Adam Engst of TidBits got upset that an update to Apple Pages that impacted Engst’s workflow for creating EPUBs. In short, Pages changed several behaviors that Engst relied on for creating EPUBs. Engst, even though he knows that Apple’s release notes are not reliable indicators of what changes have gone into a product, accepted the new update to an essential application without testing it. And when things broke, he found himself in a very difficult position that required a lot of time and effort to fix. He says this about the experience:
That shows a profound lack of respect for customers on Apple’s part, and is particularly offensive when it comes to tools used by professionals. It’s bad enough when Apple causes normal users significant headaches, such as with the massive changes in iTunes 11, which cannot be downgraded to iTunes 10.7 (see “iTunes 11: The Features Apple Removed, and Alternatives,” 4 December 2012). But when Apple’s decision to conceal changes threatens one’s livelihood, it’s time to start looking at tools from companies who care about their customers.
The problem is, Engst missed many issues. Any professional knows that you don’t update software that is essential to your business without testing it first. You make sure that it works first, and you run it through several tests before updating everyone. Engst also had unrealistic expectations about Apple updates: it’s already well-known by everyone who’s been using Macs for years (as Engst has) that Apple’s release notes are quite thin and rarely give information about all of the updates that are included in this.
But most importantly, “software used by professionals” is not the same as “professional software”. Professional software does have higher expectations associated with it: higher expectations about how it’s tested, how it’s documented, how it’s supported. In general, this means that professional software has a higher price tag associated with it. Software that just happens to be used by professionals doesn’t have those expectations. Apple has never claimed that Pages is professional software. Basing your professional workflow around an application that is not professional software, and then not testing updates when you know that you cannot trust the release notes for this application, is not professional behavior.
This isn’t to say that I don’t think that Apple’s release notes should be so short. Writing useful release notes isn’t difficult, and Apple should step up and do it. That said, I think that expecting software used by professionals to be up to the bar set by professional software is unrealistic. Use professional tools, get professional results. Use tools that aren’t intended for professional results, and you might get lucky and get professional results, but you can’t rely on it. Pages is $20. You get what you pay for, and you did not pay for a professional application.
(Edited on January 28th, because I can’t type and got the price of Pages wrong. It’s $20.)
I would have thought that Mr. Engst could have used Time Machine to regress his app. But maybe I’m missing something.
If installing the update made changes to any files in Library or Frameworks (which is pretty common for Apple’s apps to do in updates), then moving back to the old version is more difficult than just using Time Machine.
I thought you could just go back to the previous image if you’d backed up before updating. (I always backup before doing any updates but I’ve never had to try to regress an update.) I guess I was confused about Time Machine.
Interesting point about the software used by professionals versus professional software, Nadyne… I’ll have to ponder that more this week while at Macworld/iWorld, but from a marketing standpoint, I’d say that Apple does consider iWork to be for professionals, at least to the same extent that the Mac and Mac OS X is for professionals. Certainly, that’s the impression that’s given on the Apple Web pages for iWork – just as for the Mac. Should we stop using the Mac because Apple doesn’t give us good release notes for Mac OS X?
And more to the point, Pages has more of the features needed for professional book publishing in our agile publishing model than Microsoft Word, which we used and fought with for years before switching. That’s not to say that Pages is better than Word in every way (we’d love to have collapsible outlines, sticky comments in deleted text when change tracking is on, and the spell checker back), but Pages has EPUB output, better PDF output, better file integrity, and better link reliability. And that’s after years of reporting bugs and asking for features.
We certainly didn’t make the jump from Word to Pages lightly, and the effort of switching a massive stylesheet and training authors and learning output quirks is the main reason we haven’t looked really hard at Nisus Writer Pro. But that’s it – there is no other professional level word processing software on the Mac, short of Adobe’s InCopy, about which I never hear warm fuzzy things and which Adobe doesn’t even think highly enough of to include in Creative Suite (since writers are second-class citizens in the Adobe world view).
As for my failing to test, I addressed that in the article. Yes, I should have done so, or rather, as a company, we should have ensured that no one who works on production upgrades without testing, but as I said, it’s unreasonable to expect busy professionals to run regression testing against every release of every product used. I have my work to do, and it shouldn’t be up to me to do the developer’s work for them. Not to mention the fact that I can’t afford to spend hours making sure apps do what they say repeatedly – that’s just as much of a waste of time as dealing with hidden changes and bugs. I’m not sure I would even have noticed the BBEdit 10.5 bug in testing anyway – there’s a limit to how far something can be tested, and testing my final distribution Automator workflow isn’t something that can be done without real data on my production machine. To paraphrase the immortal Dr. McCoy, “I’m a publisher, not a tester, Jim!”
Had there been even a hint that EPUB export had changed, we would never have upgraded without testing, and as you agree, Apple shouldn’t be let off the hook for writing such bad release notes. That’s really the main thing I’m asking for here – just a little transparency and respect.
With regard to your pricing comment, I think Apple is, for the most part, trying to radically push software prices down as part of their platform lock-in strategy. The more software you use on the Mac or iOS, the harder it will be to switch. Plus, by forcing software prices down and eliminating upgrade revenue, Apple keeps developers from gaining the kind of market power that Microsoft and Adobe have. So the fact that Pages is $19.99 (not $10) isn’t necessarily indicative of how Apple views the software.
