Hacker News Reader

I think Pages is a joke for serious writing

What makes Word the best tool for serious writing? I use Pages for writing papers (for humanities courses) and vim+pandoc for math. I have dabbled with Word here and there over the years but I've never seen anything that would indicate to me that it's amazing for writing. Personally, I can't figure out what's going on with the ribbon. It just seems to be a heavily modal interface which is not particularly discoverable.

I mostly use Google Docs but, frankly, for my writing just about anything works. (Being able to work in shared docs is useful but not much else matters.) I'll use Scrivener to do the first pass at assembling a book but, other than that, anything that lets me put sentences down on a page and edit them is fine.

I used to use Word and I'll sometimes use it if I need to if that's what a publisher is using but I never really loved the ribbon and there's way too much clutter that I never use.

Before the original commenter answers: I'm gonna guess collaboration with others. The reliability of being able to send anyone the original file, them being able to open it with all Word-specific features and content, and e.g. sending it back with inline comments.

I've also dabbled with Pages lately, and I don't think I've found any features for now that I desperately miss from Word. Now granted, this is just my workflow, which I believe is fairly basic. But the thing is, most people's workflows are basic. I'm gonna guess that about 80% of people wouldn't miss anything by switching from Word to Pages.

It's a typical example of collaboration lock-in that you'll encounter in so many other areas. It's the reason why so many people are forced to use Adobe apps or Visual Studio.

The most important feature of Word is that everyone has it.

Ahh okay. So if you’re serious enough about writing that you regularly collaborate with, e.g. an editor, then Word is the default choice for that.

But nothing about that applies to the writing process itself. You could be like George RR Martin and write in WordStar for DOS and then convert the files over to Word before you send to your editor. The main issue there is how often you need to correspond (which may be seldom for a novelist like Martin).

Well yeah, I assume they referred to "writing" as in the entire workflow, including drafting, reference, revisions etc.

Because otherwise, I have zero idea what that sentence was supposed to imply. If "serious writing" actually means "typing words in a serious manner" in the original comment, then I don't really have much to say, except that OC is probably spewing utter nonsense.

> Before the original commenter answers: I'm gonna guess collaboration with others.

Since a free iCloud account gives you access to the online version of Pages, collaboration with others seems to be covered, including simultaneous editing.

You can export to Docx within Google Docs, this is bad take. I use Google Docs and Libre Office since I can't run Office.

As a university student it really is quite unfortunate. So many students use MacBooks that come pre installed with a word editor capable of collaborative editing, but choose word regardless! Luckily I seldom had professors who required submission in .docx, but even for that, Pages has an option to export as .docx.

I’ve never really “got” the appeal of Word (outside of it being the prevailing standard) either, but my writing needs would be met well enough by TextEdit/WordPad in most cases or maybe AppleWorks 6.x or Word 2000 if we’re getting fancy, so…

To generalize a bit on this, I've been using MBA's (11" and 13") as my personal laptop since about 2012 alongside my blowfish desktop and the work laptop (which in the same time has varied only little, just further iterations of MBP's), while I've also spent considerable time with a Thinkpad x230.

I have to say, the Airs are hands down the most handy, and in particular the 13" one. It strikes a perfect balance between screen size, weight, and responsiveness, and the battery is always much, much better than anything else. In all, I feel the least amount of internal resistance when I have to reach for the Air, lift the lid, and start typing, while all other computers have one or more practical or psychological barriers.

Disclaimer: I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything - far from it. But I'm a huge MBA fan...

> the Airs are hands down the most handy, and in particular the 13" one.

That describes all of them. M1 and earlier are 13.3", M2 is 13.6".

At one point there was an 11" Air but the last model in that size is from 2015: 7 years ago.

GP says they've been using these computers since 2012, so presumably they're speaking from their own experience with the old 11" Air.

Shame it's gone IMO, I love the size. My current laptop is a 2014 11" Air.

