“The last version of iWork for Mac – Apple’s answer to Microsoft Office – was released well over four and a half years ago, on 6 January 2009,” David Price writes for Macworld UK.Since then the company has introduced versions of the apps for iOS, and added compatibility with iCloud, but apart from that Apple’s office suite has been untouched.”
“Apple has sent out invitations to a press event tomorrow, which is expected to focus on the next versions of the iPad and iPad mini,” Price writes. “Could we hear about the next version of iWork as well?”
“The next version of iWork is long overdue, and being a software release, could be slipped into a launch event without details leaking out in advance,” Price writes. “Maybe Apple would view an iWork update as such a non-glamorous announcement that it would just drop it into the end of another product’s unveiling.”
Read more in the full article here.
I’d love to see a new version of iWork. I wish Apple would kick Pages up a notch and make it a full blown page layout program. Quark is nice, but they charge a small fortune for it. You can keep InDesign, it’s basicly PageMaker using the Illustrator/Photoshop interface. Plus my clients are bitching like hell about Adobe’s greed based software subscription service, they’ve got to be kidding.
Make a decent, feature packed page layout program, and Apple could jump into this window of opportunity.
Interesting comment/request.
Microsoft continues to waste time in bringing a fully functional version of its Office suite to iOS and Android. That opened the door for Google and Apple to fill the void. In short, Office may no longer be the industry standard now that mobile computing has entered the boardroom. No longer being an industry standard means that Office becomes a choice and thus must compete in the marketplace at a number of levels. Bad news for Microsoft.
The whole Quark/InDesign issue is a bit different from my perspective. Right now that’s still a desktop space and I’m not sure Apple wants or needs to go there. Things change. We shall see.
Well I think there is indeed a window of opportunity now that both MS and Adobe are effectively blackmailing its customers. I shall stick with Adobe as long as its available for the desktop and usable but if Apple provided a serious alternative iCloud based or not I would be seriously interested even if it lacked some functions I never use anyway. After all Office users already are disillusioned enough to think that producing brochures et al in Office is a practical solution for print.
There’s no doubt that both Quark and Adobe’s InDesign are vulnerable for creation/presentation at the mobile level.
My modest take is that talented software writers will, over time, erode the existing hegemony at the high end (newspapers and magazines) as the move to digital consumption marches on.
Whenever they do release an update I sure hope it is something that was worth a 4 year wait!
@GTDworak,
Excellent point and an interesting one for me because a few years ago the company I used to work for used InDesign CS4 for Technical Publishing. About 6 months ago the MD (still a good friend of mine) contacted me about this “Adobe Cloud” subscription, asking what it was about and how much it cost.
I visited their offices and explained to the Management all about Creative Cloud, then showed them Pages and how easy it is to create EXACTLY the same publications they currently produce (it’s a Technical Publishing firm so their style, like a newspaper, hasn’t changed since 1980 [Helvetica, 10pt, 11pt leading).
Then I told them the price of each, and guess what? There’s now a Technical Publishing company using Pages to produce their content.
Admittedly, they still use Illustrator to produce their drawings… so maybe Apple could conquer that next? 🙂
Hey, Apple….Aperture….how ’bout a major upgrade? Been awhile. We professionals are losing faith in you.
… “no changes”? Or because “changes NEEDED”? If the former, crawl back into your shell. If the latter, where has the competition crept ahead of Apple?
New versions are really only when a) something is broken or b) a feature is missing.
You have no idea what your talking about. Do you use any of these apps?
lol.
I agree with nikcomp.
Flipkal, I wouldn’t hold your breath. Make the switch to LR5. You won’t regret it. They have really sped it up, not to mention the workflow is MUCH better than Aperture. My Aperture has been relegated to only Photo Stream downloading new images from my iPhone.
Cook: There is a reason that 30-40% of Macs have MS Office installed (per Seeking Alpha’s study) — that’s almost 3x the deploy rate for Office on Windows machines. Perhaps, Cook and blind Apple fanboys, we should objectively ponder why this is so. Could it be that, despite all its flaws, several MS Office programs really are the undisputed leaders in their respective segments??? Could it be that Jobs was correct in realizing that MS Office really does represent a set of critical functions that the Mac needs to offer in order to play with the mainstream? Could it be that there are a lot of Mac professionals (under-represented on these forums) who can acknowledge when a non-Apple company does a good job at something?
