Apple Updates Pages, Numbers and Keynote for Mac and iOS

Never had any use for things like the iWork or Office suite. I never really liked the concept of a tool that can do a lot of things but every single of those very badly and inefficiently. PowerPoint may be the only program that actually has a use (although I don't really need it for work). Word documents just look laughably bad, Excel is of no use at all and I never bothered to use the rest. And iWork is even less usable in my experience.

You know what would be nice, is the ability to make folders within the iCloud save space. I like the ability to start something on my iMac at home, and go over, add and edit on my iPad on the road, but I go into iCloud and theres just a huge swarm of papers, I would like a little bit of orginization. Even if its just those weird ios folders.

CrickettGrrrl said:

Odd, doesn't show any iWork updates for me. My Pages version is still stuck at 4.1 too....hmmm baffled

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Apple seems to have stopped support for 10.6.8 at 4.1. And, afaict, there is no way to get 4.1 from the app store any more...

JAT said:

Have you modified them to fit your personal needs?

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I don't like the interface. It's too busy, and not at all intuitive to me. Was perfectly happy with the old File | Edit | View menu system.

PsudoPowerPoint said:

• Software that helps make documents that look professional, even when the author is not an expert on professional document formatting
• Smarter and easier use of styles to simplify the creation of documents with consistent styling that's easy to change globally
• Automatically updating cross references for figures, tables and other numbered items
• Smarter control of figure placement within documents e.g. figures are place d at the top or bottom of the first page where they are referenced
• Captions that stay with figures and tables and never break to the next page
• Headers and footers with content that are automatically set based on the content of the page (e.t. if a paragraph is labeled "confidential" that the word "confidential" shows up on the page or pages where that paragraph is printed)
• The ability to hide notes and comments, spelling errors and grammar corrections, and to prevent changes to the document except when the document is opened with a password
• Figures and tables that are automatically updated when the external "source" file is updated
• Smarter tools for creating and formatting tables
• Hyperlinks to and back-from figures, tables, table of contents and index items

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Nailed it. Also want a good way to insert lists of figures and tables that you can then edit (e.g. caption says "Figure 1: <long description>", but the list just says "Figure 1: <brief description/title>". Oh and being able to number equations.

I wrote a thesis in Pages, and even with EndNote and MathType, it was a bit of a nightmare. Having to nudge tables onto the next page at the end and manually manage lists of tables and figures (with page numbers) is asking for trouble. Those things should be automatically updating and dynamic.

Sad, as it's so close to being a great product.

theSeb said:

That's your opinion. The majority of MS Office users hate the ribbon and prefer the pre 2007 UI. Anecdotal evidence is awesome.

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Whats the evidence that the majority hate it? I bet the "average" user really doesn't care....

I like the ribbon and I love Windows 8 and Office 2013.

Still waiting on iweb.

the ribbon ui is much better than having to dig into menus, more menus and options, never understood the hate

New icon for Keynote? At least the slide differs from before (had only text on it).

Mad Mac Maniac said:

I'm going to be buying a macbook air soon and I've kind beeen thinking I'd ditch office at that point and go iWork... but considering how it's now 4 years old I would hate to buy it and then Apple turns around and releases a full paid upgrade.

I can't quite tell where Apple is heading with iWork. It seems almost like an Apple TV level hobby...

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I ditched MS Office years ago - lived with Google docs for a while when iWork wasn't the greatest at Office integration and sharing, but I've not had any issues sharing with those in the PC world. In fact, a colleague that created a powerpoint doc that had issues running said ppt doc on ppt, emailed it to me and I was able to run and view it perfectly in Keynote. After I exported it back to him as a ppt, he was able to run it in ppt. Funny how sometimes things work like that.

If you buy iWork now, chances are almost 100% that any upgrade fee will be minimal at best. And we're not talking expensive even if you had to pay full price. If you run complex excel spreadsheets, you may want to consider Excel, but my wife runs Office on her MBP and it's buggy as heck, so you gain one thing and lose another with MS (which always seems to be the case).

brendu said:

To me it seems obvious that apple is more invested in the iOS side for iWork. There is no Microsoft office for iOS yet and apple wants to get as many users on iWork as possible before office does inevitably become available. Conversely, on the Mac side, office has always been available and most users choose to pay more for it because of the major brand recognition it has so apple isn't going to focus they efforts there until they build up a user base From iOS users. That's how it looks to me anyway.

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What ticks me off is that strategy was working on me (I was a LibreOffice guy, not a MS guy, but still), but then they never finished iCloud on Lion. So my magical syncing paradise of my iPad, iPhone, and 2006 MBP never came to pass (although I had already bought Pages and Numbers for iOS). Sigh.

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skaertus said:

Well, let's see... what about cross-references in Pages? All serious word processors have support for cross-referencing, which is a basic feature for writing anything reasonably complex. Word, Word Perfect, OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer, Nisus Writer Pro, Mellel... you name it.