I drove an 11" Air for 3 years until I sold that machine to a friend who kept it running for another 3-5 years. Loved the size of the machine, not so much of the screen - but I made it work. These days I'm not sure I could use something that small for serious work but the current (actually previous gen, I haven't tried the M2 one yet) 13" Air is a pretty good size!

No, unless your work load is purely SSD bound - in which case you probably want a larger SSD anyway - the M2 Air is consistantly faster than the M1, as the CPU is noticeably faster.

If you get a good deal on an M1, by all means get one as you can save a lot of money. But in real-life usage, any M2 is faster than the M1.

Or you use more than the 8GB of RAM and have to swap...

Although I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple "updated" the current 256GB M1 Air they still sell to use a single flash chip like the M2 models.

Even with reasonable amounts of swapping you are unlikely to notice huge differences. Only if you are thrashing the memory, you surely would. But then just getting more memory would be a very wise investment.

> While I see other working on big old and clunky laptops (usually Dell or Thinkpad) that basically need to be hooked up to a power cord, my

I stopped reading, when my Envy had better battery life and Better keyboard than my MacBookAir M1.

You forgot the OS.

You’re saying your HP envy got better battery life than your M1 MacBook Air? I highly, highly doubt that.

Yeah, out of all complaints one could have made about M1, this one seems like the strangest one.

Not M1 Air, but I once used my M1 Max MBP for virtual onsite interviews. It was about 4 hours of videocalls on Google Meet + code editing using coderpad or something similar + i had a bunch of personal/unrelated tabs (50+) in chrome on another virtual desktop + 1hr break where i was reviewing my notes and such. Did it all fully on battery, no plugging in. After all was said and done, my laptop charge dropped from around 95% to 71%. No overheating, fans never kicked in either.

1 point by MonaroVXR 3 hours ago | parent | next [–]

I didn't give the details... so here I go. I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy.

Since I was using my Envy for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, with Edge and Chrome open, I didn't expect the Macbook to shutdown, since it has great battery life. (According to some people) I don't care to be honest, but I hate it when I things turn out differently for me and I have this experience a lot and the things we do, shows this too. (benchmarking, but differently than the majority of people)

Edit: I forgot to say, I don't hate Apple or the Macbook at all. it's the notebook that's first on my list, when I suggest a good model.

I didn't give the details... so here I go.

I was synchronizing iCloud and importing mail it took very long and that process was using the most amount energy.

Since I was using my Envy for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, with Edge and Chrome open, I didn't expect the Macbook to shutdown, since it has great battery life. (According to some people) I don't care to be honest, but I hate it when I things turn out differently for me and I have this experience a lot and the things we do, shows this too. (benchmarking, but differently than the majority of people)

You certainly don't need the slightly faster SSD, I bet most people would never notice the difference.

They shouldn't be offering 256GB on the base model given the price rise (arguably at all, even on the M1 MBA). Let alone making it slower by default.

They want you to buy more cloud services/storage.

But that’s not how iCloud storage works. Or any other consumer cloud storage. You have a copy in the cloud whether or not a copy is on the computer, and unlike commercial clouds do not pay for data transfer.

I'm not sure what's your point. Apple makes local storage as expensive as possible/acceptable so that you buy more icloud storage for your files, photos etc and "stream" your content from the cloud instead to keep it stored locally. It's not secret that they see the "services" as being the biggest growth factor.

That's not how the 'iPhone full' message describes it.

Been using an M2 Pro for a week (16GB RAM, 256GB SSD), absolutely cannot tell. Large dependency installs (node, go, c++, python) are insanely fast, docker builds are fast, everything is just fast.

I've been on Linux until I got an M1Pro. Docker build on mac's, even M1Pro are slow IMO compared to Linux.

Have you enabled VirtioFS in docker?

Yeah I have. Made a big difference. But not Linux fast difference.

You definitely will on an 8GB machine under memory pressure. Which happens more often than people imagine if you are using a number of Electron Apps.

This is the type of response of acceptance I totally disagree with. You're happy that Apple are selling you a throttled base revision but Apple is actually taking the piss. The ability to double the SSD capacity by adding the missing chip would only cost Apple three bucks. It's intentional hobbling of the platform. That they do the same dirty trick with the so called MacBook Pro is shameful. The MBP is not a Professional machine.

