“Let’s make one thing clear up front: iWork.com (in its current pre-release form) is not a collaborative online productivity tool such as Google Docs or Zoho Office Suite,” Dan Miller reports for PC Advisor.
“You can use iWork.com to share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from the iWork ’09 productivity suite. But the people with whom you share those documents can only view, download, and comment on them; they can’t actually edit them,” Miller reports.
“All that said, iWork.com is a convenient way to share iWork documents, particularly with people who don’t run iWork themselves – which will be useful in a crossplatform environment,” Miller reports.
“All in all, if you’re an iWork user, and want to share your work with those who aren’t, iWork.com is a handy tool,” Miller reports.
Full review here.
Another favorable review.
iWork.com is simple and it works.
Why wouldn’t I just use a pdf? In the latest versions of reader you can comment and return the pfd to the originator.
It simply takes a minute to “print” a pdf from OS X. Not to mention more people can access it.
You’re right, I think this is really just the first step to Apple offering online aps.
to LastOneStanding:
It actually DOES offer a PDF version as well. When you go to a shared iWork space on iWork.com, you can view and comment on the owner’s documents online. If you need to take it offline, you can download iWork, MS Office or PDF version of that document, for printing.
The reason they aren’t using PDF online is so that the annotated, commented documents can automatically be updated in the owner’s original iWork files. In other words, you share your files online, your collaborator marks them up, you sync your iWork and annotations arrive in your native files.
Nobody but the owner can actually edit the files, which is most of the time preferred option (to avoid all version control issues), but anyone who’s invited can provide comments.
Perhaps Apple will figure out how to simplify online editing and versioning, and expand this into a full-blown online application. Until then, it’s of great practical use as it is.
It’s a start, but I need a true collaborative word processor, so this isn’t going to be for me in this version. However, I’ll still be buying it for other reasons.
When it offers the means for others to properly edit my documents, it will be even better.
Information made available since the basic announcement have made this option more acceptable. The creator has considerable control over the document even after releasing it for viewing by others. Initial reports of “cloud computing” were a bit scary. Now the fear is “how much will it cost”, followed by “will it integrate into my MobileMe account”.
LastOneStanding has a point, but that point breaks down when collaboration is in order. iWork.com beats the .PDF option when you use chat to discuss the document with someone.
Baby steps, people. Baby steps. That’s the Apple way.
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Just don’t try to view your iWork 09 document on the iPhone. It doesn’t work. You have to save as iWork 08. You might hope Apple would fix that soon.
Other than that (and a mess of formatting bugs in the new outline mode in Pages 4) iWork 09 looks pretty sweet.
Quote from above: “iWork.com is simple and it works.”
iWork and what it does is far from simple, in fact it’s extremely complex.
But it is designed to be simple to use.
@ Third Billy Goat Gruff
I have been using iWork.com and iWork 09 since day one and it works beautifully.