8 ms·

> so you never really can blame Word Absolutely, you can. Microsoft has long stopped improving the basic word processing features. When there is no competition

> so you never really can blame Word Absolutely, you can. Microsoft has long stopped improving the basic word processing features. When there is no competition Microsoft stops improving their products.

reaperducer 4y ago
When there is no competition Microsoft stops improving their products. Coincidentally, at this very moment I am re-creating an old paper form for another department in the company. They need it as a PDF. The people from the department sent me their best effort as a Word document. It's a disaster of mismatched styles, misaligned boxes, things that get cut off for no discernible reason, and stuff that won't print right because it's past Word's margins. I'm almost done re-creating it in Pages, from which I'll output a PDF. It's gone swimmingly. Pages isn't yet a replacement for every single little thing that Word does, but for the things it does do, it works well, quickly, predictably, and fast. But that may be Word's downfall: It took the kitchen sink route and became a mess. Pages is a good basic word processor for those who are interested in processing words. It's less "powerful" at doing all the thousand other things that people use Word for that they should probably do in Acrobat.
- nvr219 4y ago
  Google Docs is the competition, not Pages.
  - kiwijamo 4y ago
    And Google Docs has its fair share of issues too. I've seen many Google Doc documented with the issues described here for Word.
    - nvr219 4y ago
      Verily
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    A processor that is at the level of Word 2.0 is hardly the competition, unless being a better typewritter is everything one expects from a word processor.
- philistine 4y ago
  The most important word in your comment: predictable. Even when Pages completely changed when they redid the engine for web, iOS and Mac, Pages stayed predictable. If you turn invisibles on, you basically know everything of what’s happening at all times.
- fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
  Pages is really frustrating to me: until around 2012, pages was an extremely good tool for desktop-publishing and general writing. Sometime around then, Apple did a whole UI update and cut it down to a much more basic word processor that has slowly been improved.
- qubex 4y ago
  I personally adore Pages and especially Numbers. I spend most of my professional life designing and dealing with spreadsheets and Numbers’ table-based paradigm is simply orders of magnitude more elegant that Excel’s everything-is-a-sheet approach. Why? I can modify tables (inserting row and columns, changing attributes, & cetera) without affecting other tables. The one thing I miss and that infuriates me is Numbers’ lack of iterative solutions to circular references. Circular references are bad, you say, and I agree, but unfortunately in corporate finance they’re unavoidable when creating business plans because short-term debt depends on interest to be paid and interest to be paid depends on short-term debt. That means that Numbers can only take me so far until I have to export to .xlsx and then slog it out with Excel from then on. It’s a real pity they keep adding useless (to me) features such as collaborative editing and so forth when adding this functionality would take the whole application from being a toy to being a professional instrument. One can hope, I guess.
  - tomjen3 4y ago
    In excel select the location of your table, select format as table and now you have a table that you can setup auto sum on, setup computed columns and automatically have everything extended when you add a new line. You can also use it as basis for a pivot table so excel can make you a much better overview of your data.
    - qubex 4y ago
      Thanks (no sarcasm) but I know how it works. My point was that in Excel this is an afterthought, whereas in Numbers it’s a consequence of how the application is devised from first principles.
    - Someone 4y ago
      Problem: once you have multiple such tables on a sheet, adding and removing rows or columns to such tables becomes hit and miss. Numbers will happily shift down tables to make room, but Excel won’t. Array formulas are another sort-of alternative for Numbers’ tables, but there, too, the implementation could be better. You can’t insert a row ‘inside’ a range of rows covered by an array formula, for example.
MonkeyClub 4y ago
And it’s gotten worse, apparently. Had to use Word and Excel for a few days, and there’s an obvious latency to almost any action, on a multi core multi GB computer. Why? It shouldn’t have any delay, period. I’m slowly forming the opinion that it’s been downhill since the Ribbon revamp. Office 2000 was pretty good, and aggressively snappier than 2016.
- Bluecobra 4y ago
  Are you talking about the smooth moving cursor? That's the first thing I disable in the registry with any new install. https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/office-2016-smooth-cursor-disable.html https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/office-2016-smooth-curso...
  - benbenolson 4y ago
    No, he's talking about an obvious latency to almost any action, on a multi core multi GB computer.
    - arthurcolle 4y ago
      Do you think it's due to some kind of network call? I think the licensing in general is extremely painful. I've definitely paid like $450 over the last 8 years for various microsoft stuff and I just don't like that. I wish you could easily get device-portable single use licenses that don't just evaporate after the licensing period ends. Word/Excel is decent but has become an immeasurably huge piece of shit over the last two or three years compared to previous eras
      - HankB99 4y ago
        > Do you think it's due to some kind of network call? Good call! (No pun intended.) I often wondered why my fancy Xfinity DVR is so sluggish when I press a button on the remote. It finally connected when my Internet kept going down after some improvement they made and when the Internet could not be reached, the system stops responding to the remote. Can't even pause or exit. It's clear that every button press must make a round trip to Comcast' servers before it is acted on. It's Craptastic!

