Saturday, January 29, 2005
Where has the time gone? Finally, my first blush with iWork.
And this was going to be the week in which I finally got caught up on the backlog of email from two weeks ago. Hmm, I guess not. If you ever want to find out what it's like to be totally, totally, totally overwhelmed some time, just go ahead and get your name and your company mentioned in the New York Times. Not that I'd trade it for anything, of course, but last night was the first time all week that I've so much as gotten anything resembling a night's sleep. In the past six days I've done interviews with newspapers, magazines, TV stations(!), heard from hundreds upon hundred of folks who want to work for the company...and that's before you even factor in all the, you know, customers.
So anyway, that's my big long sorry excusre for not having had so much as a few minutes to even play with iWork since I installed it on Tuesday, let alone write anything about it. I'll see how much of that I can correct this weekend. But in the mean time, seeing as how I've installed it and spent a good four or five minutes with it, here are my first impressions:
- This is the first Apple product I've ever installed that required a registration code. I have no problem with Apple asking me to spend an extra fifteen seconds typing in a code to help prevent piracy, because if it's getting to the point where Apple feels like it has to do this, then there must be far too many folks out there not paying for it, and Apple's other alternative would be to charge more for the software, and end up with one of those stupid situations like Adobe has with Photoshop, in which the honest people pay $600 for it and dishonest people continue to steal it, and the honest folks without $600 to spend either don't get to use it or have to reluctantly become criminals to do so. So if Apple thinks that invoking a registration code is going to help keep iWork's price at $79, then I'm all for it.
- The only thing I object to with registation codes, though, and I know it sounds tiny, is the use of both the number 0 and the letter O in the registation codes. I think every code I've ever typed in has at least one instance of one or the other in it, and of course you don't get to find out whether you guessed correctly until after the code has been accepted or rejected. The simple solution, of course, would be for companies to never use 0 or O in their codes. So when I glanced at my iWork code and saw that it contained instances of both, I was disappointed that Apple do something so unintuitive -- until I saw that every instance of the number 0 had a dot in the middle of it, and the letter O didn't. And how did I know that it wasn't the other way around? Because the words above it used the same font, and in "iWork '05" the number 0 had a dot in it. Easy as pie. Leave it to Apple to come up with a nice solution to something that seemingly every other software company has totally overlooked since the dawn of registation codes.
- No restart after installation. Cool!
- After installing, I immediately jumped into my Applications folder, launched Keynote 2.0, and was extremely disappointed to find out that it was identical to Keynote 1.1. Then I realized that I was in fact using Keynote 1.1 - whoops. Turns out the iWork apps are in a folder in the Applications folder called "iWork." Duh. It was so obvious, I missed it. Interestingly, the installater builds Keynote 2.0 from scratch, rather than seeking and modifying Keynote 1.1.
- Keynote 2.0 will open Keynote 1.1 a document but will immediately consider it to be an unsaved document. If you immediately close the document, it'll warn you that the newly saved document will not be Keynote 1.1-compatible, and will give you the option of saving it under a new name (retaining both versions of the document), saving it with the same name (making it non-Keynote 1.1-compatible), or not saving it at all (leaving it in Keynote 1.1 format). What I just described sounds complicated, but it really does present itself intuitively. By default, you're just going to allow it to convert it to 2.0 format, unless you know you're going to be moving that document to machine that only has 1.1, in which case you choose one of the other options.
- Biggest new feature of Keynote 2.0: speed. As some you are aware, I've built a rather comprehensive Keynote document in which each slide contains a certain aspect of my business. I don't want to go into details about it (yet, anyway), but suffice it to say that it's not intended for presenation. It's just a matter of Keynote making a better visually-oriented database/spreadsheet tool than any database or spreadsheet tool out there. But anyway, my document (can't really refer to it as a presenation) has grown large enough that on an aging G4, it launches and saves a little slowly. Well, not anymore, it doesn't. Both of those actions take place about twice as fast with Keynote 2.0. Other functions are noticeably faster as well. I'm afraid I really haven't had time to jump into any of Keynote's new features yet, but right now I'm really enjoying the speed boost. It alone is a boon to productivity. Can't wait to see how this thing flies on a G5. Or on Tiger.
