“In the tech world, three years is an eternity, so it may come as a surprise to realize that Apple’s own office productivity suite, iWork ’09, was first released in January of that year,” Gene Steinberg writes for Tech Night Owl. “Since then, there have been a few maintenance updates, and the latest versions of the three apps that make up the suite, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, are fully compatible with Mountain Lion’s Auto Save, Version and full screen features. Microsoft remains behind the curve, having apparently forgotten the promise to make Office 2011 compatible with Lion that was made last year.”
“Now that an app doesn’t receive a major upgrade doesn’t make it less usable. Some prefer older versions of Microsoft Office, for example, simply because they aren’t quite as bloated with useless features,” Steinberg writes. “I have one client, who consults for education, who runs Word 5.1a on an old Power Mac, using an ancient macro program from the 1990s to automate his workflow. He does have a newer version of Word on his iMac, but cannot find any new features that he needs. This is doubly true on the Windows platform, where much of what Office 2013 has to offer is a pathetic implementation of touch for the benefit of Windows 8 users.”
Steinberg writes, “That iWork hasn’t seen a major update doesn’t necessarily mean that the existing version is close enough to perfect not to require some changes… Since I do not pretend to know or understand Apple’s priorities, I can just hope for a better iWork in the near future.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: You know, in Apple’s defense, when you only have $120 billion cash on-hand, it’s tough to keep an office suite current.
Related articles:
Apple reminds users: iWork.com beta service ends July 31st – July 2, 2012
Apple releases Pages, Numbers and Keynote iWork apps for iPhone and iPod touch – May 31, 2011
Apple’s iLife ‘09 ships on Tuesday, January 27 – January 26, 2009
Apple is waiting for Microsoft to release the new ms office before showing their hand. Remember, they have cross licensed patents… So better to wait.
Well I would love to see a Major Upgrade, especially all those great Transitions used in Slides – like the Dust Clouds, when a Price Drops to the Ground in Apple Keynotes would be a nice thing…
So hopefully an Updated Version of iWork may come along with the new iMac & MacPro?!
Dust Clouds already in there. Look for the build called “Anvil”.
Keynote needs better Quicktime integration. That’s been obvious since 2009. Also, would like to see an Expose like feature for individual slide panels.
Actually I would argue that Keynote could really kick some butt if it had better Quartz Compose integration!
DITTO!!!!
At minimum, an updated iWork needs:
–Real time collaboration features.
–A way to share files with OTHERS who do not have iWork (without exporting into Office files). WHY did Apple kill iWork.com before they had a replacement for that key feature available???
Agree with the take, completely. Apple is bedazzled with the consumer-level product market with crazy-profitable tablets and phones. Fine, but iWork (Numbers especially), MacPro workstations and FinalCut Pro all need some love.
Steve is missed once again. He needed Keynote for his own presentations.
Cue the foaming fanbois!
I love it when MacDailyNews turns the snark on Apple!
No apple has been remiss on updating a number of times (remember the long wait for FCP8 ;-))
You know it interesting all the MS fanboys and applehaters in the tech press always accuse the apple fans of “religious devotion”, however I find the MS fanboys, more like a religious cult than your average Mac fan.
Perhaps long ago in the “bad old days” of 1% marketshare when it was mostly hippies and oddballs who bought apple (I don’t know I was part of the SGI revolution! back then (which actually worked out OK for me considering the fate of SGI)) they were weirdos with “cult like” devotion to apple. But now, mostly, I encounter normal people who recognize (as did I) the vast superiority of OS X over windows and also like the amazing quality, design and attention to detail (and service) of apple hardware.
The ones you can’t figure are the current windows fans. They have to know (only an idiot wouldn’t recognize) that windows has been going downhill with every release (past 2K) and is now just short of completely worthless. (a trend which they plan to accelerate with win8) Why do they defend it (and the trash hardware now foisted upon them by the likes of HP and dell & levono) so fervently?
Seems the “cult like” -ignoring reality ball- is now squarely in the court of the PeeeCeee fan boys.
Yeah, let’s wait til 2013, for the Mac Pro update!
Still using Office 2004 under Snow Leopard – the last version that supported VB macros and did not have the ribbon.
I am in no hurry to upgrade to Lion/ Mountain Lion because Apple dropped Rosetta, and Office 2004 is PowerPC.
And while we’re knocking Apple and iWorks, when will Pages have a grammar checker? I know they’re not perfect, and I often ignore Word’s checker’s advice, but it does catch the stupid mistakes, especially those that creep in during editing, like noun-verb agreement.
It doesn’t? I could have sworn I used it just a few days ago…
See http://pagesfaq.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-can-i-grammar-check-pages-document.html
My guess is that they are waiting until they work out way to allow upgrades in the Mac App store.
While Windoze is vastly inferior (as are a lot of Microsoft products), Microsoft has a couple of wins in two of their big products – the XBox, and the Office suite. If iWork wants to compete with Office, they should update much more often than they are.
Agreed with Eric. The lack of updates for iWork is curious. My guess is that the iWork team has been consumed by iOS versions for some time now.
How about hiring more people then.
How long have I been bitching about this, folks? Like 2 years?
When Apple does update iWork, I wonder if it will be a 64Bit program or just 32Bit as it is now?
I have to agree that at this point it is not premature to criticize Apple for stagnating. The money’s coming in, but the innovation has slowed. Logic 10? Please?…
Is Snow Leopard the best we can do? Can’t we just leapfrog Samsung and Google outside the courtroom?
I hate to say it, but Apple’s track record could make even the most ardent Apple fan a bit wary of becoming too reliant on Apple software. Pages is a great little program; but I’ve never felt comfortable assuming that Pages (or Numbers and Keynote, for that matter) would be supported by Apple for years and years. It’s hard to admit that a company as great as Apple can also be a bit of a flake, but it’s true.