reaperducer 4y ago

When there is no competition Microsoft stops improving their products. Coincidentally, at this very moment I am re-creating an old paper form for another department in the company. They need it as a PDF. The people from the department sent me their best effort as a Word document. It's a disaster of mismatched styles, misaligned boxes, things that get cut off for no discernible reason, and stuff that won't print right because it's past Word's margins. I'm almost done re-creating it in Pages, from which I'll output a PDF. It's gone swimmingly. Pages isn't yet a replacement for every single little thing that Word does, but for the things it does do, it works well, quickly, predictably, and fast. But that may be Word's downfall: It took the kitchen sink route and became a mess. Pages is a good basic word processor for those who are interested in processing words. It's less "powerful" at doing all the thousand other things that people use Word for that they should probably do in Acrobat.

nvr219 4y ago
Google Docs is the competition, not Pages.
- kiwijamo 4y ago
  And Google Docs has its fair share of issues too. I've seen many Google Doc documented with the issues described here for Word.
  - nvr219 4y ago
    Verily
- pjmlp 4y ago
  A processor that is at the level of Word 2.0 is hardly the competition, unless being a better typewritter is everything one expects from a word processor.
philistine 4y ago
The most important word in your comment: predictable. Even when Pages completely changed when they redid the engine for web, iOS and Mac, Pages stayed predictable. If you turn invisibles on, you basically know everything of what’s happening at all times.
fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
Pages is really frustrating to me: until around 2012, pages was an extremely good tool for desktop-publishing and general writing. Sometime around then, Apple did a whole UI update and cut it down to a much more basic word processor that has slowly been improved.
qubex 4y ago
I personally adore Pages and especially Numbers. I spend most of my professional life designing and dealing with spreadsheets and Numbers’ table-based paradigm is simply orders of magnitude more elegant that Excel’s everything-is-a-sheet approach. Why? I can modify tables (inserting row and columns, changing attributes, & cetera) without affecting other tables. The one thing I miss and that infuriates me is Numbers’ lack of iterative solutions to circular references. Circular references are bad, you say, and I agree, but unfortunately in corporate finance they’re unavoidable when creating business plans because short-term debt depends on interest to be paid and interest to be paid depends on short-term debt. That means that Numbers can only take me so far until I have to export to .xlsx and then slog it out with Excel from then on. It’s a real pity they keep adding useless (to me) features such as collaborative editing and so forth when adding this functionality would take the whole application from being a toy to being a professional instrument. One can hope, I guess.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  In excel select the location of your table, select format as table and now you have a table that you can setup auto sum on, setup computed columns and automatically have everything extended when you add a new line. You can also use it as basis for a pivot table so excel can make you a much better overview of your data.
  - qubex 4y ago
    Thanks (no sarcasm) but I know how it works. My point was that in Excel this is an afterthought, whereas in Numbers it’s a consequence of how the application is devised from first principles.
  - Someone 4y ago
    Problem: once you have multiple such tables on a sheet, adding and removing rows or columns to such tables becomes hit and miss. Numbers will happily shift down tables to make room, but Excel won’t. Array formulas are another sort-of alternative for Numbers’ tables, but there, too, the implementation could be better. You can’t insert a row ‘inside’ a range of rows covered by an array formula, for example.

MonkeyClub 4y ago

And it’s gotten worse, apparently. Had to use Word and Excel for a few days, and there’s an obvious latency to almost any action, on a multi core multi GB computer. Why? It shouldn’t have any delay, period. I’m slowly forming the opinion that it’s been downhill since the Ribbon revamp. Office 2000 was pretty good, and aggressively snappier than 2016.

Bluecobra 4y ago
Are you talking about the smooth moving cursor? That's the first thing I disable in the registry with any new install. https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/office-2016-smooth-cursor-disable.html https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/office-2016-smooth-curso...
- benbenolson 4y ago
  No, he's talking about an obvious latency to almost any action, on a multi core multi GB computer.
  - arthurcolle 4y ago
    Do you think it's due to some kind of network call? I think the licensing in general is extremely painful. I've definitely paid like $450 over the last 8 years for various microsoft stuff and I just don't like that. I wish you could easily get device-portable single use licenses that don't just evaporate after the licensing period ends. Word/Excel is decent but has become an immeasurably huge piece of shit over the last two or three years compared to previous eras
    - HankB99 4y ago
      > Do you think it's due to some kind of network call? Good call! (No pun intended.) I often wondered why my fancy Xfinity DVR is so sluggish when I press a button on the remote. It finally connected when my Internet kept going down after some improvement they made and when the Internet could not be reached, the system stops responding to the remote. Can't even pause or exit. It's clear that every button press must make a round trip to Comcast' servers before it is acted on. It's Craptastic!