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Wow, I didn't know about that Keynote feature, that's amazing. it really shows the extent to which they care about visual design as an end result. I desperatel

by yoz 2y ago

Wow, I didn't know about that Keynote feature, that's amazing. it really shows the extent to which they care about visual design as an end result. I desperately wish Apple's office apps got more development. They have the potential to be world-beating (especially Numbers) but Apple seems content to just update a couple of minor features a year and leave it at that.

timr 2y ago
Keynote is absolutely the presentation software a designer would create, if they didn't have to do it while being saddled with inappropriate technologies. I'm a pragmatist and I understand why collaborative editing and web-based "files" won out...but when you use a well-crafted piece of desktop software like Keynote it really makes you wistful for what might have been. People have forgotten how much of a hole you dig for yourself in when you have to build everything in the browser.
- yoz 2y ago
  You prompted me to try out the little-known web version of Keynote on iCloud.com. I expected it to be surprisingly good if not quite up to the desktop standard, since Apple's front end web teams do amazing work. And sure enough, that's what it is. I focused on animation features and it has most of those available in the desktop version, but it's missing a few (e.g. action build effects). It's also missing some of the image adjustments. But it's got Magic Move, and shape subtraction/intersection[1]. Most importantly feels pretty good to use, though it takes a while to load (on Chromium). I've no idea if they implemented that inner-detail object alignment - don't have an easy way of testing it. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote/combine-or-break-apart-shapes-tane80cfd59d/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote/combine-or-break-apa... - note the feature about breaking apart SVG images too, I wonder if that's related to the inner-detail trick.
- ianleighton 2y ago
  My only counter to this is that after, what, two _decades_, Apple _still_ has not added the ability to adjust number boxes with the up/down arrows on the keyboard (like text size for example). A designer would have included this on day 1, it’s such a common UI pattern in design tools. If anyone on the iWork team is reading this, _please_ get to that Radar.
alwillis 2y ago
> They have the potential to be world-beating (especially Numbers) Don't sleep on Numbers. It doesn't get a lot of attention but it can do some nice things in a much less bloated interface than Excel. It's had regular expressions for a while for example, while Excel is just getting them. I love being able to put multiple spreadsheets on a page and arrange them in whatever way you want. Reminds me of Lotus Improv [1] from back in the day. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv
- tambourine_man 2y ago
  I like numbers, but AFAIK its file format is not open and Apple just dropped support for older versions some years ago. Imagine not being able to open a spreadsheet from 5 years ago.
- gcanyon 2y ago
  > put multiple spreadsheets on a page I’ve been hot for this feature since the Improv days — I browbeat the AppleWorks people to support it better, and when a bunch of them split off to build <app I don’t remember the name of> I made sure they knew this was a key feature. Ragtime still supports it as far as I know. https://www.ragtime.de/start.html?lang_id=en https://www.ragtime.de/start.html?lang_id=en
  - tveyben 2y ago
    Ragtime is still a thing??? I had the pleasure of working in Ragtime 2.5 and then 3 in 199x on a MacPlus (I had a job translating the manual for Cricket Presents - “PowerPoint” before PowerPoint - from English to danish). It was one of the reasons I ‘got in to computers’(Macs) - it felt like it could ‘do it all’ and was so easy to use (at the time x86 based pc’s did not do the same for me…
    - gcanyon 2y ago
      Remarkably enough it seems so. Unfortunately I've never been in a place where 1. I needed its particular skillset 2. It was the best candidate for the job. I love the idea of having multiple worksheets in a particular document so much, and yet 99.9% of the time I just throw open a google sheet and start throwing in numbers. The collaboration smoothness is a beats-all-else feature.

by yoz 2y ago

timr 2y ago

Keynote is absolutely the presentation software a designer would create, if they didn't have to do it while being saddled with inappropriate technologies. I'm a pragmatist and I understand why collaborative editing and web-based "files" won out...but when you use a well-crafted piece of desktop software like Keynote it really makes you wistful for what might have been. People have forgotten how much of a hole you dig for yourself in when you have to build everything in the browser.

yoz 2y ago
You prompted me to try out the little-known web version of Keynote on iCloud.com. I expected it to be surprisingly good if not quite up to the desktop standard, since Apple's front end web teams do amazing work. And sure enough, that's what it is. I focused on animation features and it has most of those available in the desktop version, but it's missing a few (e.g. action build effects). It's also missing some of the image adjustments. But it's got Magic Move, and shape subtraction/intersection[1]. Most importantly feels pretty good to use, though it takes a while to load (on Chromium). I've no idea if they implemented that inner-detail object alignment - don't have an easy way of testing it. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote/combine-or-break-apart-shapes-tane80cfd59d/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote/combine-or-break-apa... - note the feature about breaking apart SVG images too, I wonder if that's related to the inner-detail trick.
ianleighton 2y ago
My only counter to this is that after, what, two _decades_, Apple _still_ has not added the ability to adjust number boxes with the up/down arrows on the keyboard (like text size for example). A designer would have included this on day 1, it’s such a common UI pattern in design tools. If anyone on the iWork team is reading this, _please_ get to that Radar.

alwillis 2y ago

> They have the potential to be world-beating (especially Numbers) Don't sleep on Numbers. It doesn't get a lot of attention but it can do some nice things in a much less bloated interface than Excel. It's had regular expressions for a while for example, while Excel is just getting them. I love being able to put multiple spreadsheets on a page and arrange them in whatever way you want. Reminds me of Lotus Improv [1] from back in the day. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv

tambourine_man 2y ago
I like numbers, but AFAIK its file format is not open and Apple just dropped support for older versions some years ago. Imagine not being able to open a spreadsheet from 5 years ago.
gcanyon 2y ago
> put multiple spreadsheets on a page I’ve been hot for this feature since the Improv days — I browbeat the AppleWorks people to support it better, and when a bunch of them split off to build <app I don’t remember the name of> I made sure they knew this was a key feature. Ragtime still supports it as far as I know. https://www.ragtime.de/start.html?lang_id=en https://www.ragtime.de/start.html?lang_id=en
- tveyben 2y ago
  Ragtime is still a thing??? I had the pleasure of working in Ragtime 2.5 and then 3 in 199x on a MacPlus (I had a job translating the manual for Cricket Presents - “PowerPoint” before PowerPoint - from English to danish). It was one of the reasons I ‘got in to computers’(Macs) - it felt like it could ‘do it all’ and was so easy to use (at the time x86 based pc’s did not do the same for me…
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    Remarkably enough it seems so. Unfortunately I've never been in a place where 1. I needed its particular skillset 2. It was the best candidate for the job. I love the idea of having multiple worksheets in a particular document so much, and yet 99.9% of the time I just throw open a google sheet and start throwing in numbers. The collaboration smoothness is a beats-all-else feature.