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Apple Announces Upcoming Features for iWork Mac Apps Following Criticism
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Well, they are generally understaffed (hence why they had to hire more people to work on iWork recently), but you're mostly right. More programmers doesn't mean faster work.
Because Apple doesn't make any money if you are forced to buy a new PC. They do however have a financial incentive to make your Apple products go obsolete sooner so that you are pushed into purchasing new Apple hardware.
Also look at all the features Apple left behind in the .mac to mobileme to iCloud transitions, along with dropping support for older Apple hardware forcing us to upgrade hardware in order to keep using existing services such as syncing devices.
I keep getting surprised not enough people are seeing the real problem here:
If full iOS editability is the rule for iWork, it will never be as powerful as it used to be or as powerful as the Mac can make it. If Apple continues to base its decisions of iWork by being able to do everything you do on a Mac with a 4 year old iPhone, then the Mac will always be screwed, as well as Mac users.
Why isn't anyone seeing this? Why isn't anyone addressing the main issue that any software will be screwed if Mac to iOS feature parity is mandatory? It is not like the FCP X debacle, it is much worse. Imagine FCP X being bound to iOS and you will get the picture.
I have to disagree with this statement. Now that iOS is 64 bit and Apple has implemented an excellent ARM chip to back it up - you can have advanced features. Even Google Docs has sophisticated features. This statement also assume no additional functionality will be added to the iOS platform.
It is true across the board. All the applications that have been referenced - iMovie, iWork, FC Pro - were all re-written to the 64 bit platform in Cocoa so they can manage and upgrade these apps more easily in the future OS X environment.
It is obvious they are not going to let iWork stagnate along with the other applications because it is this ecosystem that gives them an advantage. One thing I noticed with these re-writes is the level of integration between the applications to knit them more tightly together.
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That will happen in due time. There will be multiple rolling updates to these apps - particularly now that they are free and have auto-update. They even announced two new iPhone upgrades a year. I think Apple's strategy is going to come into sharp focus over the next year.
Hey Man, google docs has all the sophistication of word processing in Windows 3.1... One day they might even have page zooming or even a page layout view.
It's not retarded. It's 'retro'.
I like the nice sophisticated feature where they make the cursor be 2-4 spaces ahead of where it actually is. I hear it's a new feature if you have Mavericks!
On Chrome, that is. On Safari, they added in a new "crashes repeatedly" feature.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I didn't mean that literally. I KNOW how software development works. What I meant was they have sufficient resources to get it right however anyone thinks it should be done. Those who believe just one programmer would be optimal? Then, Apple has the dollars to hire the best ONE in the world. Small team? Apple has the resources to stock that team with the best programmers in the world. etc.
4 YEARS. The best they can do is rewrite core code and strip out basic features?
They haven't been working on it for the past four years, don't kid yourself.
I must be one of the few that actually really, really likes the new iWork apps. Had iWork 08 and 09 and they were OK but going to/from Word and Excel was clunky so I didn't use them much.
Got the new apps and the import is pretty much flawless as is the export. Even with fairly complex documents (think 60 page document with lots of screenshots) and a Spreadsheet I use to track our finances with a couple amortization tables, etc. I really like them as an alternative to Office.
I picked up Pages and Numbers for iOS and I'm blown away. I was formerly a paid QuickOffice user and, to put it frankly, it sucked donkey's butt. Keyboard support was a joke, the editing "features" were poor and the only thing it had going for it was great Offfice format compatibility. It's gone from my iPad now since I have iWork.
I love the syncing with iWork. I'm in training this week and taking notes in iWord to help me study for the test on Friday. I edit in class on the iPad and finish up on my Mac in the hotel. It's all synced, it all translates perfectly, and it just works.
It's that type of integration that Apple rocks with. It's all seamless and will work across my Macs, iPhone, and iPad, and the Web.
Will it replace Office? Nope, but for personal use and SMB use it's great. Not sure how MS's integration with Skydrive is, but if it's anything like every other MS product, it's piss poor.
Is it feature complete? Nope. Some things are sorely missing (multipage views in Pages, functions in Numbers), but I think Apple will get there.
I swear some people like to bitch to hear themselves talk. Apple could give away a 100% feature complete, 100% Office compatible suite (including VBA support) and they would still find something to complain about or whine that "Apple has lost their way".
Got the new apps and the import is pretty much flawless as is the export. Even with fairly complex documents (think 60 page document with lots of screenshots) and a Spreadsheet I use to track our finances with a couple amortization tables, etc. I really like them as an alternative to Office.
I picked up Pages and Numbers for iOS and I'm blown away. I was formerly a paid QuickOffice user and, to put it frankly, it sucked donkey's butt. Keyboard support was a joke, the editing "features" were poor and the only thing it had going for it was great Offfice format compatibility. It's gone from my iPad now since I have iWork.
I love the syncing with iWork. I'm in training this week and taking notes in iWord to help me study for the test on Friday. I edit in class on the iPad and finish up on my Mac in the hotel. It's all synced, it all translates perfectly, and it just works.
It's that type of integration that Apple rocks with. It's all seamless and will work across my Macs, iPhone, and iPad, and the Web.
Will it replace Office? Nope, but for personal use and SMB use it's great. Not sure how MS's integration with Skydrive is, but if it's anything like every other MS product, it's piss poor.
Is it feature complete? Nope. Some things are sorely missing (multipage views in Pages, functions in Numbers), but I think Apple will get there.
