Pages work’s fine when saving a document in .doc format, but as soon as you try to save it again (e.g. a simple change to it) you get presented with the following window:

Which is a right pain when you’re trying to do virtually anything with a Word Document, so your options are don’t save until you’re finished and hope nothing goes wrong, keep going through the process above to save the document, or keep on reading to find a simple fix.

It’s all in the .plist

In common with Apple’s other recent “mishap”, there are just a couple of things you need to change in a .plist file. It’s nice & simple and only takes a couple of minutes, or if you’re lazy you can download the file which I’ve posted below.

For the technically minded

What you’ll need

For the sake of easiness I am be going to using Property List Editor, it comes included with Apple’s developer tools, if you haven’t got this installed it is still possible to do so, simply using TextEdit, although that is significantly more complicated, and I would reccomend that you download the .plist file at the end of this entry.

Update (11/8/09): As has been pointed out in the comments the actual plist entries which you are required to edit has changed with updated versions of iWork, please bear this in mind and look out for it when you follow this tutorial!

1. First off, you need to open the Pages.app package, to do this simply browse to it using finder, then right-click and click “Show Packages Contents”.
   
2. Now a new Finder window will appear, this allows you to browse around the … Package Contents, although for now we’re only interested in one file, “Info.plist” (in the Contents folder). This is what appears to be Pages’ main configuration file, so by editing it we can adjust the behaviour of it.
3. I would recommend that you make a backup of “Info.plist” before you do anything, just in case something bad happens, to do this simply copy it to somewhere you’ll remember (like the Desktop). Now double click on the original file (within Package Contents) to open it with Property List Editor.
4. Now we’re getting somewhere, you will see a view of the properties associated, you need to expand the “Root” by clicking the triangle/arrow to the right of it, and then expand the “CFBundleDocumentTypes” in the same way. This gives a list of numbers, and you then need to expand 8 and 9, which will let you view something similar to this:



5. The properties which you need to change are CFBundleTypeRole, for both instances (shown above) change them to “Editor” (without quotes), you can do this by double-clicking on where it says “Viewer”. Now you just need to save the file (File>Save), close Property List Editor, and you’re good to go.
6. Now when you open up a Word Document using Pages and try to save any pages it should all work seamlessly, although you may notice a small progress bar like this:
   
   Which is nothing to worry about, it just let’s you know that all is working well.

Hopefully that was easy enough to accomplish, if not here’s the easy version below:

For the not-so-technically minded

Here’s a version of the above tutorial which accomplishes the same output but with fewer steps, just to make life easier for you

1. Follow steps 1 and 2 above.
2. Download the updated Info.plist from here: Info.plist, you may need to tell your browser to download it (right-click, Save Link As).
3. Copy the new Info.plist into the Contents folder of the Package Contents window. Now just close this and re-open Pages to have the ability to save Word Documents.

Conclusion

I think that it is rather odd that this support isn’t enabled by default, after all when you open a document the last thing you’ll want to do is save it somewhere else, as that’s what “Save As” is for. To me it is a completely illogical step for a user to have to take, and I can imagine there being many “.pages” documents inadvertently being passed around by unsuspecting iWork users. Although maybe this is Apple’s way of promoting the software, with the hope that people who receive these “weird” files will end up paying for software that they don’t necessarily need?

I hope that this post has covered everything, and that it is easy enough to understand. If you have any questions please leave a comment and I’ll try my best to help you out.

Update (6/2/09): Inserted link to the pre-built Info.plist, which I forget to add. Oops.

One of the “exciting” new releases at MWSF this year, iWork (aptly named) ’09. Seemingly a bog standard progression of the standard iWork line. Since I’m relatively new to OS X I’ve never really had chance to use it before, so with a new release now seems the ideal time to give it a go.

Also, worth mentioning, is that it has had quite a lot of publicity recently regarding a certain iWork ’09 plist file. But that’s a story that Google will tell you, so no need for me to repeat what has already been said.

I’m currently playing around with them at the moment, having no past experience mean’s they take a bit of getting used to, but so far I’m liking Keynote & Numbers, but favour Microsoft Word over Pages – simply not a fan of the DTP aspects of Pages’ interface. Anyone else had chance to play around? What do you think, and how do you reckon they compare to past versions?

