But when I decided to use it for the whitepaper, things got a little hairy.

When the first whitepaper was being worked on, only one of my business partners owned a Mac so therefore only Matto and I could be the ones to work on it. Unfortunately, we didn't own corresponding typography so I did most of the editing on my end. Also, OmniGraffle's PDF export abilities leave a lot to be desired (offset borders, incorrect shadows, incorrect font weights, etc.) so I've been kicking around alternatives and when Pages came out I knew I had to give it a shot.

The Pages Advantage

Now that Paul's got a nasty Mac setup he can join in on the editing with the rest of us. Pages makes it easy to layout the flow of text, columns, tables, headers and footers, and other things that OmniGraffle never made possible without me doing it all manually. Now I can design the header and footer for the next whitepaper with no hassle, and we can start using a cohesive design for all proposals, contracts, whitepapers, and anything else the team comes out with or needs. Consistent branding across all our media is the way to go, and Pages is letting us do that.

Pages' PDF output capabilities are really fantastic, and pretty much drop OmniGraffle right to the ground crying. Nothing is offset, and the PDF looks exactly pixel-for-pixel like it does on my screen when editing it. Everything is there—shadows, bold text, gradients, borders, and all other design elements.

Now after I create the basic template for our whitepapers using Pages, all three of us can take a hand in the writing/editing without anybody messing up the design. The design is locked, so now content can reign as king.

Should Pages be used for really large projects like books? Um, definitely not. Maybe. I wouldn't. But in terms of the actual layout and editing of documents, to me it is far ahead of Microsoft Word for Mac OS X, and I'll never switch back. Goodbye Word and OmniGraffle, hello Pages!

Comments

[Darice de Cuba]

Well you convinced me. I dislike working with Microsoft Word and I have been looking around for a replacement. iWork looks pretty good and not that expensive either. My Apple wishlist is growing by the day(Shuffle, Mac Mini, iWork). Soon Tiger will be here as well.

[Bronwyn]

Anyone looking for a Word replacement should try out OpenOffice. I've been playing with it (on my PC) and am darned impressed. It might not be as good as Pages for short projects, but it will probably be better for long ones than anything except LaTeX or Framemaker.

[John Zeratsky]

Unfortunately, OpenOffice is pretty much useless on OS X.

[Richard Albury]

> Unfortunately, OpenOffice is pretty much useless on OS X

Uh, NeoOffice/J, anyone?

[Gilbert]

Gracias, Mike. It's good to hear these reviews from trusted resources.

[loosecanon]

I am interested in your results because just last night, while taking a spin in Pages, I tried its PDF and Word export of a template in which I'd added shadow to an object. In word, the shadow appeared, but in stark black with no blurring of the edges. In AR, the pdf did not recreate the shadow at all. Zip. Any wisdom about how you get your results?

[Jakob]

When my CEO/boss asked me about pages at MacWorld, you said almost exactly what I told him. It's perfect for typing, and somehow even more perfect for 95% of what you would do. It fails miserably at that last 5% though that maybe 2% of the population cares about.

[fred flintstone]

Pages is very cool. When Apple comes out with a spreadsheet, and when its importing of Word documents are 100% successful, there may indeed be no need to bother with Office anymore.

Another alternative to OpenOffice is a re-packaging of OpenOffice called NeoOffice/J, which has been pretty cool to me so far, and doesn't require X11. Check it out:

http://www.neooffice.org/

Certainly not at pretty as Pages and Keynote, but the two together may allow you to forgo Office entirely.

[Dave Hanks]

Used Pages to create a "look alike" program bulliten for an organization I belong to. The ease of use was phenominal. While it is NOT perfect, I was able to replicate the document FAR FAR FAR easier than the staff that is using a series of PC Windows products to develope this weekly item.

Integration with iPhoto could not be better. Boss has a series of CD-ROMS with artwork that she has been using in the newsletter. The images (mostly artwork) were in WMF format??? Never heard of that. Long story short: images opend within Safari, then I saved them to the desktop. The used drag and drop to put them onto iPhoto. Now the artwork is among the photos. So I can build a series of Artwork Albums that I can pull from... actually this will be far easier than using the CD-ROMS! I am planning to burn a DVD of these images and use iPhoto Library Manager to switch between normal and cartoon artwork databases.

Ain't The Mac GREAT!

[Benjamin Huot]

Looking forward to Pages too when I am able to upgrade to Panther. I read an article in French (used Google to translate it) about what the other word processor developers for the Mac are doing in response to it. Nisus is going to focus on text editing and is going to leave the page layout feature for Pages, Mariner is going to promote their spreadsheet program until Apple comes out with its own, and Mellel is going to try to match Pages feature wise in the next couple of months. The only one that has a chance is Nisus. http://www.macgeneration.com/mgnews/depeche.php?aIdDepeche=114140

[giovanni]

Hello - so can Pages be used to produce a newsletter consisting of appro 20 pages? i have heard vague statements which say yes or no. any real experiences?

[tripdragon]

has anyone even used pages here ? I have seen it make a greaty design into crap and cheese when exported to html. Sure PDF is great but HTML wasmy big hope for it :(

[mathew]

hanks: you could write an applescript to do all that for you! :)

[jacob]

Pages leaves some to be desired, but definitely beats MS Word, which is a bloated piece of crap. One problem is the enormous size of PDF output. Pages doesn't resize or compress any images used in its pdf's, so where Indesign or Distiller can make jpeg2000's, at 300 or 600 dpi, pages is stuck with a full-size image, taking a huge amount of space. In general, in fact, even all-text PDF's seem to be bloated.

Still, for layout, it's enough easier than Indesign or Quark that it makes more sense for small projects, and isn't so unnecessarily complicated and bloated as MS Word.

I'm sticking with it

[James Perih]

Man, I've used Pages (with update) to finish off a 50 page Church Annual report. Just dropped in the word documents from 7 different authors as they came in; retained the Pages document's formatting, and dropping the MS Word. Printed the XLS files to PDF, and inserted to Pages, and added a Mask to the inserted file to remove the margins.

Basically, Pages helped me keep a consistent look to the document, and more rapid structure control than Word. I like it. Made a good size PDF (maybe due to the update), and even exported to Word flawlessly.

Is there any links for more templates? E-mail me.

[Trevor Andrews]

I can't get the hang of how to change case in a text doumant here you have inadvertently used the caps lock while typing a letter,memo,etal

[Mark Rauterkus]

How do you get a Pages document into OpenOffice.org?