I ran Mac for years but never actually considered using Page or Numbers. A long time ago I gave up on MS Office and switched to Libre Office which was… fine-ish. I also use Google Docs but wouldn’t want to give up a local desktop office suite altogether.
Having just bought a new MBP I opened one of my old MS Word documents forgetting I’d not installed LibreOffice yet and of course it opened in Pages. I figured maybe I should give it a go instead of knee-jerk rejecting it. My first issue is that almost anything I ever work on will be something that was almost certainly made with Microsoft Word and it’s very annoying to me that in Pages, I can’t just cmd+s save a Word document as I edit it, having instead to save a .pages version for safety and periodically ‘exporting’ a .docx and overwriting the previous export to update it in order to maintain the document’s compatibility with anyone else using it in Word.
I also tried recreating my invoice document that I first made many years ago in Word. Editing the original was a non-starter, just impossible to get it looking right but that’s okay it wasn’t designed for Pages and I was trying to keep an open mind. So I remade it from scratch figuring it was a good test bed as it has some just basic writing of words on a page but also more complicated formatting and tables to recreate in a specific way to make it indistinguishable from my original document. I got there in the end but it was horrendously painful. I haven’t given up on it yet because I figure Word is actually probably one of the very first computer programs of any type that I ever used so to say it’s just what I’m more used to is an understatement. Because of that, learning anything significantly departing from Word will naturally be hard, and unlike Google Docs and Libre Office Write, it doesn’t try to emulate Word. The thing is though, maybe I could get used to it, but I’m kind of wondering, if it’s worth the bother. My main reasoning for trying is that it’s there already, so why install something else and I may as well get my money’s worth and while over-hyped, often Apple software is really nicely polished and a joy to use so I feel like I want to like it and to use it. But with the learning curve plus the compatibility issues with Office, I think the bar for it being worth it raises to the point where it really has to actually be better than word in a meaningful way to justify it, not just as good. Is Pages better than Word? Certainly right now it doesn’t look that way, but I’m still adjusting of course.
Does anyone else use it and do they like it? Is it something that once you get used to you’d never want to use anything else? My other problem is that for some reason most of the Apple Support articles and forum posts answering questions I have all seem to be from around Circa 2012 at the latest and very rarely any more recently than that. Often they refer to menu items that are slightly out of date and subtly different now, which is weird. What happened in 2012 that seemed to stop people using this software?
I hate to admit it, but Word is quite good. Especially when it comes to compatibility and widespread use. I’ve still found myself gravitating towards LibreOffice for a variety of reasons.
As someone who isn’t a big fan of Microsoft, LibreOffice is refreshingly not Microsoft. Open-source, no telemetry, cross-platform with great Linux support, etc.
As for Pages, while it has its merits, I’ve found it to be somewhat limiting and unintuitive compared to other office suites. The compatibility issues you mentioned are a significant drawback, especially if you’re frequently sharing documents with users who primarily use Word. LibreOffice has fantastic Word compatibility in my experience.
The learning curve for Pages can be steep, especially if you’re used to the layout and functionalities of Word or LibreOffice. Apple software is often rightfully praised for its polished interface and user-friendly design, but this doesn’t necessarily translate to a superior user experience in this specific case where learned behavior and muscle memory are relevant.
It is hard to get a concrete answer here, but I’d say keep exploring different options and seeing what works best for you. I’ve found that LibreOffice strikes a good balance between functionality, ease of use, and compatibility. But of course, everyone’s preferences and needs are different - good luck!
Unsurprisingly I gave up on Pages in the end. I really wanted to like it, I was all set to embrace something I saw as being a kind of fancy, expensive option over the usual free software I use, but without the bitter taste of Microsoft products. It would also just slightly have made the choice of my new Mac feel better too since weirdly enough, much as I really like Apple computers, I rarely actually use any Apple software on them.
Pages had all this going in it’s favour but it just pissed me off too much to use it when LibreOffice was right there and not such a hassle. The lack of ability to natively save word formats was what really kneecapped it on top of the significant friction of the unfamiliar. A shame but not unexpected I guess.I’m still curious what the deal was with everything online including many of the official support articles being from 2012, WTF?