First Impressions

As I have said above, to begin with I had high hopes for this App, it seemed well polished like the usual WordPress admin panel. Adding my blog was easy; simply enter URL, username, and password. It is after this part when confusioon occurs.

Opening up the App you get a nice, simple interface with 2 options: “Set up your blog” and About, clicking on setup you enter blog details and how many recent posts you wish to display, if you’ve managed that part correctly it will be taken back to the main screen where your blog is now listed. So far so good.

Clicking on the blog brings up an interface similar to Mail.app, listing all of your previous post’s and a Local Drafts folder, which you can use for offline drafts. Clicking on a post let’s you edit it, upload Photo’s, Preview it and change Post Settings. Although for me the Preview page has often frozen, sometimes just quitting the app and returning back to the home screen, and other times showing the post under a default template as if it cannot connect to the internet.

Posting a new entry is pretty similar, press the “Write” button and enter all the text. Under one condition, it doesn’t crash and send you back to the home page. Once you get to the interface it is pretty much self-explanatory, letting you enter a Title, Tags, Categories, the entry itself and set it’s status. There are also the same additional tabs as the edit interface. Once you’ve done here click Save to then, well, save the post. Assuming this works and you aren’t thrown back into the Home Screen you’re all done.

Annoyances

Where do I start. Firstly I have found that the Categories are cached, sounds great, but I couldn’t get the cache to update. Since first setting up I had created lot’s of categories through the web panel, and no matter what I did I couldn’t get these to show up. Also there’s it’s love of the Home Screen, can’t go anywhere/do anything without it. And finally no way to edit settings once they have been entered (as far as I can tell). It seems like once a blog has been added, it can’t be deleted, and neither can any settings which go along with it.

So really I like the concept of it, although think it’s pretty badly implemented. For now it’s deleted from my iPod, and I’ll definately consider installing again in the future.

A logical choice for this to me seemed to be to go with what I was used to, Ubuntu box with all the additional software which I needed installed via apt-get, this is something which I’ve got experience in doing and I know it works effectively. But, since there are now Mac’s involved I also thought Time Machine integration would be a nice touch, after a bit of googling around I found this tutorial. It all seemed simple enough to understand so I decided to go for it and hope for the best.

A couple of hours later I’d got it all setup, along with a DHCP server running on the Ubuntu box which makes everything run just a tad more smoothly, so, time for the first backup. Initially I couldn’t get past the “Preparing Backup” stage, it seemed that I have got too much crap on my laptop, so I thought I’d kick-start the process by excluding the “Users” folder, bringing the backup size to a more manageable 27 GB. This all worked fine after a lot of fiddling, but basically the connection kept getting interrupted for some reason, and it took forever to do the initial backup, at this point I removed the exclusion folder for the Users fold and left Time Machine to do its stuff. Though not for long, I kept getting network problems, so came to the conclusion that this simply wasn’t working.

Time to rethink?

By then I was getting somewhat annoyed, what seemed like a simple process simply wasn’t working, and why could the backup’s simply be created on any file sharing protocol which OS X supports? After all the data is stored within a “.sparsebundle” file, therefore there won’t be loss of meta data regardless of these variables (I am pretty sure about this, not 100% though).

I came to the conclusion that the best solution would be to add something there which natively supported the AFP protocol, since a new Apple computer was out of the question it seemed the next best thing would be a logical choice, I knew that the machine I had to install “Leopard” on had driver support which left much to be desired, although my conclusion was that so long as I could get the ethernet port running I was good to go. Installed this without a glitch, ticked all the right boxes and within an hour a “brand new” mac. Setting up the Time Machine drive so that It was shared over AFP was no problem, and my MacBook picked it up straight away, then after selecting through Time Machine prefpane I set it going and got a backup done over a speedy gigabit connection, so far so good, but then I started getting the same problems – every so often the connection would appear to just cut off, not allowing me to login over AFP or, well, do anything really. Since this has happened twice on the same computer I am beginning to think that maybe the problem is related to the physical port, as otherwise I’m out of ideas.

And now …

That is where I’m stuck for options; I can either use Time Machine with a standard external drive, and simple connect it up to different computers, continue trying to get to the root cause of the problem with my Server, or spend money on new hardware (Time Capsule/Mac Mini).

