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Apple finest software ?
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angelmb
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May 29, 2012, 11:47 AM
 
Just curious what the general feeling on this is. Everyone's views are equally valid so here is mine:

I bow before Keynote, I just can't find it in me to dislike it.
  • Ease of use. Accepts virtually all files, which are automatically embedded, no more missing files.
  • Flexibility and non-destructive editing. Be it high resolution version for print, web, iOS devices, et cetera.
  • The cleverest grid lines I have ever met. Take that Adobe.
  • No tacky PowerPoint effects. Animation tools that can actually be used so you don't have to go through rehabilitation due to brain damage.
  • Should someone go the extra mile, third party add-ons and libraries are there to help.
  • Affordable, it costs only $19.99 on the Mac App Store.

So, what's your take on it.?
     
imitchellg5
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May 29, 2012, 12:02 PM
 
I love Keynote and Pages. As Word and PowerPoint become needlessly complex, Keynote and Pages are like a breath of fresh air. Of course part of that reason is because there haven't been new versions since 2009, but still.
     
Athens
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May 29, 2012, 12:23 PM
 
Apple Works and HyperCard. Both should have been maintained to this day. Pages is a good program but is more similar to Illustrator then a word processor. Apple has no paint type program or drawing program. Apple Works would still be relevant today as a traditional word processor and for its paint and drawing programs. The presentation part of it is replaced by keynote.
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imitchellg5
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May 29, 2012, 12:28 PM
 
How is Pages similar to Illustrator???
     
Athens
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May 29, 2012, 12:44 PM
 
Pages is more a layout program (desktop publishing) then a word processor. Pages shares elements with Quark, Illustrator, In-Design more so then say Microsoft Word or Apple Works.

Pages is a versatile all around tool, but isn't great at either because of that. It adds some powerful elements to a word processor and it takes away some of the complexity from the desktop publishing apps.

In the full Microsoft office suite I would class Pages more as MS Publisher the Word.
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imitchellg5
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May 29, 2012, 01:36 PM
 
What? Illustrator is a vector-design program. Pages has nothing to do with graphics design. I'd say that Pages is much more similar to InDesign than Illustrator.
     
Athens
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May 29, 2012, 01:49 PM
 
my apologies I was referring to page layout aspects of the program, illustrator was a poor example, indesign and quark.
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Eug
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May 29, 2012, 03:02 PM
 
iTunes of course.
     
boy8cookie
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May 29, 2012, 03:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by Athens View Post
Apple Works and HyperCard. Both should have been maintained to this day. Pages is a good program but is more similar to Illustrator then a word processor. Apple has no paint type program or drawing program. Apple Works would still be relevant today as a traditional word processor and for its paint and drawing programs. The presentation part of it is replaced by keynote.
Try TextEdit.
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 29, 2012, 03:20 PM
 
iMovie is awesome. Really awesome.

I also really like Logic, but the fact that it doesn't do fixed-phase plug-in processing is a bit of a wall-banger.

     
Eug
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May 29, 2012, 03:29 PM
 
AppleWorks sucked 15 years ago.
     
11011001
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May 29, 2012, 07:18 PM
 
Mail, it's been refined to perfection.
     
Sealobo
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May 29, 2012, 07:41 PM
 
looking at my dock... there are only 3 apps made by Apple:

Finder, iTunes, and Stickies.

so i guess iTunes.
     
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May 29, 2012, 08:26 PM
 
iMovie 6 HD was a jewel.
     
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May 29, 2012, 08:48 PM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
AppleWorks sucked 15 years ago.
ClarisWorks was awesome, in contrast.

Most impressive Mac app ever: Claris Homepage. Hands down the best.

Second: ClarisWorks
     
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May 29, 2012, 11:21 PM
 
Safari.
     
chabig
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May 29, 2012, 11:39 PM
 
ResEdit.
     
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May 29, 2012, 11:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by 11011001 View Post
Mail, it's been refined to perfection.
Interesting you should mention this. Mail IMAP in Lion screwed up my Yahoo mail message dates. It pissed me off so much I switched to Thunderbird. I got some of the dates back in Thunderbird, but not all of them. To this day, a whole chunk of my email messages are dated the same day I activated Mail IMAP. It makes searching mail a royal PITA, because you can't use date as a criterion for a lot of messages.

The stupid part is all the messages still have the proper dates in the header. It's just that they get seen as having a total different date, which is the day Mail.app downloaded them.
     
besson3c
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May 30, 2012, 12:31 AM
 
Originally Posted by 11011001 View Post
Mail, it's been refined to perfection.

I disagree with this quite strongly.

I'd say iOS is Apple's finest software, for a myriad of reasons.
     
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May 30, 2012, 03:53 AM
 
I think all of Apple's software right now is "OK", but there are no standouts as excellent apps. I have to say that Mail has got quite good by now, though.

It is interesting to note which apps are hard to replace on the Windows side. From that perspective, iPhoto and iMovie are hard to match.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Salty
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May 30, 2012, 04:40 AM
 
I'd have to agree that the iWork apps, specifically Pages and Keynote are phenomenal, I just wish they'd get around to adding the promised iCloud support so that Pages on the iPad and iPhone would actually become useful!

