Pages v Word

I use Apple’s Pages word processor a lot at home when I’m working on my laptop. At work (or at home when I’m at my PC) I use Microsoft Word. Apple are great at many things but Pages isn’t their best work. When compared to Word its flaws and weaknesses are many and varied. Here are the ones that most annoy me:

• Adding hyperlinks is easy in Word - hit Ctrl-k and paste in the link - but a chore in Pages. There doesn’t appear to be a keyboard shortcut and, when you find the dialogue, you have to first delete the pre-inserted link (livepage.apple.com) before you can add your own. It’s worse if you want to add a second link, by which time the dialogue is probably already open and your workflow (highlight text, check Enable as a hyperlink, highlight default URL, replace with target) is even more complicated. 
• Many people are very rude about Microsoft’s Ribbon but it’s clear, when switching between the two programs, that it is a lot easier to find the commands you want to use in Word. 
• Text formatting keyboard shortcuts are the same in both programs, which makes life easier, but if you want to use an unusual format, like Strikethrough, you have to open the Styles Drawer or pull it from a tiny drop-down menu labelled “a” - not immediately obvious. 
• And speaking of styles, the range in Pages isn’t very good. Word’s large, friendly icons and readily navigable ribbons make it easy to find the commands you need, even if you’ve spent years acclimatising to Microsoft’s menus. 
• Styling in Word is also blindingly easy. Pages has only 8 text styles and they’re slightly hidden; Word has dozens (although you probably don’t need all that Word offers) and creating new ones is very straightforward. 

There are some features that I like in Pages:

• Full screen editing, which is built into Mac OS X Lion, is rather better than in Word (where it appears to be something of an afterthought). Without the distraction of icons, dashboard or other paraphernalia, text creation and editing proceeds more quickly. 

Actually, full screen editing is the only feature I can only think of that I particularly like about Pages. In all other respects Word is at least the equal, and often rather superior, to Pages and, if I’m honest, I prefer Word, especially for long, complicated documents. It’s not that I dislike Pages, or that I have a particular fondness for Microsoft, it’s just that Word makes everything easy while with Pages you just have to work at it some more; it’s almost as if the software can do what you want but doesn’t quite see why it should bother.

My hope is that Microsoft bring Word (and Excel) to the App Store quickly and for a sensible (i.e. affordable) price. There are good reasons for Office’s commercial success and Microsoft’s monopoly is only a small part of it; in the end, the software’s just damn good.

My Favourite Places in London

I’ve lived in London for just over a year and worked here for more than five so I have some idea of what is going on and where the good stuff can be found, especially if you are making a quick trip to the capital. Here are my favourites:

• Park: all the royal parks are impressive but St James’s Park, as well as being close to other major attractions, has pelicans and therefore can’t be beaten. Go early to avoid the hordes.
• Cinema for action movies: the IMAX at Waterloo on the south bank is, by far, the best place to see big action movies. Get there early, have a beer, then head into the enormous auditorium for a genuinely great move experience.
• Theatre for Shakespeare: some people like Stratford-upon-Avon but for the best productions you need to visit Shakespeare’s Globe in Southwark. Pick a good weekend and you can stand in the yard for the Saturday matinee then sit in (relative) comfort for the evening show. 
• Restaurant for fancy breakfast: London is full of great places to eat but for breakfast in the centre of town you should try Indigo at One Aldwych. Not the cheapest place around but the food is great. 
• Cafe for everyday breakfast: if you don’t fancy a restaurant, how about a cafe for breakfast?Cafe on the Rye serves a really nice full English breakfast in a family-friendly setting in the middle of Peckham Rye Park.
• Market for food: it’s where the tourists go but if you arrive early on a Saturday morningBorough Market should still be fairly empty and you can stock up on fine cheese, meat, bread, veg and other items before the rush.
• Venue for afternoon tea: for afternoon tea you should really treat yourself. Go for a bit of luxury at the tea room in Fortnum and Mason. Booking is vital.
• Museums for entertaining children: London has more museums than you can shake a stick at but the big two for entertaining the kids are the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, both in Kensington and both free.
• Browse for antiques and luxury items: Burlington Arcade is stuffed full of small shops selling expensive luxury goods. It’s worth wandering through just to see the variety of things on offer.
• Public square: Trafalgar Square is big, loud and often busy with some sort of activity. Splash in the fountains on a hot day or just take photos from the steps of the National Gallery on the north side. Beware pigeons.
• Art gallery: like many of London’s major attractions, the art galleries are often free. Tate Modern is impressive even if you don’t like modern art.
• Shopping and entertainment: if you have time to visit only one market, head for Covent Garden. Lots of entertainment, lots of places to shop, eat and drink, and lots more to do in the surrounding area.

