iWork 2009: A Hands-On Review, Part 1

The Template Chooser window in Pages offers a choice of close to 200 different templates. The templates range from colorful school reports and graphical brochures to professional-grade white papers. (Joshua Philipp/The Epoch Times)

iWork is the office suite from Apple that has received little attention outside the community of Mac users, which is a real pity. This three-program suite brings some much-needed life to its software genre.

Frankly, whether in terms of its features, workspace, or support, iWork outdoes Microsoft Office by leaps and bounds—and this is coming from a long-time and (formerly) dedicated user of Microsoft Office.

iWork offers a friendly touch that is unfortunately absent in most other software programs. The user doesn’t feel abandoned to a rigid interface and thick tutorials. Apple provides simple tutorial videos and walkthroughs on its Web site, which anyone can access.

This program suite includes all the features most professionals would expect, and presents them in a format that is simple and easy on the eye. Plus, it’s economical. You can get the iWork 2009 suite for close to $60, whereas the newest version of Microsoft Office goes for more than $200.

The Epoch Times will be reviewing iWork in a three-part series. This week, we’ll be looking at Pages—Apple’s word processor program included in iWork 2009.

Templates to Do Anything

When you first open Pages, you are greeted by a Template Chooser screen. This is my favorite feature in this application. The templates alone make Pages a worthwhile buy.

Pages comes with close to 200 ready-made templates, all of which allow for both professional and whimsical documents for virtually any occasion. Some of the template offerings available include brochures, professional letters and postcards, and school and business reports.

One interesting feature is the prewritten templates, with photos already laid out—all waiting for you to simply change, rewrite, and customize as needed. Photos can be dragged into the document from your own files, and you can change most elements of the document to your liking.

To make it easy to differentiate between the template and your new material, the prewritten text is in another language.

While some users may at first be put off by the Template Chooser screen that pops up each time you open the program, it serves to encourage the use of the templates—a welcome habit sure to save time in the long run. Pages also has smooth, quick load times; and it begins the template selection screen with the conventional Blank pages, which you can navigate through in just a few seconds before writing.

A Look at the Workspace

Pages has a clean workspace. Toolbars are colored and arranged in a way that makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. It manages to avoid the tightly cluttered look found in most word processing programs, yet still provides all the needed tools.

There are two main toolbars at the top of the page by default. The tools to use for tables, charts, graphs, and so on, are found in the top toolbar. Each tool has a small, easy-to-find, colored icon. The text editing tools—such as text size, font name, and alignment—are in a smaller bar found beneath the main bar.

At the bottom of the page is a live word count. You can also highlight text to show the word count of specific sections.

It’s much easier to insert charts, graphs, and pictures into your document in Pages than it is in Microsoft Office. A simple click opens up a graphical menu of your different options. When you select your choice, another tool emerges to help you edit colors and layout. You can also create 3-dimensional charts easily with a tool that lets you rotate the object accordingly.

If you want to delete any charts or graphics, simply click the Delete key. Unlike with Microsoft Office, deleting a chart or graphic does not leave behind floating bars or special formatting.

There is also a tool for dynamic outlines that you can access by simply clicking the Outline tab on the top of the page. This feature lets you map out ideas and subjects. Hit Return to open another topic, while the Tab key opens subtopics. You can rearrange your outline by clicking and dragging different portions, and you can open or collapse subjects with a single click.

In a Nutshell

There are many word processing programs, but Pages is definitely one of the best available. The only catch is that the iWork suite, including Pages, is only available for Mac users.

Pages offers beginners an easy-to-use program and features a professional, clean workspace with all the necessary tools to get the job done.

Pages is just one of the three programs included in the iWork 2009 software suite from Apple. Next week we’ll be looking at Numbers, followed by Keynote.