I genuinely love iBooks Author, I realize it's not commonly used but I love it for all the reasons i love Pages.

I think iTunes 3 was probably one of the most perfect apps ever. Once they added the store the team behind it seemed to be allowed to do any moronic thing they wanted without consequence. I'm glad they seem to have been reigned in. iPhoto ... I think it was 08, before Faces and all that extra junk and all the non standard UI paradigms that make it look like something Google made.

I enjoy the current version of Mail, though I only use it with iCloud.

I genuinely like Safari I realize a lot of people prefer other browsers, I use Chrome on XP at work, but I feel like Safari is actually a really good app. I never understand why everyone else complains.

iCal 1 was great, certainly not in love with this current version.

Also the Finder gets mocked a lot, but compared to Explorer in XP the Finder is amazing. Also system preferences is very thoughtfully laid out. It's not perfect but if you've ever tried to walk a senior citizen through figuring out what their IP is in any version of Windows, and you compare that with "Go to the Apple Menu, select system preferences, click network, what colour is the dot?" you know what I mean.

As for iOS? I think iOS 4 was probably my favourite, though I enjoy some of the features of 5 it just doesn't run perfect on a iPhone 4. I love AirPlay though.
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 30, 2012, 05:23 AM
 
Originally Posted by Cold Warrior View Post
iMovie 6 HD was a jewel.
The redone interface is so much better.
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 30, 2012, 05:26 AM
 
Originally Posted by chabig View Post
ResEdit.
     
besson3c
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May 30, 2012, 06:23 AM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
I think all of Apple's software right now is "OK", but there are no standouts as excellent apps. I have to say that Mail has got quite good by now, though.
Unless you have a email account with a ton of messages or require multiple identities, in which case it's pretty much unusable.
     
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May 30, 2012, 06:55 AM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Unless you have a email account with a ton of messages or require multiple identities, in which case it's pretty much unusable.
I have an email account with a ton of messages (and another with fewer), although I do try to clean it up on occasion. I don't have multiple identities, but I'd probably just make a second user account if I did. Never had problems.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
besson3c
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May 30, 2012, 07:09 AM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
I have an email account with a ton of messages (and another with fewer), although I do try to clean it up on occasion. I don't have multiple identities, but I'd probably just make a second user account if I did. Never had problems.

I don't think Mail will allow you to create a second user account accessing the same mailbox?
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 30, 2012, 07:17 AM
 
He's talking about a second user account on the Mac.
     
ShortcutToMoncton
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May 30, 2012, 07:21 AM
 
Hmmmmm.

When you sit down and think about it, what great software does Apple make? I find I mostly just enjoy how integrated everything is...but none of it is particularly "fine".

Perhaps OS X itself? But then again, stuff like the "red button to close, yellow to minimize, green to...what?!" drives me batty, and the mishmash window management is also painful to go back to now that I use the latest Windows for work (I'm not on Lion yet so I don't know if that's been addressed at all....but having 4 Safari windows open with 3 tabs each is an exercise in frustration if you're trying to switch back and forth. Also really enjoying the window control options in Windows, like Windows-arrow keys to pin windows to fullscreen, half the screen, minimize, etc...makes it real easy to have a window take up part of a screen while you look at what's going on in another window/program on the other side, or to work on two Word docs etc.).

I don't know. Like others, I used to love iTunes but it's become a slow and bloated hog now - need it to play iTunes movies, but it's useless playing file-based movies because it can't play shit, and while you're in the iTunes store you can't look at your music playlist....blah. That's not the way to integrate things. Mail is okay but it's done weird things to my emails. Safari is nice but I randomly need to use Firefox for certain things.

I don't know, actually. Huh.
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angelmb  (op)
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May 30, 2012, 09:34 AM
 
Originally Posted by Salty View Post
I genuinely like Safari I realize a lot of people prefer other browsers, I use Chrome on XP at work, but I feel like Safari is actually a really good app. I never understand why everyone else complains.
To me it is just I can't properly adds labels, remarks, tags… to my bookmarks. Anything else is OK and IMO it still looks the best; never liked the 'Safari' name though.

Also system preferences is very thoughtfully laid out.
You know what I love about System Preferences? View > Customize… and hide those panes you don't need sitting there, making it even cleaner to look at.
     
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May 30, 2012, 11:17 AM
 
Apple's best software is OS X/iOS. Its best application software. . . that's a harder question. Keynote's pretty nice I agree.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
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May 30, 2012, 11:44 AM
 
MacDraw Pro!
     
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May 30, 2012, 01:17 PM
 
I loved MacDraw, and MacPaint.

Currently, I don't use much apple software frequently except mail and itunes and calendar.

Mail works, but there are things that entourage can do that I am continually surprised mail can't. Click on "from" column to sort, sure... type someone's last name, and it should jump to that person or letter at least. I have to run a search instead of a simple sort.
     