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Functional cross-references took me from Word to OpenOffice in 2004. Then I learned LaTeX, but when I have to use Word it definitely helps that they've fixed it. I've never used Pages for anything complex, and it's a bit of a surprise to learn that you can't do it. That is pretty lame.

Still can't do Numbers in widescreen on iOS.

iEdd said:

Nailed it. Also want a good way to insert lists of figures and tables that you can then edit (e.g. caption says "Figure 1: <long description>", but the list just says "Figure 1: <brief description/title>". Oh and being able to number equations.

I wrote a thesis in Pages, and even with EndNote and MathType, it was a bit of a nightmare. Having to nudge tables onto the next page at the end and manually manage lists of tables and figures (with page numbers) is asking for trouble. Those things should be automatically updating and dynamic.

Sad, as it's so close to being a great product.

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Should you ever write a second thesis, consider learning to use LaTeX, it's worth the effort. The problem in the commercial world is that MS Word is ubiquitous despite it's shortcomings, and LaTeX is virtually unknown.

DrDomVonDoom said:

You know what would be nice, is the ability to make folders within the iCloud save space. I like the ability to start something on my iMac at home, and go over, add and edit on my iPad on the road, but I go into iCloud and theres just a huge swarm of papers, I would like a little bit of orginization. Even if its just those weird ios folders.

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I recently discovered that you CAN make those weird iOS folders by dragging documents on top of each other. It's painful to sort through, but can be done.

PsudoPowerPoint said:

Should you ever write a second thesis, consider learning to use LaTeX, it's worth the effort. The problem in the commercial world is that MS Word is ubiquitous despite it's shortcomings, and LaTeX is virtually unknown.

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Yep, almost did it for this one. Unless Pages has some magical overhaul that covers everything, I'll definitely go LaTeX for postgrad.

How about giving us a serious upgrade to the desktop version, especially Pages.
Some nice things like cross-references, nice image sub-titles (with automated prefixes), more freedom when working with ordered lists (on different levels) and more features for scientific working.

Besides that Pages is still my favorite documents editor, but please Apple give us some love!

When I first got my MPB I bought the iWork suit but after a month of using it ditched it and got MS Office for Mac. iWork sucks big time, is in't even half of what Office is. It's a pity Apple doesn't care more, they could really offer a game changer but they rather sit there doing next to nothing to improve the iWork applications...

neier said:

Apple seems to have stopped support for 10.6.8 at 4.1. And, afaict, there is no way to get 4.1 from the app store any more...

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Ahhh yes, thank you for clarifying. I was indeed checking for updates on my Snow Leopard partition, --which I still use the majority of the time (can't help it, it's good & comfortable). A bit sad didn't toss SL iWork a little something new.

I'm waiting for iWork 13 with the killer new application

It will be forum posting software for places like MacRumors, called iB##ch

iWork is horrible and needs an overhaul

Like many of the posters have said...iWork is utter crap. I've tried to use it multiple times, and it never fits the bill. Conditional formatting in Numbers is crap, the inspector popup is annoying as hell. Why can they not integrate something simple into the ribbon up top like Microsoft did? It is annoying as hell to manage all those different pop-ups for inspector windows, shape windows....the list goes on. And besides that, numbers does not have any capability for automation power...no c# or vba/vb support or anything. Sure, I've read that you can use Apple Script, BUT WHO THE HELL IN THE BUSINESS WORLD USES THAT BS???

There was my 30 second rant...they either need to completely overhaul iWork or it needs to die...

The End

Numbers

So numbers only just got the ability to hide columns?
Says it all really.

I fired up Numbers on my first gen iPad and it seemed snappier. The previous version was a real dog.

MacFoodPoisoner said:

Wow, that's a big surprise, and we thought apple gave a damn about os x...

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It's officially entered abandonware status imho. I really can't see how the biggest company in the world, with 100s of billions sitting in the bank can't put together a team of 50 people to work on iwork for os x. Maybe, if need be, also HIRE some people too, you know? Their wages would be about 1/10 they spend opening up a new store or something... It's beyond my comprehension...

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Well the only reason is that they are currently working on this. It's always like this with Apple, total silent for a really too long time then a brand new app. Just like they did with ilife: Garage Band, iPhoto and iWork came one by one without any clues.

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Good update. This software is good for kids and book reports and for moms to keep track of little things. So do not expect pro features people. Geez.

zin said:

The iWork apps for Mac need a complete overhaul, in my opinion. I think that Microsoft did a great job with the ribbon interface; it really fits well for productivity.

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Let's see... That's 12 people who like the "ribbon" interface. Everyone else hates it.

The Bulge said:

From my experience users hate ribbon. I have actually seen people crying trying to get used to it.

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If there's one thing good about Windows 8: It makes the "ribbon" interface look good by comparison. With the ribbon interface, you think "why the **** are they wasting all this screen space for something that would be handled much better with menus and shortcuts". With Windows 8, you are just speechless.