More About Apple's “Pages”

My first thought when I read about “Pages”, Apple’s new word processor, was that it was more of a desktop publisher than a word processor. But then I let Apple’s marketing hype override that impression and wrote yesterday’s musings about Pages Vs MS Word. Today, I stand corrected because of a web article by a MacWorld staffer who validated my first impression, i.e., Pages is more a desktop publishing application than a word processor.

When the PC revolution started back in the 80’s, the differences between word processors and desktop publishers were more apparent. Since then, as the PC market (and I am including the Mac in that term) has become more sophisticated and software makers have strained to differentiate their products, the line has become more blurred. Most word processors today are a hybrid of true word processors and desktop publishing applications. That’s why Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect, among others, come with templates that allow you to make everything from brochures to labels to calendars.

The MacWorld writer thought that Pages was Apple’s answer to the killing of Adobe Pagemaker for the Mac. I disagree. From what I’ve seen of Pages (and admittedly that hasn’t been a lot), it’s more akin to Microsoft Publisher or MacKiev’s PrintShop than PageMaker. PageMaker’s replacement on the Adobe side of the house was and is In Design. PageMaker might have ended its reign on both the Windows and Mac platforms as a “small business and home use” app, but it began life as THE professional product for desktop publishing on the personal computer. It was PageMaker and the laser printer that made the desktop publishing trail.