iWork ‘08: The “Microsoft Go Fuck Yourselves” Edition

Apple just unveiled its new productivity suite iWork along with some more “professional” looking iMacs to run them on. I own a copy of the previous copy of the suite, iWork ‘06 and I have to say that I was impressed with the ableness of Pages, the word-processor portion of the bundle. It is a surprisingly powerful page layout tool that I have used for that specific purpose several times now with great effect. I hadn’t really used Keynote until a few weeks ago, and even then I can’t say that I used it all to its fullest potential. The presentation that I created was very simplistic and didn’t even use some tasteful transitions. Having also used the dreaded PowerPoint, I consider Keynote to be miles and miles ahead of PP on nearly every front.

Pages even preformed well as just a generic word-processor, but it didn’t feel very polished or refined, the fact that everything was moveable was big step down when editing a page with both text and images in it. Despite how surprisingly good Pages is, no one sane clearly thought that it could be a credible replacement for the 800lb elephant in the corner Microsoft Word. Nearly every time that I have used Word there has been something terribly annoying happening automatically, something that is very difficult to find, or just the general unresponsiveness of the application. Granted Word has some very cool features and necessary ones at that, but they are often buried in layers of menus and what not. What has been true about nearly every non-Microsoft word-processor that I have used is that they are always very intuitive to use and very easy to learn. Even NeoOffice, which is essentially a Mac port of the OpenOffice project, is easier to use than Word, although it’s just dog slow and very buggy. It has to do with the fact that all of these companies are trying to earn your business by making your workflow easier to handle. These software developers don’t assume that you must have their product to function in the wired world. They have to compete for your business.

This is were Pages makes its big splash. Apple has already tried its hand at creating text editing and creation programs. MacWrite, AppleWorks, and even the very capable TextEdit are all excellent word-processors, but they died a slow and painful death at the hands of Word. The original Word was one of the better applications for any platform, but Microsoft has been adding to the bloat and feature count in obtrusive ways and with questionable user-interface ideas. Ask a Mac greybeard about Word 6 and you will most certainly get a “you-walked-over-my-grave” shudder running down his spine. With the latest iteration, Pages and Apple got serious about making a challenge at the entrenchment of Word on the personal computer. I think that the most requested feature that is present in Word, but typically implemented in a kludgy way, is the Track Changes button. I have had to use track changes on Word before and it just highlights what has been changed and sticks lots of unnecessary text in the way of the prose. Pages has its own little sidebar that contains a sequence of what was added, deleted, or edited by other people. All color coded and easy to reject or approve. Pure. Genius.

Not that I’m likely to collaborate with someone on any kind of document, but for those who need it there is another reason to ditch Word. The contextual format bar is another stroke of genius and it fits perfectly within the dichotomy of the page layout tool and the word-processor. Being able to adjust the frame for a picture when a photo is selected and being able to decide the kern on text without a lot of pointless navigating is just damned handy.

This is the iteration where Pages shoots a shot across the bow of Word and makes a bid for desktop share on the Mac. Add to the fact that Mac Office 2008 has been pushed back to January 2008 and Mac customers have serious reasons to look at iWork as a viable option for replacing Word and Keynote. (The fact that Keynote is getting an update just puts it in the stratosphere as far as PowerPoint is concerned. Keynote won the battle for presentation software on the Mac long ago.) The sticky wicket appears to be Excel. Lots of people actually like Excel, as opposed to having to use it for one job or another, and it has quite a loyal following on both sides of the platform war. EvenI have certain affectations for Excel. I usually judge an application by how well it acts as I think it should the first time that I use it. And lo and behold Excel did what it should do as a spread sheet app the very first time.

And then the Lord begat Numbers. Numbers has, I think done away with the spreadsheet as we know it. You don’t start with cells, you start with a blank page and then add a table of cells. Things like realtime graph updating, normal language formulae and such are those that will differentiate it from Excel. It’s not as powerful or as feature rich, but I think for 90% of spreadsheet users will be very satisfied with Numbers.

And so it begins. I won’t say that Apple is blameless in the suite war and the battles between Microsoft and Apple, but the recent shots have been taken by Redmond. Internet Explorer for Mac was axed, Windows Media Player for Mac died, and of course the delay of the Office 2008. I say bring it on. Numbers has a few problems with it and Pages could use some polish, but by time the next iWork comes out, I think that it has the potential to be a giant slayer and totally evict Microsoft from the Macintosh.

Apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t like Harry Potter

So Harry’s back. Hay na, hay na, Harry’s back. JK Rowling is desperately trying to convince the press that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be the last chapter of the Potter series. There is no way that Rowling wouldn’t see more Harry Potter as a license to print money. Authors and movie makers might say that they want to respect the integrity of the series and the characters, but then there are things like T3: Rise of the Machines and Rocky V. Perhaps Harry Potter will lie dormant for a few years but I sense the curse of Star Trek. When Paramount decided that they were going to cancel Enterprise at the end of the 2005 season it was widely believed in the fan community that the franchise needed a break, which is something that I echoed. I felt that Star Trek had run it’s course, yet two years later a film is in development. Of course it’s a prequel. To quote Patton Oswalt “I don’t care where the stuff I love comes from, I just love the stuff I love!”

To get to a greater point, I know that I am not the first to be mystified by the success of Harry Potter. I will say at the beginning of the post that I have only read up through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, yet I still feel sufficiently qualified to discuss the success and the grip that it has on the populace. To say that Harry Potter is terrifically entertaining prose with intelligently written and well defined characters is a stretch. It’s not that the series is poorly written and whatnot, I just do not understand the appeal to the larger and older American reading public. As a kids series it is merely okay. The massive changes in characterization and plot twists are perhaps enough to keep a child interested, but the greater American reading public taking a vested interest in the life and or death of Prof. Dumbledore continues to goggle the mind.

To call JK Rowling a hack would be too strong a language, but honestly I think a friggin’ monkey chained to a Remington could do better. The absurd deus ex machina in Azkaban as Hermione has that ridiculous magic necklace that can turn back time immediately comes to mind. I guess the whole point of that bit was to point out to the reader that Rowling couldn’t find a way for her heroes to survive their particular quest without resorting to the hackery of time travel. It feels tacked on and inelegant because it is and the prose suffers for it. Rowling isn’t a particularly gifted write. She has other problems stringing together other absurd plots and trying to hold it all in one neat package at the end of the novel upon the thinnest thread. Lupin is a werewolf, the elder Potters were animagi, Ron’s rat is a spy, Harry is a twit. All of these contrivances add little to the main plot of Harry filling more into the role of being a sorcerer.

And that is what is so sad about Harry Potter, if there were just less of the extraneous padding and there were more characterization of Harry and his journey as a boy into the throes of manhood instead of these awkward phrases about Harry the idiotic side plots that end up becoming central to the plot. But the subtleness is lost when it feels as if the author is reaching through the page to point the reader in the right direction, not with clues or hints, but by saying “Look at this! This is important.” Smart readers, even child readers should be able to grasp that. Harry’s main story, and that of the rise of Voldemort is actually quite interesting, if not terribly original, but it feels as if Rowling knows that she has seven books to deal with the consequences of that storyline so readers are forced to deal with silly tripe including all of the scenes with the Durselys.

Another thing that always brought me out of the story in the Harry Potter series was the way that the universe was not at all interesting or immersive. Every single aspect is completely derivative and not convincing at all. Even Tolkien, who draws extensively from mythos from around the globe, added his own little spice and twist about the creatures, races, and phenomena that were in his universe. In Rowling’s Potterverse, Goblins are greedy, Giants are tall creatures of the forest, and Hippogrifs are deadly and dangerous. Most of the monsters in Potter books are used as sight gags, for example Fluffy the three-headed Cerberus look-alike that guards the Chamber of Secrets in the first book immediately loses its appeal when the gamekeeper is able to talk him down and tame him.

Even other children’s books still hold their appeal as one ages. I know that books I read as a child that were clearly in the children’s genre and reference things like cooties and homework still have some kind of an appeal as an adult. R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, Bruce Coville’s My Teacher is an Alien and even Tolkien’s The Hobbit (which I found much more approachable as a child than the rest of the Lord of the Rings). These works still have value and immersive universes, distinctive prose and a certain believability. Not to say that some particular Goosebumps books aren’t cheesy now, but the fit into the genre of children’s literature better than Harry Potter ever would. And I haven’t even brought out the big guns Madeleine L’Engle and Ursula K. Le Guin.

As for adults there are so many good science-fiction and fantasy books out there to be sampled. I only read Potter as part of an assignment in school and then went back to catch up to the current book, which was at that point Phoenix. Potter was entertaining and easy to read. And sometimes one just needs a book that is easy to read, but now looking back I would much rather pick up the latest Stephen King than pick up the next Potter. Authors like Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson Douglas Adams, George R.R. Martin and Robert Jordan offer entertaining and much more invigorating reads for adults looking at fantasy. The three best fantasy series out there right now are Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, King’s The Dark Tower, and Jordan’s Wheel of Time. All offer immersive universes and distinct characters without the wincing prose and the vapid, useless plot twists of J.K. Rowling.

All I would say to those who read Potter is that, yeah it may be a decent and entertaining series, but it doesn’t hold a candle to even Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia (which I have always despised, but still respected). For both children and adults who hold Harry in the deepest esteem, I remind them that the world of fantasy does not end with Harry Potter.