That’s it for now but there’s loads to see and do in London - more later.

2012 Techno Resolutions

This year, things are going to change. I don’t, as a rule, make New Year Resolutions (they never last past February) but for 2012 I’m breaking the rule, at least as far as technology goes. In fact, I’m not just breaking the rule, I’m completely disregarding it. Here are my 2012 tech resolutions:

• Blogging - almost nobody reads my blogs, which isn’t hugely surprising, but this is something I want to change. I’m not paying for advertising so the only publicity they’ll get will be from Twitter and Facebook. I aim to post an average of one halfway interesting entry each day on my everyday blog and one 500-word rant (or review, or comment) on my other blog once a week (Sunday, 12:00 London time). 
• Twitter and LinkedIn - I’m going to grow my followers and contacts from the current 53 and 161 to 200 (both services) by the end of the year. That might not sound like a lot but I have no idea how I’ll do it. 
• Apple products - in the last thirteen months (explanation of my addiction) I’ve bought a MacBook Air, an iPhone 4S, an iPad 2 (birthday present for my parents), an iPod Touch (birthday present for my wife) and an Airport Extreme router (slightly strange present for me). I might have to buy an iPad 3 and and iPhone 6 (I don’t think it’s likely to be called a “5”, even though that seems to be the expectation of the blogosphere) but those are the only ones I’ll allow myself, whatever temptation Apple puts before me. 
• No other gadgets - in fact, I resolve only to buy replacements for gadgets that fail or are lost. No more upgrading to the latest thing (with the possible exception of the iPad 3, for which I’ll make an exemption) and no more punts on new technology (except for a Jawbone Up, which I may buy as a “fitness aid”). Anything I buy I’ll review. 
• Cameras - last year I bought a Canon EOS D600. It’s great but I haven’t published any photos; I’ll get some up on the web this year, either on Flickr or Picasa (although I’m not making specific commitments because I’ll probably miss them). 
• Gmail, iCloud and Exchange - I’m going to take control of my contact lists, notes and calendars. I’ll find a way to sync lists across all three service providers or, if that isn’t possible, I’ll work out how to manage the lists to avoid huge numbers of duplicates and I’ll post the solution as soon as I have it. 
• Finally, I’m going to try as many new web technologies and Kickstarter projects as I can over the next 12 months. 

So there you have it. There should be loads of new stuff to test and review in 2012 and this time next year I’ll look back and see how I’ve done with my resolutions. If they go really badly, maybe I’ll resolve to join a gym and get into shape. Or maybe not.