Why has Apple been tone deaf all this time to consumer inputs about the lack of features in iWork? Then, instead of offering users what they request [comprehensive professional office applications that work great without subscription or a “cloud”], Cook put Apple’s software team to work chasing Google Docs, spending the last 5 years porting its amateur office apps for the Mac into an equally amateur suite for iOS. Cook, did your customers really demand an electronic tether, begging to be chained to an always-live internet connection and a subscription-based iCloud? Any truly professional user of Google Docs, i.e., not the occasional home user, cheapskates, or fanboys, will tell you how horrid it is to use in practice. The equivalent functionality under an Apple banner won’t fix the fundamental issues. Moreover, we don’t like to be used as pawns to be levered into your iCloud subscription-based computing model. iCloud stinks as much as any other company’s subscription-based vapors.
Standalone MS Office has no worries when its competition resembles bumbling clowns. That’s why MS can charge what it does for Office — even despite its disastrous ribbon interface and attempts to offer way too many different versions with various levels of bloat since 2003, and despite the recent moves to offer a “365” subscription configuration — because the competition overall STILL DOES NOT OUTMATCH IT. Not Google, not Open Office, not Star Office, and certainly not Apple. If you’re a lightweight user, sure, enjoy iWork ’09 or your favorite freeware/adware. We can whip out the occasional classy document on iWork too. But if you are a professional, you still have to go with the most powerful package for your daily work. Mac users are no less pro-Apple for using Office for the Mac.
If & when Apple ever gets serious about competing in the professional/business/enterprise markets with the Mac, it’s likely still a decade away from displacing Excel or Word. We can only hope that Apple shows some progress this year.
However, we know better than to expect any great leap forward on the Mac from Cook. He thinks the future is iOS-based, and he is wrong. Over 30% of Microsoft’s revenues come from the business division, driven by Office. A large percentage of those earnings could easily be Apple’s for the taking, if only Cook would serve Apple’s long-suffering professional users. Let us hope Apple shows the Apple community something worthy this year. I doubt it though. Cook seems more excited about rolling out pastel plastic wrappers for last years’ hardware.
Do you think Cook has any understanding of what it takes to conquer the business market? He’s a clueless CEO.
Instead of refining iOS 7 to be business friendly he introduces childlike icons & thinner fonts. Do you think this is a man capable of reforming iWork to take on MS Office head to head? Not a chance.
Misguided yes, but clueless no. iOS7 is as ugly as sin, but one can see the strategy. Cook is chasing after the next generation instead of serving long-suffering Apple professional users or leveraging Microsoft’s decade of mis-steps to displace them in the offices of the planet. It’s pathetic that a company with the resources Apple has can’t do both at the same time.
… oh wait, Cook is laser-focused on iOS and iAds, and he is also spending over $5 billion US on an aerobie office complex to seat less than 15,000 employees? In one of the most expensive zip codes on the planet?
You’re right. Those are the actions of a clueless leader.
Apple should finally kill MS Office. Redmond deserves it.
Another perspective on iWork:
1) We know Keynote was an inevitability because Steve Jobs wanted it for his own keynotes, a program that allowed him to do what HE wanted, not what Microsoft wanted via PowerPoint, in a presentation. The only alternative was from Kai Krause in the form of Kai’s Power Show, which had great effects but was very clunky.
2) AppleWorks was incredibly long in the tooth at that point. It similarly had not had a major update in yonks. The move to Intel was leaving AppleWorks’ PowerPC code behind and Apple wasn’t going to bother to update it without an overhaul. The result was a far better spreadsheet and incredibly better text editor with added page layout features.
What’s still missing in iWork is a database program. Apple may well have foreseen Bento at that point, which was a mini database offshoot of FileMaker. But Bento has recently been pulled and is no more. Wouldn’t it be interesting if Apple put a mini FileMaker into iWork? It makes sense to me. It would make iWork more equivalent with AppleWorks; it would round out the set and makes it more a consumer level equivalent of the Windows version of Microsoft Office.
Meanwhile: I highly suggest LibreOffice, which is the current best free office suite for OS X.