And more to the point, it’s not like it’s really that different from Word – Office 2011 costs $119, whereas iWork ’09 costs $59.97. Half as much, but not nearly the difference as your $10 implies.
Lastly, to address the previous comment and your response, I covered the downgrade issue completely in the article. Restoring the Pages.app package from Time Machine wasn’t sufficient, but once I learned that I also had to restore /Library/Application Support/iWork ’09, downgrading did become possible. Not that Apple helped in any way with doing that, either by providing documentation or the previous updater for iWork 9.2.
See you at Cirque du Mac on Friday!
cheers… -Adam
Thanks for pointing out my typo, I meant $20. I’ll fix that and note that I updated the post.
I fundamentally disagree that Pages is a professional application, but this appears to be a point where we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I don’t think that Apple markets it as a professional application. Apple does have professional applications, such as Final Cut Pro, which are priced differently and have significantly different support structures than Pages and the rest of Apple’s consumer applications.
Likewise, I fundamentally disagree that testing your workflow before upgrading every machine is not your job. I’ll agree that no-one tests everything on every release, but given that Pages is central to your workflow, I honestly can’t imagine updating Pages across the board without making sure that it works for you. No-one cares about your livelihood more than you do. Testing to make sure that things work the way that you need them to is not “doing the developer’s job for them”. It’s about making sure that you can still do your job. But this is probably another point where we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
I’m not quite sure why you spent so much time in this comment talking about Word. I didn’t mention it. If I were going to talk about professional applications for page layout, neither Word nor Pages would be on my list at all (sorry, Word and Pages developers). InDesign would be my first stop. The last time I did any serious writing and layout was back when FrameMaker was still supported on the Mac (sigh). The *nix snob still lurking in me says that LaTeX is the only way to go for true page layout, but I’m not so cruel as to inflict that on anyone who doesn’t bring it on themselves.
But since you mentioned Word and and the cost of the application, you got the pricing of Office wrong. $110 is the version for Home edition, not for the Business edition. The Business edition is $200. Even if I had made the argument that Word is a professional application for page layout, which I didn’t and wouldn’t, there is a significant difference in $200 for the business edition of the suite and iWork’s $60.
To clarify for you viewers at home, Nadyne and I attempted to resolve our disagreement via traditional Indonesian mixed martial arts thumb wrestling, but in an unexpected twist, the match was declared a draw when the union guys in Moscone West literally pulled the rugs out from under us. 🙂
I think a lot of this comes down to definitions, since while I certainly wouldn’t disagree that InDesign is a professional application, it’s totally unsuited to our publishing model (because it’s focused on designers, not writers). We used to use Word (which is identical for our purposes in the Home/Student and Business editions of Office), and it worked fairly well, but we switched to Pages some time ago to gain its EPUB export. Whether or not those are “professional” applications, they’re the only ones available that met our business needs at the time.
Someone else made this point in a comment on the article – that different needs result in apps being used in ways they might not be intended. For instance, our custom software for creating and uploading audio versions of our articles relies on iTunes to set metadata – few people would consider iTunes a professional application, but it’s still useful in this professional context. And luckily, iTunes 11 didn’t break that functionality.
I think my frustration is mostly related to the poor release notes, which I’d argue should be better for all applications. Had there been any indication of what had really changed in Pages, we would have approached it far more cautiously.
Until next year at Macworld…
cheers… -Adam
I’m still convinced that you bribed the rug-pullers. I was totally winning until those guys came along, because we all know that something written on a blog is The Most Important Thing Ever. 😉
I think that it’s fair to say that we’re in agreement on the underlying issue, which is that Apple’s complete lack of useful release notes is ridiculous. Off the top of my head, I can’t point to an example of good Apple release notes in recent memory. I’d say that they’ve gotten significantly worse in the past few years. One-line release notes are completely and utterly wrong, and we’re seeing more and more of ones that just essentially say “we changed stuff”. Based on the release notes, I don’t know if any given bug that I care about has been resolved (or has a chance of being resolved), I don’t know if there have been improvements to an area that I care about, I don’t know if there have been changes to functionality that could impact my own usage.
I think the major point where we disagree is that I think that, given that we know that Apple’s release notes can’t be trusted and Apple has no issues in making these kind of important changes with no indication whatsoever, you have to test to make sure that what’s important to you still works. I know it’s a time suck and that you don’t feel like you should have to do it, but I feel like it’s the reality of the environment we’re in. I don’t like it, and I really wish that I could have a higher degree of trust in Apple updates, but I’ve been bitten too many times by updates that don’t behave in the way in which I want/expect them to take an update without testing it first. For example, all of my recent whinging about iTunes 11 is from my testing, because iTunes is really important to me. I tried it out on my baby iTunes library, and I hate it so much that I haven’t updated my real iTunes library to iTunes 11 yet (and have no intent of doing so). I’m currently trying to decide whether I keep my baby iTunes library on 11 and see if further updates make me hate it less, or if I completely give up on it and incur the pain of going back to iTunes 10.