Betalogue

Apple has adopted a strange new approach for iWork ’09 updates. It is distributing a package called iWork ’09 Update 1, which updates Pages ’09 from 4.0 to 4.0.1, Numbers ’09 from 2.0 to 2.0.1 and Keynote ’09 from 5.0 to 5.0.1.

I guess users who only need Pages and Numbers and don’t care about Keynote have no choice but to download the update for three applications just the same. Granted, the total size is “only” a little over 42 MB, which, in this day and age, is positively puny, but it still means less flexibility for users and troubleshooters, not to mention the additional difficulty of keeping track of application version numbers when the name of the update itself does not give you any clues regarding the version numbers (unless you are supposed to assume that “Update 1” means versions x.0.1, and “Update 2,” if there ever is one, will mean versions x.0.2, and so on).

Anyway, the main news here as far as I am concerned is that there is a fix the page count bug in Pages ’09.

If I take a single page document and insert a section break and instruct Pages to start numbering the second section at 1, then a page count inserted in the second section behaves as expected (which it didn’t in Pages ’09 4.0.0).

In other words, the page count total is again section-specific instead of being document-wide.

It also looks like the scrolling speed and overall responsiveness is somewhat improved when working with documents containing pictures. Unfortunately, when a page contains a table, there is still a noticeable slowdown in the scrolling speed and overall responsiveness.

And other new bugs introduced in Pages ’09 4.0.0, such as the disappearing cursor when using line breaks (shift-Return), the failure to scroll down when extending selection with option-shift-Down, or the focus bug after hiding the application are still not fixed.

It really is quite frustrating that such bugs slip through the cracks and end up poisoning our daily lives for months on end until someone at Apple finally pays attention to bug reports and does something about them.

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Pages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.