When you can buy a DELL with 6x the SSD speed you realize that Apple SSD solutions a dumpster fire.

Don’t get me wrong I badly want to get my hands on an M2 Air, but I strongly agree that the M1 Air still kicks ass and might be the better value for money.

The thing is you want different stuff from the CPU arch up through the kernel for responsive interactive use than for compiling a big Rust program. Apple have fucking killed it on the former, and Intel’s Gracemont stuff has made a kickass machine for the latter cost 1000 bucks at Best Buy.

The new AMD 6000 mobile chips are also getting very good reviews and seem to be the equal of Intel 12th gen. I'm actually really excited to see what Intel, AMD, and all the other non-Apple ARM chip vendors bring to the table in the next 2-3 years. After the M1, these other companies must all have been burning the midnight oil to try to catch up.

The AMD 6000 is better I'd say. For example the 6800u trades blows with the 1260P. But the 1260p runs MUCH hotter. And that is not even disregarding the iGPU where the 6800u totally smashes the 1260p.

My newest AMD box is a Zen3 (I think) Threadripper, and it’s a heavy little computer no doubt.

But I find myself using the i9-12000K way more often. It clocks to 5-ish GHz on 8 Gracemont cores without making much if any noise, and DDR5 makes a shockingly big difference. And it’s “build a box with Best Buy parts for 1-2 thousand bucks” cheap.

Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff?

> Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff?

The Ryzen 7 5800x3d trades blows with Intel's top chip, with many games benefiting enormously from its monster 96mb L3 cache. It will be superseded by the upcoming Zen4 chips, but the nice thing about the 5800x3d is that it's a drop in upgrade for most AM4 motherboards.

The ARM chip manufacturers have been competing with Apple since 2010. In the 18 months since Apple unveiled its first ARM computers, nothing has been released that is a serious response. Which tells you everything you need to know; the fact Apple puts its chips in a different chassis has changed nothing for those companies.

Apple has to your point differentiated in micro architecture.

Having the whole slab of TSMC’s best new process locked-in until the heat death of the universe doesn’t hurt.

Have you seen how far Qualcomm/Samsung are behind?

Samsung S22 Ultra (2022): GeekBench 5 single core: 934, multi-core: 2925

iPhone 13 (2022): GeekBench 5 single core: 1706, multi-core: 4661

That's not just TSMC's best process node. Oh, and the CPU of the S22 Ultra is made on Samsung's 4nm process.

Hey I know the PA Semi people are ballers. 5-wide dispatch on the M1? Ambitious and they pulled it off. Hot shit.

Having the best transistors always doesnt hurt.

I have a 14 inch m1 pro.

When using it for work, I get approx 6 hours.

I'm confused when people report 20 hours usage. I'm guessing this is during very light work and it looks if sleep time?

FYI. My previous Lenovo p15v also got approx 6 hours. That was a great laptop as well - as good as the new MacBook, just without the looks.

Depends on the work. I'm always amazed at how long my battery lasts when I'm just doing writing related tasks--I definitely see the two day battery life others mentioned--but anytime I'm touching code or compiling anything I get about 6-8 hours

What do you typically run? I can get down to 6-7 hours on the M1 Max if running something like a game engine in debug mode.

Docker, rider, Firefox and a some of compiling.

Fact is, people say terrific battery. And I was looking forward to terrific battery. But I get the same as what my Lenovo would give me.

Maybe I was just already spoilt and lucky and expect8nh too much. 6 to 8 is still much better than 5 years ago.

Fact is, people say terrific battery. And I was looking forward to terrific battery. But I get the same as what my Lenovo would give me.

The discussion about the MacBook Air and you are comparing to a MacBook Pro 14". I have both laptops and the battery life of the Air under heavier use is definitely better than a Pro. This is not surprising, the M1 Pro/Max have double the number of performance cores, the efficiency cores run at a higher clock, plus the Pro has active cooling and a brighter display. At the same time, the battery of the 14" is larger, but not twice as large (49.9 vs. 70 Wh).

