My experience with personal computers goes back to a machine called the Sinclair. I bought it mail order through Popular Science magazine for seventy dollars as a kit. Needless to say there were no programs written for it, and I had to learn to program in basic to make it do what I wanted. It was fun for a while. I learned that I was lousy at programming, and it was easier to buy canned programs to do work. The company I worked for was slow to get into PC’s, but eventually succumbed to the revolution. They went through several generations of machines before finally settling on the IBM. The logic was that IBM would stay in business longer than any of their competitors. We had a few Apple Macintosh but they fell out of favor because of the limited software availability. Everyone was writing software for the PC. Microsoft won big by providing the operating system, and they are still big.
I bought a used Apple IIe for my son to learn on, and he did well using that. I bought a Dell machine for myself long after the company put one on my desk and forced me into using it. I say forced because I had to learn how a spreadsheet program worked, and the peculiarities of the word processor. Skip to today. I am proficient in Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, and finally forced myself to learn Apple Pages. They all do about the same thing except they shuffle the windows and the menus thus forcing a user to learn where everything is. I climbed onto the Pages wagon when I became an Applephite. I own a Mac, a Macbook, and a smart phone. I still have two old Dell laptops for special work only. I have an ancient scanner whose software is only recognized by my oldest laptop.
It took me several years to learn how to use mail merge using Word. I loved it because I could finally send personalized letters to my friends without the letters appearing like form letter ads. The biggest problem I always had with my PC’s was the machine could not keep up with the software. A new version of software often worked well only on the newest largest memory machine. Freeze-up was another problem. My Dell machines froze too often, and unwanted malware caused endless slowdowns. It seemed like all I ever did was spend time waiting, or fixing problems related to security leaks in the operating system. Microsoft sent updates almost daily. Many times when I updated my older programs, they were no longer functional, and fighting viruses became the number one issue requiring my time.
When I switched to the Apple, I chose to avoid firewalls and virus protector programs. My days spent fixing Microsoft related issues were over. The IMac has been in my house for four years, and I have never had a virus. Only recently have I had to reboot the machine. Since the arrival of ICloud, I find myself rebooting more often.
Last Christmas, I wanted to use Pages to make my own Christmas card, and to address envelopes. That is until I realized that Pages no longer has a merge function for envelopes. Evidently Apple believes that the world no longer needs Snail Mail functionality. I worked around the problem by reloading an old version of Pages that still had the mail merge function. This year, I used Microsoft Word. It still works.
More recently, I contracted with my grand-daughter to edit the manuscript of my book. She asked me which program I wanted her to use. I told her that Pages is what I used, and Pages is what it should stay in. She sent me edits in groups of five chapters via email five times and they have been flawless. On the sixth group of chapters I could not open the file. I replied to her that she should resend it because I couldn’t open the manuscript(required index.xml file is missing). She did, the same thing happened. I suspected a snake in the woodpile, and Googled the error code; here is what I found:
Reply Helpfulby PeterBreis0807 on Mar 29, 2014 8:54 PM
You have 2 versions of Pages on your Mac.
Pages 5 is in your Applications folder.
Pages ’09/’08 is in your Applications/iWork folder.
You are alternately opening the wrong versions.
Pages ’09/’08 can not open Pages 5 files and you will get the warning that you need a newer version.
Pages 5/5.01 can not open Pages 5.1 files and you will get the warning that you need a newer version.
Pages 5.1 sometimes can not open its own files and you will get the warning that you need a newer version.
Pages 5 can open Pages ’09 files but may damage/alter them. It can not open Pages ’08 files at all.
Once opened and saved in Pages 5 the Pages ’09 files can not be opened in Pages ’09.
Anything that is saved to iCloud is also converted to Pages 5 files.
All Pages files no matter what version and incompatibility have the same extension .pages.
Pages 5 files are now only compatible with themselves on a very restricted set of hardware, software and Operating Systems and will not transfer correctly on any other server software than iCloud.
Apple has not only managed to confuse all its users, but also itself.
Note: Apple has removed over 100 features from Pages 5 and added many bugs:
Archive/trash Pages 5, after exporting all Pages 5 files to Pages ’09 or Word .docx, and rate/review it in the App Store, then get back to work.
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I searched my Pages work file for a clue and found the file my Grand-daughter sent. I opened it and it worked. What happened? I looked for my older version of Pages in the Applications file, it is not there anymore. Who made it disappear? Like I said there is a snake in the woodpile.
Apple made a change to Pages without regard to a customer’s usage. In their infinite wisdom to force an electronic vision upon us they created a Microsoft like need for updates. I guess staying ahead of your competition is no longer considered a good thing at Apple, instead they want worms just like their competitors.
Apple has the similar problems with IPhoto, and IMovie. They insist on making their pc’s act like the IPhone.
Filed under: Biography, Education, family | Tagged: Abortion, Apple, Pages, Trouble | Leave a comment »