- Only criticism of Keynote 2.0 so far: I instinctively pressed Shift-Apple-I to bring up the inspector palette, and nothing happened. Checked the menu, and for some reason, the inspector is now summoned by Option-Apple-I. It's actually an easier key combination to hit, and I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough, but I can't for the life of me figure out the reason for the change. It's not as if Shift-Apple-I suddenly does something else now. Only thing I can think of it that maybe in Tiger, Shift-Apple-I does something else system-wide. Right now, it mounts your iDisk, but only if you're already in the Finder. Maybe it means I'll finally get my way as far as seeing the items on the Finder's "Go" menu get moved to the Apple menu and become available system-wide without having to first go to the Finder before being able to trigger them. We shall see.
- My first brush with Pages was when I needed to type up a very quick and simple word processing document and print it out. It was only after I'd done it that I realized that I'd instictively fired up Pages instead of AppleWorks. The funny part is than when I wanted to adjust the font size, I simply hit the key combo to bring up the font panel, just as if I were using Keynote. I haven't spend more than 60 seconds using Pages yet, but my first blush with it is that it really is a word processor built just like Keynote. Dream come true, if it turns out to be true.
- I realize that I'll eventually need to sit down and create a meaningless test document in both Pages and Keynote 2.0 so that I can push the new features to their limits, rather than just using them for my regular workflow like I've been doing all week so far. But the best thing I've seen so far is the fact that I've been able to jump into both applications and use them for tasks that I've previously accomplished with their predeccesors, and not miss a beat. That, perhaps above anything else, is the mark of an ideal software upgrade: minimal learning curve, you feel right at home from the minute you launch it, and the new features, speed, and refinements are just gravy that you can dive into later when you feel like it.
Now, if only every other software company on earth could just figure that last part out.
And this was going to be the week in which I finally got caught up on the backlog of email from two weeks ago. Hmm, I guess not. If you ever want to find out what it's like to be totally, totally, totally overwhelmed some time, just go ahead and get your name and your company mentioned in the New York Times. Not that I'd trade it for anything, of course, but last night was the first time all week that I've so much as gotten anything resembling a night's sleep. In the past six days I've done interviews with newspapers, magazines, TV stations(!), heard from hundreds upon hundred of folks who want to work for the company...and that's before you even factor in all the, you know, customers.
So anyway, that's my big long sorry excusre for not having had so much as a few minutes to even play with iWork since I installed it on Tuesday, let alone write anything about it. I'll see how much of that I can correct this weekend. But in the mean time, seeing as how I've installed it and spent a good four or five minutes with it, here are my first impressions:
- This is the first Apple product I've ever installed that required a registration code. I have no problem with Apple asking me to spend an extra fifteen seconds typing in a code to help prevent piracy, because if it's getting to the point where Apple feels like it has to do this, then there must be far too many folks out there not paying for it, and Apple's other alternative would be to charge more for the software, and end up with one of those stupid situations like Adobe has with Photoshop, in which the honest people pay $600 for it and dishonest people continue to steal it, and the honest folks without $600 to spend either don't get to use it or have to reluctantly become criminals to do so. So if Apple thinks that invoking a registration code is going to help keep iWork's price at $79, then I'm all for it.
- The only thing I object to with registation codes, though, and I know it sounds tiny, is the use of both the number 0 and the letter O in the registation codes. I think every code I've ever typed in has at least one instance of one or the other in it, and of course you don't get to find out whether you guessed correctly until after the code has been accepted or rejected. The simple solution, of course, would be for companies to never use 0 or O in their codes. So when I glanced at my iWork code and saw that it contained instances of both, I was disappointed that Apple do something so unintuitive -- until I saw that every instance of the number 0 had a dot in the middle of it, and the letter O didn't. And how did I know that it wasn't the other way around? Because the words above it used the same font, and in "iWork '05" the number 0 had a dot in it. Easy as pie. Leave it to Apple to come up with a nice solution to something that seemingly every other software company has totally overlooked since the dawn of registation codes.