That’s why a naming convention that includes the year of release is a terrible one.
That said, I’m waiting on new versions to buy from the Mac App Store.
Speaking of, why doesn’t Apple combine all App stores (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Mac) in one place? You should be able to find what you want and filter by platform. And bundles should be offered when buying an App for multiple devices.
Move them ALL to the App Store and out of iTunes, Apple!
I posted at the article’s site too.
I use Pages quite a bit, now that I’ve upgraded to a Macboook Pro & it’s just cheaper to get iWork than MSOffice. If it weren’t for the cost savings though, and the incredible bloat/ribbon in the latest Mac version of Office, I wouldn’t be using Pages, or Numbers ftm.
The problem is those programs are too interested in getting you to do what they want, instead of what you want (also, Numbers just isn’t keeping up with Excel, imo). My biggest issue is with saving in Pages. If I want to save all my documents as .doc files, why do I also have to have .page files cluttering up the drive too? The short answer is I can’t work on a .doc file in Pages – for some stupid reason, I can save in that format (a process that has way too many steps, btw) but can’t work on the file later. It has to be in .pages to be worked on in Pages. Even MS let you work on .txt, or .wps, or whatever in Word! I’m sure it has something to do with iCloud & auto saving & wtf-ever … and that’s fine if you want to work that way. But if you don’t, there should be a way to default the program to save where you want, in the format you want, and be able to work on said formatted file later without trouble or hoops.
It doesn’t just end with saving, however I don’t want to make this a long drawn-out rant. I’m sure anyone who’s used Pages knows the frustration of dealing with it’s ‘preferences’ in formatting, spacing, fonts & font sizes … it really never seems to end, the number of big & small ways this program gets in the way of smooth workflow.
Apple, I love your stuff generally. And yes, I started buying specifically BECAUSE they were the simpler technology to use (‘Computers for the rest of us’ wasn’t just marketing shtick afaic). But lately you seem to be building computers/hardware & especially software for … Apple. Please, continue to offer the latest & creates ways you think will skin the cat better, but let those of us who can skin it just fine without your ‘help’ do so without impediment.
Seriously? You don’t understand anything about file formats do you!
There are any number of features that are particular to any given application. A file format is designed to persist those things to permanent storage in-between sessions. For Pages, that might well include things like text ligatures options, image shadow and reflection options, placeholder text markers and any number of things that Pages has which are more advanced than Word – in exactly the same way that Word DOC files could well contain macro information or other features where *it* in turn was more advanced than Pages.
The more specialized a given software application is, the more likely it is to need specific data within its data files. Pages and Word are also quite different – better in some ways, worse in others – and this compounds the issue. Text files are a poor example in your argument precisely because they are a feature-barren yet universally-recognizable format which intentionally do not have any fancy features at all. Pages is perfectly capable of reading and exporting fairly-plain RTF files. TextEdit can go right ‘down’ to plainTXT.
To flip your transparently false argument on its head, how far do you get when attempting to open Pages files in Word, hmm?
article written by true moron IMO
clever and simple – that is iWork
add what? more bloated features?
sure, if you are in a tap dance against Redmond to win what? the most bloated software award?
Steinberg usually tries to write with consideration and thought.
But that aside, I can think of a really important way that iWork could be improved – and I love it to bits and refuse to install Office at all.
In faaaaact, in its current state it gives the impression *of* bloat:
Performance in Numbers.
Nuff Said.
Lest anyone forgets, Apple did release iOS apps for the iWork apps over the past year or so. That’s not exactly ignoring a current product line, particularly since Microsoft has had over 5 years of iOS being released and still no MS Office apps for iOS devices.
I think Apple and MS have a secret agreement. Apple will not upgrade iWork so it doesn’t threaten Office and MS will keep Ballmer as chief. Seems like a fair trade, maybe?
Really, however, Apple should turn over Mac software to the Filemaker team or create another wholly-owned subsidiary like Filemaker to maintain and improve some of this great software. Apple’s attention is obviously too diverted with iOS, iPhone, Apple TV, Mac OS, and Mac hardware to keep their production software up to date.
Microsoft hasn’t gotten anything better to compete on the iPAD… Apple has nothing to worry.
Pages, Numbers, Keynotes on a portable CELLULAR device
NO ONE has anything like it… so no worries.
I’m still using the FIRST version of the iWork suite…
You can’t do too much to a word processor and spreadsheet app, before they start looking bloated with unnecessary features that 99% of users never use. They start to look like a Microsoft product.
I guess Keynote could use new features (but I don’t use Keynote very much).
Hm, I agree with your warning sentiment, but 1.0 of anything is unlikely to be that sweet spot before bloat sets in.
A really easy one for me to think of (because I use it all the time, and is not a crazy-useless esoteric thing) is the ability for Pages Mail Merge to use an arbitrary Numbers document as a data backing, rather than being restricted to using your Address Book!
I seem to remember they did the same thing with AppleWorks before eventually killing it off. I’m wondering if they will simply stop selling the OSX version of iWork and simply add the programs into OSX as free programs like they do with Mail, Calender, etc, just leaving the iOS version as a paid for product.
“Word 5.1a”
That was the last decent version.
Um, Apple has a Non Competition Agreement with Microsoft. As long as MS is providing Apple products from their Mac Business Unit, Apple cannot complete with MS Products like Excel, for example. I wish Apple would just by the company that owns Quantrix (a revolutionary spreadsheet based on Lotus Improv), the best spreadsheet on the planet (according to Steve Jobs at the 2007 WWDC).
Bring back iWeb