Pages and Importing Word Documents
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 29, 2005 2:21 AM EST- Posted in
- Anand
Ever since I got iWork I've been importing as many Word documents into Pages as possible to figure out what will and won't break it. Up till recently things were looking quite good, but one of Vinney's law documents wouldn't import at all and I'm not certain why. I haven't had time to look through it and pinpoint what it was that broke it but the fact that there is at least one document out there that wouldn't import at all is a little disappointing. From what I can tell the document itself didn't use any fancy Word features, it was just a normal Word doc - but I'll dig deeper soon. For what it's worth, TextEdit opened it just fine.
The rest of the documents I've imported all work fine, except sometimes I'll get a font doesn't exist or character shading not supported warning, but nothing else major.
I realized I hadn't timed the installation of iLife '05 on the mini, so I decided to do that today - 23 minutes. That's 23 minutes for the actual installation portion of iLife on the mini - Apple needs to ship these things with iLife '05 preinstalled asap. Of course I'm talking about installing a 4GB application suite from DVD onto a 2.5" laptop HDD, but still :)
That brings me to another point - having applications and games shipping on DVDs, I can't even begin to describe how great it is to install everything from DVD. I think this is actually a smaller part of a much larger story though. The early adopter nature of the Mac platform is something that can definitely appeal to the enthusiast PC buying population. I can't even count the number of times that I wished floppies would go away, or that we'd do away with parallel/serial ports on motherboards, but the problem always ends up being backwards compatibility for the masses. A platform built almost entirely around early adoption is quite appealing to the PC enthusiast in me, I just don't think Apple has done a good job of actually marketing to that group of people.
I was thinking about this the other day - it wouldn't be too difficult for Apple to put together a box that would actually suit the needs of the PC enthusiast (other than the mini), they would just have to actually put the time into doing it. A user upgradable G5 - offer CPU upgrades, allow for custom SPD programming on memory modules so that users can use whatever memory they'd like (although offer a default setting that will reject all non-Apple approved memory) and the HDD/storage upgrades are already pretty much covered. Throw in a handful of overclocking options (and if Apple did it we'd probably actually get a good interface for once) and obviously do whatever it takes to target a lower price point. Even throw in a flash upgrade kit to convert PC video cards to work on Macs, something that end users could flash on their PCs - after all, the PC versions of Mac video cards are generally cheaper anyways. It's wishful thinking but it is a way to address a community that I think would be very appreciative of some of the features of the platform.
At 2:20AM on a Saturday morning - it's back to work for me :)
Take care and enjoy the weekend.
The rest of the documents I've imported all work fine, except sometimes I'll get a font doesn't exist or character shading not supported warning, but nothing else major.
I realized I hadn't timed the installation of iLife '05 on the mini, so I decided to do that today - 23 minutes. That's 23 minutes for the actual installation portion of iLife on the mini - Apple needs to ship these things with iLife '05 preinstalled asap. Of course I'm talking about installing a 4GB application suite from DVD onto a 2.5" laptop HDD, but still :)
That brings me to another point - having applications and games shipping on DVDs, I can't even begin to describe how great it is to install everything from DVD. I think this is actually a smaller part of a much larger story though. The early adopter nature of the Mac platform is something that can definitely appeal to the enthusiast PC buying population. I can't even count the number of times that I wished floppies would go away, or that we'd do away with parallel/serial ports on motherboards, but the problem always ends up being backwards compatibility for the masses. A platform built almost entirely around early adoption is quite appealing to the PC enthusiast in me, I just don't think Apple has done a good job of actually marketing to that group of people.
I was thinking about this the other day - it wouldn't be too difficult for Apple to put together a box that would actually suit the needs of the PC enthusiast (other than the mini), they would just have to actually put the time into doing it. A user upgradable G5 - offer CPU upgrades, allow for custom SPD programming on memory modules so that users can use whatever memory they'd like (although offer a default setting that will reject all non-Apple approved memory) and the HDD/storage upgrades are already pretty much covered. Throw in a handful of overclocking options (and if Apple did it we'd probably actually get a good interface for once) and obviously do whatever it takes to target a lower price point. Even throw in a flash upgrade kit to convert PC video cards to work on Macs, something that end users could flash on their PCs - after all, the PC versions of Mac video cards are generally cheaper anyways. It's wishful thinking but it is a way to address a community that I think would be very appreciative of some of the features of the platform.
At 2:20AM on a Saturday morning - it's back to work for me :)
Take care and enjoy the weekend.
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Mephisto - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
Nice dreams but look how hard the PC industry find it to make money unless you are unimaginably huge, like Dell. You've just described how to undermine Apple like the PC builders are undermined - Commoditise and there is NO Mac OS X, at best there is another buggy Windows with Apple struggling to get it to work on a million hardware combinations.I know you like cars so here's the equivalent: a million kit cars and minimal reliability/safety testing.
Apple would lose their MAJOR selling point over Windows ("It just works") and would crash like BeOS, Amiga, OS2 etcetera.
Apple computers are not toys to tinker with, they are tools to produce something else with, The best analogy is 1970's motorcycles: owners of Japanese ones went somewhere on them; owners of UK built ones turned their front gardens into engine oil stained parts graveyards and themselves into part-time mechanics.
If you want to be a technician get a PC; if you want to edit your video get a Mac.
gnumantsc - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
#5 well that part is not true. When I had to support Sasser calls as a former tech support agent you do not get people who have enough experience with computers to do what you said.I remember 4 out of 5 calls people had a Dell machine and Earthlink internet, so you know right there the majority of people who call MS for virus support don't know computers themselves, this is where the Mac Mini comes into play.
Anandtech is not geared towards the everyday joe shmoe but towards people who love tech and tech news. If you were to throw linux on a machine and say here use this you wouldn't be worse or better off than they had Windows on a machine.
Think of it as a car, most people see the car as a place to get me from A to B while there are people who would love to modify their car to look cool. We are enthusiants and the majority of the people out there are not.
Mac made a lousy decision with the mini in the respect that they didn't come with idea at a good time. They should've released it 6 months after the iPod because they would know by then how successful the iPod was.
Poser - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
The bit about a Mac aimed at PC enthusiasts seemed way, way out there. It's a lovely thought, but giving the end user the flexibility to tinker with their hardware is so far away from Apple's normal business model that I think you must have lost your mind for a moment.If they offered CPU upgrades, they would charge exhorbiant amounts, because every upgrade kit is a lost sale of a whole new Mac. That's how a monopolist thinks, because it can disregard the possibility of competition -- I'm positive that Apple still works in that frame of mind, stuck there from having spent too many years just selling Macs to Mac Users.
In a larger sense, I would think that at least the corperate end of Apple would want to steer clear of catering to the general hardware enthusiest userbase -- it's just a bad idea to get sucked into marketing products to them when you can't bring the biggest gun to the fight with any regularity.
'Pologies for the rant, anytime past 3 am is probably way to late for me to be posting. As always, love the site - keep up the excellent work.
JarredWalton - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
Heh, while we're on the subject of wishful thinking, what I really want is OS X ported to x86 or any other platform. I've often wondered how much of the OS is really platform depended. Being based off a UNIX core, OS X should have a lot more potential for porting than Windows.Dreams are free, right? :)
Dtravis - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
I think if Apple did that there would be a lot more PC users try out OSX and the Mac. The Mini is a step in the right direction. I hope down the line they go all the way and do what Anand is suggesting.nad - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
OMG user a user upgradble mac would be RADksherman - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
GO TO SLEEP!!!!