- No restart after installation. Cool!
- After installing, I immediately jumped into my Applications folder, launched Keynote 2.0, and was extremely disappointed to find out that it was identical to Keynote 1.1. Then I realized that I was in fact using Keynote 1.1 - whoops. Turns out the iWork apps are in a folder in the Applications folder called "iWork." Duh. It was so obvious, I missed it. Interestingly, the installater builds Keynote 2.0 from scratch, rather than seeking and modifying Keynote 1.1.
- Keynote 2.0 will open Keynote 1.1 a document but will immediately consider it to be an unsaved document. If you immediately close the document, it'll warn you that the newly saved document will not be Keynote 1.1-compatible, and will give you the option of saving it under a new name (retaining both versions of the document), saving it with the same name (making it non-Keynote 1.1-compatible), or not saving it at all (leaving it in Keynote 1.1 format). What I just described sounds complicated, but it really does present itself intuitively. By default, you're just going to allow it to convert it to 2.0 format, unless you know you're going to be moving that document to machine that only has 1.1, in which case you choose one of the other options.
- Biggest new feature of Keynote 2.0: speed. As some you are aware, I've built a rather comprehensive Keynote document in which each slide contains a certain aspect of my business. I don't want to go into details about it (yet, anyway), but suffice it to say that it's not intended for presenation. It's just a matter of Keynote making a better visually-oriented database/spreadsheet tool than any database or spreadsheet tool out there. But anyway, my document (can't really refer to it as a presenation) has grown large enough that on an aging G4, it launches and saves a little slowly. Well, not anymore, it doesn't. Both of those actions take place about twice as fast with Keynote 2.0. Other functions are noticeably faster as well. I'm afraid I really haven't had time to jump into any of Keynote's new features yet, but right now I'm really enjoying the speed boost. It alone is a boon to productivity. Can't wait to see how this thing flies on a G5. Or on Tiger.
- Only criticism of Keynote 2.0 so far: I instinctively pressed Shift-Apple-I to bring up the inspector palette, and nothing happened. Checked the menu, and for some reason, the inspector is now summoned by Option-Apple-I. It's actually an easier key combination to hit, and I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough, but I can't for the life of me figure out the reason for the change. It's not as if Shift-Apple-I suddenly does something else now. Only thing I can think of it that maybe in Tiger, Shift-Apple-I does something else system-wide. Right now, it mounts your iDisk, but only if you're already in the Finder. Maybe it means I'll finally get my way as far as seeing the items on the Finder's "Go" menu get moved to the Apple menu and become available system-wide without having to first go to the Finder before being able to trigger them. We shall see.
- My first brush with Pages was when I needed to type up a very quick and simple word processing document and print it out. It was only after I'd done it that I realized that I'd instictively fired up Pages instead of AppleWorks. The funny part is than when I wanted to adjust the font size, I simply hit the key combo to bring up the font panel, just as if I were using Keynote. I haven't spend more than 60 seconds using Pages yet, but my first blush with it is that it really is a word processor built just like Keynote. Dream come true, if it turns out to be true.
- I realize that I'll eventually need to sit down and create a meaningless test document in both Pages and Keynote 2.0 so that I can push the new features to their limits, rather than just using them for my regular workflow like I've been doing all week so far. But the best thing I've seen so far is the fact that I've been able to jump into both applications and use them for tasks that I've previously accomplished with their predeccesors, and not miss a beat. That, perhaps above anything else, is the mark of an ideal software upgrade: minimal learning curve, you feel right at home from the minute you launch it, and the new features, speed, and refinements are just gravy that you can dive into later when you feel like it.
Now, if only every other software company on earth could just figure that last part out.
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