MacBook Air - Genius in Aluminium

What can I say about the MacBook Air? We have one of the late 2010 models, 13" screen, OS X Lion, 128Gb SSD, 2Gb RAM. It serves as our day-to-day computing device when we need to do something that can't easily be done on an iPad (this is a fairly short list of tasks but that's a story for another day). Mostly we use it in the living room, sitting on the sofa, watching the TV.
The most striking thing about the MacBook Air is its appearance. It isn't the thinnest or the  lightest laptop around but it has the cleanest lines and the biggest trackpad of any I have seen. Here are the things I like most about the MBA:

• Case - there's no argument, it is simply the most beautifully engineered laptop available.  The finish is just superb.
• Battery life - 7 hours is plenty for my purposes (it's not a work machine so my periods of use are normally only a few hours long) but more importantly it holds charge on standby for ages so it's always ready to go whenever I need to use it.
• MagSafe power adapter - when I do have to tether the MBA to the wall the MagSafe power adapter is absolutely the best in the business. It is easy to connect or disconnect, won't pull the laptop onto the floor if you trip over the cable and has discreet LEDs to tell you that it's working. The cable is also long enough to be useful and thin enough to be easily coiled and packed.
• OS X Lion - it has a few quirks but it does many things so well that you really notice the difference if you're a long-term Windows user. First, it doesn't restart very often and when it does the desktop is restored exactly as you left it when you stopped working. Doesn't sound like much but it saves so much time, especially when contrasted with Windows' habit of closing everything and restarting overnight. Second, full-screen applications and multiple desktops are fantastic productivity enhancements, especially if you don’t have an external monitor. 
• Mac App Store - it sounds like a gimmick but, like the iOS App Store, it's actually fantastically useful. Software is easy to find, install and update and, because all charges go to your Apple account, payment is a breeze.
• Mouse pad and gestures - I was a little worried that the gestures would be tiresome or that the lack of mouse buttons would be a problem. In fact, the gestures work so well that I miss them when using a Windows machine and the pad’s features render buttons completely unnecessary.

The only part of the package that is even slightly annoying is the keyboard, which is not laid out in the standard UK pattern (the apostrophe and ampersand are reversed) and lacks a hash key. That aside (and it’s a very minor flaw) the MBA is undoubtedly the best laptop I’ve every used and is highly recommended.

Don't break my Back button

And by "back button" I mean mouse gesture, two-finger trackpad swipe, keyboard shortcut and dedicated physical back button as well as the traditional back button in a browser. Whatever the means of execution, I want it to work reliably and predictably, every time I hit it, regardless of my current location, unless I have explicitly instructed the browser to break the convention, for example by opening a link in a new tab.

The issue is simple and is highlighted by the way the two-finger swipe works in Mac OS X Lion. If you swipe two fingers from left to right on the trackpad it triggers the back operation and returns you to the previous screen (with visual feedback via an elegant animation - it's as if you were brushing the current page out of the way to expose the page underneath). It's neat, easy and surprisingly noticeable once it doesn't work, which happens for a number of reasons:

• Websites that open pages in new tabs when it isn't logical to expect them to do so. Ok, fine, if it's a link to a totally separate site from a catalogue page, then maybe a new tab is appropriate. In all other situations, reuse the existing tab so that you Don't Break My Back Button. Opening a completely new browser window is also out - it's so 2006. 
• Strange website behaviour and redirections. If I follow a link from the search results on your website I want to be able to return to the search results when I've finished looking at the page you've offered me. I don't want to have to start from scratch and re-enter my search criteria just because you've got some funky feature that breaks my back button and prevents me going back to my results. 
• Applications with “back” functions that insist on using buttons. Unfortunately Apple are one of the main culprits of this particular problem. iTunes and the Mac App Store both have forward and back functions that don’t respond to the two-finger slide; it’s surprising how quickly the absence of the two-finger slide becomes extremely annoying. 
• Any site that “returns” you to your current page, for reasons unknown, is either poorly designed or deliberately broken (or both). Blogger, I’m looking at you (try looking at a post in edit view, then swiping back to the list of posts). 

One of the things that makes the web easy to use is the fact that there are conventions about how things are done - search boxes top right, home button top left, navigation at the top etc. - mess with these conventions and you make your website more difficult to use. Difficult websites discourage visitors by obscuring the information you want them to have. Broken or novel navigation features also trip users on their way to your content. The simple rule is to deploy new conventions only if you are absolutely certain that they will make life easier for your users. In all other cases, don’t.