Patrick James

There are two things I really like about iWork ’09. The outliner in Pages and iWork.com. The later suits me very well indeed. I find myself doing quite a lot of collaborative projects. The last one I did I used Google Docs. While Google Docs gives 100% editability to all participants the actual Google Doc that is produced is not very pretty. I would then have to create something nice from this.

With iWork.com the uploaded document is not editable like a Google Doc, but rather participants can leave comments on it. This is fine by me because that is all that is required. However the actual document is a very nice looking thing. It is much easier for me to update the nice looking iWork document with the contents of the comments by the others, rather than convert a Google Doc into something presentable.

For those that are creating newsletters and that kind of thing with Pages iWork.com would be really a fabulous thing to have.

I have one concern about the iWork.com which is the email that is automatically sent out to the invited participants. This is an HTML email with a link embedded in a graphic to open the iWork.com document in their browser. The problem is that if they are using a plain text only email client then I suspect they are going to be receiving an incomprehensible mess. The actual link is shown at the bottom of the email that is sent but it is approximately one mile long. There doesn’t seem to be any Plain Text Alternative included with the outgoing email. What I’d like to see is a plain text alternative with a short link that would not be in risk of having line breaks inserted by the email system.

I don’t think I currently use any third party desktop utilities on my Mac. I have to give it some thought because what actually constitutes a desktop utility is not very clear. I don’t even know if the term desktop utility is used these days.

To me it means something that is designed to assist with using the GUI of the Mac. It might be some system of toolbars, or maybe some form of contextual menu enhancement. Generally the destop utility will assist with locating files and folders, look after text clippings, run scripts, that kind of thing.

The Finder in Mac OS X is, imho, so well worked out that it just doesn’t need these little programs. Instead of improving the Finder they just add unnecessary complications.

I used to feel the same way with the classic Mac OS. I did use one desktop utility for that and it was the Behierachic Apple Menu extension. I remember that with the classic OS I tried out many of these desktop utilities and even bought a couple. All over the web there are people praising them for this and that. The price of these desktop utilities is usually fairly low and so there is a tendency to download them, try them out and be quite taken with their ingenuity and novelty and then buy them. Usually it’s a mistake. After a while they turn out to be more trouble than just using the Finder and so they stop being used. At least that is my experience. With Mac OS X I do try out these utilities from time to time but I now have the rule not to buy until the trial period has come to an end, and this rule has saved me some money.

OS X comes with a desktop utility called the Dock. It is the best I’ve ever used and I am a big fan of it. The Dock does deal with the big problem of the classic Mac OS which was that icons on the desktop would be covered by open windows and become inaccessible. For an OS which makes such use of icons, dragging things onto them, or launching/opening things by double clicking them, this was a problem. As well as solving this problem the Dock is a very powerful thing in itself allowing a lot of functionality with apparent simplicity.

So, I say all hail the Dock!

You can’t keep an icon for all of your progams in the Dock. Well, for those you don’t use so often, the icon is available in the Applications folder. This you can access very quickly and easily as you know. It is in the “Places” part of the Finder sidebar unless you removed it. You can use the shift-command-A short cut or use the “Go” menu to take you there.

Text clippings can be dragged to the desktop or any open folder. As can so many things.

So, for me the Finder is great and imho a far better environment than those funny third party desktop utilities.