“Although I’ve done several tours with Office (who hasn’t) I prefer iWork for most tasks and Keynote is hands-down a better application than PowerPoint,” Jason D. O’Grady writes for ZDNet.
“The problem is that Apple’s last major update of its venerable office suite was almost three years ago and it’s starting to show its age,” O’Grady writes. “Although Apple is still promoting ‘09 versions of software on its website, it has (wisely) dropped the ‘09 designation from the versions being sold on the Mac App Store.”
O’Grady writes, “So where, oh where, is iWork ‘12? Originally iCloud was believed to be holding it up, but Apple released iCloud on October 4, so that’s not it… One of my favorite rumors is that iWork ‘12 will come with a Final Cut Pro X-style reboot.”
Read more in the full article here.
Yeah, just what we need, for Apple to do to iWorks what it did to Quicktime Player and Final Cut Pro. Dumb it way down by removing features.
It is sad that the Mac versions are not integrated with iCloud like the iOS version is. It makes it hard for me to use it for work.
Yes and no. iOS versions do lack certain functionality found in the Mac versions. Therefore documents made on iOS are (as far as I know) 100% interchangeable with no loss to format etc. However, a document created on the Mac, and taking advantage of the full version, is converted when opening it iOS, and loses those features (unrecoverable when brought back to the Mac). So unless you can choose which documents are cross-platform, then automatic sharing is not a good idea, until iOS iWork apps can handle the other features. Which is unlikely to happen.
But, solve those issues and I would love to see iCloud integration!!!
Why do you think that it is unlikely to happen??? Why can’t iOS’s iWork support all the relevant features of the desktop version???
Y’know, the thought crossed my mind the other day, and I concluded the reason why is because it’s NOT showing its age. There aren’t any glaring changes that need to be made. It’s arrived. IMHO.
Love iWork, use it in my business, and am impatient for the next update. But it should NOT be dumbed down. Instead, how about some iCloud magic that supports collaboration?!?!? How about some love for that red headed stepchild iWork.com?!?!? How about some cool features that we didn’t even know we needed, but can’t live without once Apple reveals them?!?!?!?!
I agree totally. It’s perfect as it is right now, but let’s add some iCloud integration 🙂
I hate to say it, but the consumerizing and dumbing down of Apple software is getting a little old.
Apple has always catered to Pros with software that’s easy to use for the layman. But the features were there.
Now it’s “You don’t get these features cause only Pro’s want them, and they don’t spend as much money as consumers.”
So Dear Apple,
Realize that people actually want the ability to do custom things. The iOS rules don’t work all the time for desktops.
#rantyrant
Actually I think iOS/iCloud is holding up iWork. The iOS/iCloud versions of iWork use different file formats than do the OS X versions. The OS X iWork apps are more feature rich. Apparently fonts are a problem, too. Big mess with no obvious solution. Will they dumb down iWork for OS X, or “smart up” the iOS version? For now, this thing looks totally “forked.” har har…
From a functional point of view both QuickTime X and Final Cut Pro X are “dumbed down” versions of their namesake predecessors.
Apple didn’t remove functionality from Final Cut Pro 7 to produce FCPX, they wrote a new application from the ground up and christened it with a name of an existing application with similar functionality other than that FCP7 is unrelated to FCPX. That fact plus apple’s removal of FCP7 from the stores is what pissed users the most. Apple should have been better off if they had called it iMovie X or something else.
If you think of it Apple already “dumbed down” their office suite in a similar way. That’s what happened to Appleworks except iWork was not named Appleworks X.
I don’t think Apple will try dumb down iWork. I think they just have other interests.
I think it is time for Apple to release a new version of iWork, 3 years is way too much time. IMHO Pages and Key Note require a few improvements while Numbers needs to really make a big jump ahead.