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May 30, 2012, 01:21 PM
 
CyberDog.
     
olePigeon
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May 30, 2012, 01:35 PM
 
System 7 for me.
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May 30, 2012, 04:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cold Warrior View Post
iMovie 6 HD was a jewel.
I will second that!
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May 30, 2012, 04:51 PM
 
Final Cut Pro v.7 and Compressor.
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olePigeon
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May 30, 2012, 04:52 PM
 
Did anyone ever use WorldText? It was a really cool version of SimpleText that let you do sorts of things with extended fonts like Apple Chancery. Normally I hate Apple Chancery, but I didn't know you could add all sorts of neat serifs and squigglies to make it look really, really nice. Its main function was for use with non Latin based alphabets.
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May 30, 2012, 04:57 PM
 
(0) OS X itself. My personal favorites at this point are 10.6 and 10.4 (in this order).
(1) The first three versions of iTunes were awesome. iTunes is probably the most-used Apple app of all time for me. Nowadays it has become bloated, though. Apple seriously needs to make a »Music«-only app.
(2) The versions of Keynote which I've used were great. (Nowadays I use LaTeX for slides.)
(3) Aperture. Even though Lightroom has seen much more advances and more steady updates, I still vastly prefer Aperture's UI over that of Lightroom.
(4) The Finder. I really like the simplicity and although it doesn't work well for some specialized tasks, I've loved column view from day 1.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
11011001
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May 31, 2012, 12:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
(0) OS X itself. My personal favorites at this point are 10.6 and 10.4 (in this order).
(2) The versions of Keynote which I've used were great. (Nowadays I use LaTeX for slides.)
LaTeX for slides? Hardcore.
     
imitchellg5
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May 31, 2012, 09:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
(3) Aperture. Even though Lightroom has seen much more advances and more steady updates, I still vastly prefer Aperture's UI over that of Lightroom.
Lightroom is much more powerful now, but I can't stand Lr's interface. I'll stick with Aperture until Adobe fixes that.
     
11011001
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Jun 1, 2012, 12:02 AM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
Interesting you should mention this. Mail IMAP in Lion screwed up my Yahoo mail message dates. It pissed me off so much I switched to Thunderbird. I got some of the dates back in Thunderbird, but not all of them. To this day, a whole chunk of my email messages are dated the same day I activated Mail IMAP. It makes searching mail a royal PITA, because you can't use date as a criterion for a lot of messages.

The stupid part is all the messages still have the proper dates in the header. It's just that they get seen as having a total different date, which is the day Mail.app downloaded them.
I'm actually a little unhappy with some of its settings. It seems to have trouble when you mess with SMTP settings, and set them to servers that don't match the IMAP servers. That might just be me.

However, I do think the interface is perfect.
     
olePigeon
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Jun 1, 2012, 12:23 PM
 
While not Apple, I do enjoy The Grouch system extension for System 7. Puts a smile on my face every time I empty the trash.

For those of you who haven't seen it, Oscar the Grouch pops out of the trash can, singing, "I love it because it's trash!" or, "I love trash!"
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Jun 1, 2012, 11:47 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cold Warrior View Post
iMovie 6 HD was a jewel.
About once a month I try and use iMovie '11 but I always end up hating it and doing whatever I need to do in 30 seconds with iMovie HD.
     
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Jun 2, 2012, 10:41 AM
 
Originally Posted by olePigeon View Post
While not Apple, I do enjoy The Grouch system extension for System 7. Puts a smile on my face every time I empty the trash.

For those of you who haven't seen it, Oscar the Grouch pops out of the trash can, singing, "I love it because it's trash!" or, "I love trash!"
I was very sad when it stopped working. Not sure if due to Sesame's lawyers or just an incompatible update...

Oscar The Grouch on Mac Plus Trash (System 7) - YouTube

just found this hack, might be fun to play with:
Stephen R. Gilman: Oscar loves OSX because of its trash
     
imitchellg5
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Jun 2, 2012, 12:32 PM
 
I actually like iMovie '11. I hated '08 and '09, but '11 is now very good, IMO.
     
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Jun 8, 2012, 04:59 PM
 
OSX and iOS are Apples jewels, particularly iOS. The integration between apps etc is nice enough but it could be better.
In the main Apples integrated software ranges from passable (iLife) through ordinary (mail) to sub standard (iCal Address Book).
Apple are very strong on smoke and mirrors, they can polish pretty much any application so that the majority of people think it is far more special than it is. Really for such a company their ambitions for their own software are quite poor.
This space for Hire! Reasonable rates. Reach an audience of literally dozens!
     
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Jun 8, 2012, 05:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doc HM View Post
OSX and iOS are Apples jewels, particularly iOS. The integration between apps etc is nice enough but it could be better.
In the main Apples integrated software ranges from passable (iLife) through ordinary (mail) to sub standard (iCal Address Book).
Apple are very strong on smoke and mirrors, they can polish pretty much any application so that the majority of people think it is far more special than it is. Really for such a company their ambitions for their own software are quite poor.
Really?

I think GarageBand and iMovie on Mac are stellar, and GarageBand and iPhoto on iOS are simply sensational.

Logic is also rather nice, as I mentioned above.
     
   
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