iWork 08There is a certain segment of the Mac-using population that’s notorious for its “Apple Uber Alles” attitude. They won’t let a thing touch their precious CPU unless it’s been signed, sealed, and delivered by the glowing hands of Steve Jobs, himself. Everyone else comes in second, no matter the functionality of the tool, or its correctness for the job.

I’m a bit more pragmatic, having used a Commodore computer, Windows, Linux, and a Mac. I’m definitely a “right tool for the right job” kind of guy.

Yet it’s still with some trepidation that I come here today to announce that I’m seriously considering switching all of my word processing tasks to Apple’s Pages program, part of the iWork 08 collection. I don’t want to look like a Kool Aid drinker. Only freaks switch away from Microsoft Office, right?

I downloaded the 30 day demo of Pages last week and have been using it exclusively since then. It’s a wonderful program with some serious adantages over Word for me. First of all, it hasn’t had any problem loading in Word files. The backwards compatability is there. I’m not losing access to anything with Pages. Secondly, it does export to Word format (as well as PDF, rich text, and plain text), so my friends can see what I’ve written just as easily as if they were using Pages, itself. Third, I don’t use a lot of the high end features of a word processor. I don’t need mail merge. I just need text to flow, add in some bullet points and paragraph indents or centerings, and I’m good. Pages gives me all of that. Fourth, it does it in a smaller footprint. Word has never been particularly quick to load on either of my Mac machines. Everytime I start it up, it throws me an error about VB Script, I think. (I ceased paying it any attention a long time ago.) Pages, in comparison, pops right up.

The Pages in iWork 08 is a lot better than the previous one. It’s no longer a page-layout program first. It’s a word processor. I like that. You can still add pictures in and tables and all the rest, but that’s all invisible to you unless and until you need it.

But here’s the thing that sells it for me: It looks and feels nicer than Word. I think half of you just clicked to the next item in your RSS reader, didn’t you? I can’t explain this. Maybe it’s only the kind of thing you feel if you write an awful lot. I do. I probably write 5000 words a week between the column and this blog. I spent a ton of time in front of a word processor, so I need a comfortable “environment,” where things look right to my eye to make it easier to write, edit, and rewrite. The backend of the WordPress blog certainly isn’t it. It’s too busy, with too small and restrictive a textarea. Microsoft Word has just sort of been the default for the last 10 or 12 years for me. It’s not great, but you get used to it and don’t think twice about it. I’ve tried mixing things up by using different fonts to see which one is the easiest for me to read. I usually land on Times New Roman or Verdana (which is the official CBR text font.) Yet there’s always been something just slightly off about Word to me.

Pages feels right. It defaults to Helvetica in a way that I guess can’t be rendered properly in Word. There’s been talk on-line recently about the different ways the Mac and Windows handle fonts, dealing with anti-aliasing and the rest. I’m sure that’s a big part of the reason for all this. I’ve tried Helvetica on Word — and even its cheapo and much hated replacement, Arial — but it doesn’t look nearly this good. Pages looks cleaner, sharper, easier to read and edit. I can spot things in my own writing a lot easier. Helvetica is crisp and beautiful. Plus, there’s some extra white space all around the text, helping to center your eye on the screen. The toolbar at the top is very limited, which is great since I rarely use it. For more details, I can view a new palette of options, basically. I often run with the “Properties” window open separately and to the right, just to see what my word count is up to.

I have to start testing Numbers next, to see if it’ll be the Excel spreadsheet replacement for me. Again, I don’t use anything too complicated in my spreadsheets — no crazy macros, merges, or hairy formulas. If Numbers can handle what I use a spreadsheet for, then I might just drop the $79 on iWork.

I can fit that into the budget because I’m not spending the $79 on iLife, whose updates are too minimal for me to justify spending the money.

And just to prove I’m not an Apple snob — I dumped iPhoto last month in preference to Lightroom, a far superior and cooler product from a company best known for making some of the slowest-loading and most bloated software ever.

If you’d like to go really old school, there’s always WriteRoom.  I have it, but haven’t played with it yet.  Steven Poole really likes it, though.