Apple's new Pages Apple's new Pages
DTP, Design expert Fred Showker takes a look at Apple's new word/page processing program Pages
Having been in the design and publishing industry for over 35 years, it's been a real treat to watch as the printed word and image has transformed itself over and over again. From metal to film, film to magnetic, magnetic to CRT and eventually to digital, each new era has presented its own unique performance in the communications drama. Of course, desktop publishing was the first major shake-up in some 400 years. In twenty short years we've gone from primitive reproductions of type and image, built of single black or white pixels, to a highly refined splendor of millions of colors and infinite possibilities for publication and distribution.
I published my first disk of 'digital' templates for publishers in 1985 using Apple's MacDraw and bitmapped fonts optimized to print well on the ImageWriter printer. Then came the LaserWriter, every graphic designer's dream come true! We could shed ourselves of MacDraw and bask in the wonderful capabilities of Ready-Set Go, the first desktop publishing program by typographers for typographers. Then came PageMaker which freed us from the confines of RSG's objects; only to give way to Quark XPress (Ready-Set Go knock-off) and the industry was never the same. Today you can publish in any of sixty different software programs, including latecomer InDesign, and obtain respectable results.
All of this can be directly attributed to Apple Computer's original vision of turning something very complicated into something very simple. Difficult tasks of publishing words, drawings, and now, even audio and video -- once reserved for an elitist few professionals -- today are child's play. But until now you had to spend several hundreds of dollars to publish truly well constructed pages. Now Apple has completed the circle with their new streamlined yet powerful word processing program called "Pages."
But wait a minute. Let's put this in perspective before I go any further. This not the announcement of the 'next' publishing revolution. Regardless of Apple's hype, and the media frenzy, Pages is not a revolution but rather a 'next' logical step to complete the circle of iLife software. Now with Pages (part of the iWork package which includes Keynote presentation software) most consumer computer bases are fully covered -- and covered in style! Pages introduces nothing that hasn't been introduced before -- no new powers, no new processes. What it does however is eliminate 88% of the tedium of desktop publishing. It candy-coats the DTP processes into a slick, approachable $75 package. That does make it a milestone.
Within an hour of installing Page, I produced a newsletter that would easily rival that of any high-end package. So, we know up front that for the guy on the street, this $75 software program can achieve results equal to the $400 to $900 publishing monsters. If you know anything about design and typography at all, Pages is a killer. Most people will use Pages as a 'smart' word processer -- brilliant positioning to Apple's credit.
The most seductive feature, (and probably the Achele's heal) of Pages is its foundation in templates. Now, just about anyone can open the template and begin typing (or pasting) in their content -- replacing "Placeholder" images with their own; and customizing the document to suit their own needs. While this idea is not new either, it's a new turn of events because Apple has made the process so simple. All of the other template-driven solutions until now have been poorly implemented and nearly impossible to operate because of over complication and bloating.
Return to: the top of this page, or the INDEX for this department
Exit to: The User Group Network front page
Contact: The Editor, Webmaster or Membership Director