Numbers is one of the applications I use most. When it comes to functionality Numbers is way behind Excel but the basic concept behind Numbers is more advanced that the one behind Excel. Excel is still VisiCalc with graphic interface while Numbers is based on the same paradigm that Lotus Improv
Hear! Hear!
And while Apple is at it… How about a Windows version of Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
Bwwwaaaahhhhaaaahhhhhaaaaa!!!
That was the best laugh I’ve had all day!
Thanks.
Bingo baby – To not roll those three tools for the windows desktop client is just another sign Apple apps are no better than Google apps. It shouldn’t matter what client I’m on. They need to BRIDGE the gap between the desktop I can control at home and the one I can’t control using at work. If the product is to be called “I Work” it needs to work for me at work! Everytime I bring down a spreadsheet thru iWork to my work windows laptop, tweak it and Upload it to iWork again I have to Overwrite what is there already and then (even if I download in excel format) it saves on iWork as a Numbers doc and I have to go through my phone through Numbers again to share it again.
Apple is WAY WAY WAY losing track of the simplicity of how important the User Interface experience is. When it becomes necessary to do 5 steps to do a single thing – they fail. I miss Steve’s visions already.
P@
Apple froze the feature set of iwork on the desktop because they want to make it an integrated tool for all platforms. In the last years they develop a fully compatible touch version for ipad and iphone and the next major step will be a webclient version for icloud. With an icloud webclient version iWork will come to every internet connected Windows PC.
But internet integration will offer even more potential. The classic office suite have only printed paper in mind but more and more content is distributed fully digital. So why not add a tool for direct website creation? Apple brought the desktop publishing revolution, maybe they can do it again with web publishing.
Now that Apple is a device company [and no longer a computer company], we can expect to see more of this behavior. At some point in the not so distant future, Mac computers and their accompanying software products will go the way of the Newton, QuickTake, LaserWriter, et cetera; leaving everyone to ask Siri what happened? Sad! Very sad indeed!
Remember the trucks and cars parable from Steve Jobs. There will be x times more iOS devices than Macs, but they will stay and fill their new role.
Well, no… NOT “at some point in the not so distant future.” There are many things you can do with touch-based computing devices, and with voice commands, but there are many things you can’t, or would not want to, do that way.
A finger tip is too fat for artists, except those in kindergarden. Media producers need a large screen, and a way to manipulate content that does not involve waving their hands and arms around all day (and blocking line of sight to the screen constantly). Accountants need the most efficient way to manually enter a large amount of data. Writers need to “process words” by typing for hours at a time on a keyboard. Scientists and researchers need as much processing power as affordable, that does not run on batteries on a processor that is fine-tuned for efficiency, not power. And so on… What we do with tablets is just a small subset of what people do with computers in general.
The near (“not so distant”) future will be “renaissance” period for the Mac, as it continues to feed steadily off the very large pool of existing Windows users and grow into mostly untapped markets (such as China).
I’m still using the FIRST version of iWork. Seems work fine with Lion, even with things like “Resume.” It doesn’t do Full Screen App mode, but I don’t would use that for “work” documents. I was going to buy the upgrades using Mac App Store, but it did not seem necessary. Maybe I will for the next version, and only for Pages and Numbers (since I don’t use Keynote too much).
2 Points:
1. I think the “FCPro” reference was just a GUI reboot to make iWork 12 the darker, grey, “Pro-App” GUI similar to Final Cut Pro GUI.
2. A Windows version of iWork12 would be great, but MS would NOT like this & probably discontinue Office for Mac or they would do an Win8 “update” that would make iWork for Windows suddenly become “buggy” or “slooooow”.
BRING ON iWork12 that is Lion optimized & iCloud friendly with Mac OSX AND iOS devices.
I would rather they just get office on iOS, and integrate it with iCloud.
Yes! Yes! And yes!!!
I have been asking this same thing ever since iLife ’11 was released – usually here on MDN.
I use the iWork apps WAY more often than iLife and can’t wait for the next version – especially Keynote (aarrrgggghhhh )