First, the calendar issue, I’ve stopped using GCal, and started using outlook. Yes, it is great that it syncs, but, I want to be able to add/edit the calendar from within my iPod, which apparently is coming soon. Also I’d quite like an email client, maybe the iPhones one, as now I understand what IMAP is, it’s quite useful for getting everything working together. Another thing, a notes application, just for writing notes & stuff, as I am getting quite good at using the on-screen keyboard. No doubt all of these things will be fixed though, maybe sometime around February 2008?

Same problem with all the following: Argos, Comet and Currys.

So I’m out of ideas. Maybe I’ll just have to wait, and what annoys me is the ridiculous prices of accesories. £269 for iPod I think is reasonable, £19 for 6 socks, definately not, £35 for dock & remote. Not at all. But, people must be buying them, it seems an unnecessary premium for stuff that must cost nothing to make. Although controlling iPod by remote will be good

Also it seems like a Friday today for some reason, must be because I am attempting to do homework, but it has taken me (so far) a few hours to do just a relatively simple piece of physics. Must concentrate harder.

Safari is great, surprisingly browsing the web on a small screen doesn’t seem a problem, as it is easy to zoom in and travel around.

Youtube – excellent, even youtube results found on google open up in it. It’s a nice, easy to use interface. Admittedly it is a bit of a shame that you can’t log in to see favourites etc.

iTunes Store – excellent! i’ve not actuall purchased anything from there, but even just listening to stuff works brilliantly, and is instant.

Calculator – It works, good enough for me!

Video player – works very good, no delays or anything when opening & fast forwarding videos.

Music – Cover flow is very nice, and a good way to randomly choose what you want to listen to! Also the various sorting options are great.

Pictures – Fun to play around with, dragging stuff about & zoooming in.

Things I wish it had:

• Notes of some sort, it would be nice to be able to just write stuff on it, after all my old ipod had the ability to read text files!
• Add to the calendar – how hard can it be?
• Mail – again, how hard can it be?
• Flash support – I can view PDF’s, so why not flash files?
• Support for 3rd party apps – why not? Would open it up for loads more functionality

That’s all, back to playing

Update: Some More Things

• Syncing of Podcasts over WiFi – would be great when away from computer for a longish period of time
• Films/TV Shows from iTMS – although I suppose youtube pretty much has this area covered.

Only problem is that Apple don’t seem to have released much for it yet. I was wanting to buy a decent case, although the only thing on the apple store are the socks (do look rather nice though), and I don’t want to buy a 99p silicone case and wait for it to come from Hong Kong. Maybe protective wrapping will be a viable option for the time being

• I’ve been trying to convert a few videos to an iPod compatible format, I wrongly assumed that this would be simple. The files are in MPEG-2 format, and I want them in mp4 (I think that’s it), but no matter what software I use it just won’t happen. “SUPER” video converter just doesn’t like vista. VLC creates the file, but nothing will read it. iTunes, no chance. It seems something which I thought would literally be a task of opening file, choosing format, clicking convert, seems to be impossible. Now, it may not be easy on a Mac, but it can’t be this difficult can it?
• iTunes. One of the best pieces of software, but yet again it doesn’t seem to like Vista, scrolling is like you would expect from an old PC with integrated graphics, and it is generally laggy.

Plus there are other reasons, so I’ve decided that I’m buying an Apple PC. It’ll be between a Mac Mini (would make be nice with a big TV screen … need the TV), or a MacBook (would be nice for general portability).

Also my new iPod Touch hasn’t been shipped yet, which it shouldn’t have been, but I’m getting a tad impatient!

Update: I’ve found something which works for ripping DVD’s, Magic DVD Ripper. Has an iPod mode, just need to change the resolution for iPod Touch. Excellent.

The Mac Pro on the other hand, is a large machine, very powerful, and expensive. But most importantly big & upgradeable, like a PC.

Which brings me to my point. Why not make a low-end Mac Pro, identical specs to the Mac Mini, but a lot cheaper. To me this makes sense, as surely production cost’s would be lowered since Apple wouldn’t be so limited to space, and the end user would be at an advantage as they would have a nice upgradeable machine.

I’ve just looked at the parts required for a system with similar specs to the Mac Mini and the total price comes to about £230 without a case, bearing in mind thats just me looking at eBuyer, not taking into account the discounts apple are bound to get through volume purchasing. Admittedly that doesn’t look at the exact hardware they would use, but it must be an approximation.

If they released something like this, I would definately be considering buying it, since it still offers the upgradeability, without spending too much money.