I think for regular users, getting two day battery life on an Air is pretty normal. For instance my wife regularly used her Air for two work days before charging.

Docker on mac is a serious battery drain. You might get longer battery life by running docker remotely on other linux machine (e.g. using vscode remote development).

Knowing you can get a 2TB PCI-E 4.0 M.2 drive with write speeds at 5000 MB/s for around $200 doesn't bother you when Apple is marking up components that much?

Sure, but what laptop are you going to put it in? If what you want is a Macbook Air, you pay or you go home.

Of course, it’s annoying, but the Apple Silicon experience is so good I don’t mind paying the higher markup.

Their walled garden is so bad that I couldn't imagine paying that kind of markup.

It’s pretty opt-in. My computing life is on a bunch of NixOS machines with Linux 5-series kernels.

I connect to the real computers via Apple Silicon appliances because they’re cool, quiet, tender fonts properly, play sound properly, etc.

I know a lot of people are into the Desktop Linux thing. “Mine is great ever since I upgraded to PulseAudio blah, everything is awesome as song as you never close the lid…”

Have fucking fun with that.

All of Apple's software is free so you pay via hardware and services. I prefer the Mac ecosystem to the Windows one so there really is no choice. I'd be open to another ecosystem (Linux?) if it worked better than the Apple one or if Apple made consistently started making some decisions that went over the line (like their CSAM stuff which is on the edge).

Until then a few hundred dollars a year to be in a better ecosystem is not even worth second guessing.

Not all. You have to pay extra for things like Logic.

Apple doesn't make any serious profit from Logic Pro, it is straight up sold at a cost or less. Look at the major competitors.

Ableton releases new major versions of their DAW once every couple years. Standard edition is $450. Full edition is $750. Upgrading to the next major version is $240 or so (provided you already own a previous one).

Logic Pro? You pay $199, and you are done. Logic Pro had a massive major update a year or so ago, fully free. Not only it is cheaper, there are no different editions or costs for upgrades. For a one-time cost (that is already cheaper than major competitors), you get perpetual massive updates with no bs or extra costs. In terms of major commercial DAWs that are actually used in the industry, Logic Pro hands down is a great bang for the buck.

I’m just bummed I can’t dial boot windows on Apple silicon. It was so convenient having both operating systems on the same laptop.

Anyone know the NAND chip config for all these devices ? So if 256 is two 128 on the M1 Air, does that mean 512 is 4x128 or 2x256 ? Etc..

The 512 is 2x256. I'm pretty sure the Air line only has two spots for NAND flash.

That's the issue - two spots, but instead of maintaining a 128GB part for 2x128, they're shipping 256 as 1x256.

I can see the logic, they're not maintaining a whole part/inventory just for the lowest config. I'll let everyone else argue over whether it's worth the penalty or not.

how is libreoffice on a mac? i haven't heard anyone give any reviews/benchmarks ?

It appears to have an Apple Silicon native version available, so it is likely to run quite well; I haven't used it for over a decade, so I can't speak to its usability and whatnot, but unless things have changed significantly, I imagine it's still nearly identical between OSes.

Does anybody really use it anymore? Most folk use Google Docs or some other online version nowadays.

I just bought word after a year of trying use Libreoffice. Libre is usable, but has many minor bugs. I'd probably use google docs before Libreoffice.

when did you last use LO?

I wrote my Thesis in LibreOffice in 2019 on a 2015 MacBook Air, with Zotero integration. It was pretty nice, and thanks to MacOS even coming back just fine, document open and no line lost after me being too stupid to plug my Mac into power, it was a pretty great experience.

It's interesting that suddenly long battery life is the deal breaking spec now that Apple laptops have long battery life.

Now that anyone has long battery life.

Just like how capacitive vs resistive touch screens are a dealbreaker now on a cellphone: sometimes you don't know it's a dealbreaker until you have to do without.