Apple today updated the company’s iWork apps — Pages, Numbers, and Keynote — for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Apple’s iWork is for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
What’s New
• Updated media browser offers enhanced search options and new content categories such as Recents, Portraits and Live Photos
• Ability to add phone number links to table cells, text objects, and shapes
• AppleScript functionality to change a document password or open password-protected documents
• Precise editing controls in the Arrange Inspector for adjusting the look and placement of objects
• Onscreen keypads for entering exact values for text size, spacing, table size, and more
• Ability to add or remove objects or table cells from a selection by tapping or dragging across them
• Setting to always open documents in edit mode
• Ability to add phone number links to table cells, text objects, and shapes
• Updated media browser offers enhanced search options and new content categories such as Recents, Portraits and Live Photos
• Ability to add phone number links to table cells, text objects, and shapes
• AppleScript functionality to change a spreadsheet password or open password-protected spreadsheets
• Precise editing controls in the Arrange Inspector for adjusting the look and placement of objects
• Onscreen keypads for entering exact values for text size, spacing, table size, and more
• Ability to add or remove objects or table cells from a selection by tapping or dragging across them
• Setting to always open spreadsheets in edit mode
• Ability to add phone number links to table cells, text objects, and shapes
• Option to exclude the summary worksheet when exporting your spreadsheet to Microsoft Excel
• View your presenter notes, current slide, and next slide in a separate window while presenting
• Thumbnail images in the build order window make it easier to edit complex sequences
• Updated media browser offers enhanced search options and new content categories such as Recents, Portraits and Live Photos
• Ability to add phone number links to table cells, text objects, and shapes
• AppleScript functionality to change a presentation password or open password-protected presentations
Precise editing controls in the Arrange Inspector for adjusting the look and placement of objects
• Onscreen keypads for entering exact values for text size, spacing, table size, and more
• Ability to add or remove objects or table cells from a selection by tapping or dragging across them
• Setting to always open presentations in edit mode
• Ability to add phone number links to table cells, text objects, and shapes
MacDailyNews Take: Happy updating, iWork users!
When I saw the headline I thought “What have they removed this time?” Maybe nothing? That’d be good. I just hope they don’t nag us into upgrading every time we open a file (and often while it’s open).
At one point, iWorks was on a roll, developing into a legitimate competitor for the Google Apps and even for Microsoft Office. Each upgrade added more features. My wife had essentially a full-time volunteer position putting together newsletters for non-profits, the sort of projects that were far too complex for a pure word processor but too simple to justify an InDesign subscription (even if the non-profits could have afforded one). Then Apple decided to strip out all the page-layout features and repurpose iWorks as a simple collaborative working tool that would work as well–or poorly–on a 3.5 inch iPhone screen as on a 26-inch Mac Pro monitor. We were promised that the missing features would come back, and many of them eventually did… but only years after any serious user had migrated to another program or another platform.
Pardon my lack of enthusiasm for the latest beating of the dead horse.
I took a look. Apparently the landmark advance that justifies the update to iWork 11 is “precise editing controls for adjusting the position and appearance of objects.” So, another of the features from iWork 4 that was “temporarily removed” in 2013. Perhaps we will someday have all the features iWork 1.0 introduced in January 2005.
I agree with TxUser, iWorks was on a roll years ago. Before they changed it. I did a complete 200+ page doctoral dissertation in the old version and never had to mess with MS Word and their terrible table editor. It turned out beautiful in Pages and saved me tons of time.
Where Apple has really stumbled in the productivity space is allowing Google to do what they do with G Suite uncontested. I love how all of the G Suite tools work (for the most part) better than their MS Office counterparts. Especially, in an all digital Internet collaborative workflow. This is what has led Google and G Suite to own the educational market now for years. Stealing it away from Apple. In many ways iPads are far superior to Chromebooks, but not without this kind of productivity software. iPads are still by and large Internet surfing tools. Sure, there will be critics that will claim otherwise, but the low end iPads with a magnetic or wireless keyboard and solid productivity set of tools like Google’s G Suite that was Apple made (e.g. iWorks) would be so much better. But Apple doesn’t want to put their resources into something similar. It’s been clear now for 10+ years. iWorks has languished and iCloud still really sucks comparatively to G Suite and G Drive functionality and operability.
I still use iWorks as my preferred set of productivity tools. If I’m crafting a stand alone document or a presentation it’s all I’ll use. But in my work-a-day world I’m using G Suite constantly to work with others, to share documents and files easily. The robustness and the consistent improvements Google cranks out for these products is tremendous. One of the handiest tolls of all is Google Forms. Apple has nothing like it. And all of Google stuff is scriptable/programmable so independent minded folks can create even more utility with it all. I just simply wish Apple would become competitive in this space, but instead iWorks is clunky by comparison as is iCloud which iWork integrates through, too. Apple pushes out a once or twice a year feature update that includes more emojis or adds some new minor graphic elements and that’s about it. It’s really simply on life support. A place holder if you will for them at this point.
Another issue that really hurts iWorks is that it does NOT have feature parity across all platforms. That is to say features on the MacOS version are simply not there on the iOS version. So, if I create something on my iMac, then hit the road and need to edit later on my iPad, I might not be able to do it because the feature is not there in iOS. This is atrocious in this day and age and again in G Suite everything is always there.
G Suite’s interface sucks. Always has and probably always will. It’s about as good as MS Office 1.0. Seriously! Oh, and btw I never use MS Office anymore at all. It’s literally a dead product to me.
Come on Apple! With a little effort and resources given to the iWork team everyone could have the best possible productivity software ever imagined.
It’s no accident that iWork lags behind everyone else. The handful of monopolies that run our digital lives are more like branches of one big tech monopoly. Apple has agreements with Microsoft and Google, probably implicit as having it in writing would be a liability, to not step on the toes of their competitor’s biggest products. Look no further than the “no-poaching” scandal for employee hiring that Apple, Google and others were involved in a while back. Profit is not the #1 motive, it’s power and control over behavior and minds. Apple, Microsoft and Google aren’t competitors, they are collaborators.