I swear some people like to bitch to hear themselves talk. Apple could give away a 100% feature complete, 100% Office compatible suite (including VBA support) and they would still find something to complain about or whine that "Apple has lost their way".
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I'm not "kidded"... but why not? It's not like they lack the funds to be able to have dedicated teams on EVERYTHING. I like Apple but cut them no slack for ignoring a line of products for years (as you imply) and then rushing them out former feature robbed. If someone else wants to argue they didn't ignore them, then why does this keep happening? "New"... "Where'd good features go?"... "Sorry, We'll build them back in in future upgrades" over and over.
Is it an upgrade if they are putting features back in that they used to include?
Software should advance, not take 4 steps back and then spend months retaking those same steps again in "upgrades". If you want to recode it all from scratch, sit on the launch for 6 more months and avoid some user disappointment. 4 years or 4.5 years is not so different if the bulk of us can feel the product advanced. My opinion? Yes it is. I'm happy for those that are thrilled with it as is. I simply miss some features for my applications. My clients, some if which bought their first Macs to use Pages-based docs, will be disappointed too.
For a browser set of applications yes. Their spreadsheet app has multi-level filters and pivot tables. It also has VLookup and HLookup - pretty much the biggest capabilities I use.
I don't use their word processing app - so I will not speak on that. Although my kids use it for their homework and school papers/projects.
They removed about fifty single things, many of them very important to users. Code bases are not something users care about, nor should they.
Note that Apple still has not committed to all of these features returning, just "some" of them, and on no timetable.
Per Apple's webpage: "In rewriting these applications, some features from iWork ’09 were not available for the initial release. We plan to reintroduce some of these features in the next few releases and will continue to add brand new features on an ongoing basis."
If you read their release more closely - it indicates that the next sixth months will see multiple releases. As I said before on the other thread on this issue - by refactoring the code base to be common across all platforms and offering iWork free with automatic updates - they will stop delivering monolithic upgrades but will do what Google does and issue rolling updates when the new functionality is ready for release.
Apple has created a platform (64 bit and software foundation) that will allow across the board feature updates that will work as native client and web based applications. I go back to MS's odd backlash against the iWork updates. They were not reacting to iWork in its current form - but in what it could become down the road.
MS Office while more feature rich - does not have that commonality across their native client and cloud apps that Apple has developed now. iWork will look very different a year down the road.
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If Apple do this kind of thing: "Apple listen to customers. Bravo! And anyway, for sure they were from the begining planning to do it right eventually
"If Microsoft do this kind of thing: "They backtrack just because they were forced to do it by losing bilions of revenue. They must be ashamed of the huge and stupid mistake they made in the first time that never should have happened.
"Seriously
. At very least Apple should have put a beta sticker in these new versions and warn people before downloading of the reduced features set. Wouldn't that be a much more reasonable and open approach? :-/They've likely only been working on it since Scott Forestall got canned and there was a massive reorganization. I'm tempted to think that there was such a fundamental disagreement with Forestall's vision that they're trying to redo everything that he worked on and had influence over. Everything is starting over in a new direction, from the ground up, built on a new philosophy. The iWork apps are genuinely new products, not revisions of the old. And, as with any new product, they will grow and mature with age.
While I agree this was a definite mishap on Apple's part, simply throwing "a thousand programmers" at such a major undertaking is not a realistic approach to software development. It doesn't work that way.
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If Apple do this kind of thing: "Apple listen to customers. Bravo! And anyway, for sure they were from the begining planning to do it right eventually
If Microsoft do this kind of thing: "They backtrack just because they were forced to do it by losing bilions of revenue. They must be ashamed of the huge and stupid mistake they made in the first time that never should have happened.
Seriously
Generalizing massive quantities of people sure is fun.
Actually, I see plenty of people on the internet (specifically, these forums) who really let Apple have it with some of their commentary. Furthermore, what backtracks of Microsoft (actual backtracks, not just something they screw up while Ballmer obliviously acts like they're still dominating the industry) have you specifically seen that has received that sort of overall response?
It should also be noted that Microsoft and Apple are not identical. While Microsoft consistently puts out half-hearted attempts at new products these days, the glass-half-full Mac users are generally happier with their software and a little less on edge when a screw-up happens.
That's not the reason this is happening.
That would be like Ford putting square wheels on a car and then getting credit when they switched back to round.
ARM Chip? OK. Can an ARM chip dismiss all the usability problems a touch interface offers versus a keyboard and a mouse? It is not a chip problem, it is two fold:
1. The user interface problem. The Mac UI simply allows a user to do more than what you can do with an iOS device. Bigger screen, keyboard and mouse = more capable to do advanced stuff. Think of the full fledged FCP X running on an iPhone 4S. It can't be done? Why usability.
2. The market problem. iOS users will not demand power features. It is a mostly an OS and a device made for content consumption over content creation.
I wrote a whole article about this here, in case you are interested
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You are only looking at the problem from the technical perspective. It is not a technical problem, it is two fold:
1. The user interface problem. The Mac UI simply allows a user to do more than what you can do with an iOS device. Bigger screen, keyboard and mouse = more capable to do advanced stuff. Think of the full fledged FCP X running on an iPhone 4S. It can't be done? Why usability.
2. The market problem. iOS users will not demand power features. It is a mostly an OS and a device made for content consumption over content creation.
I wrote a whole article about this here, in case you are interested
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You just went to a completely different place. My point is features WERE removed from the perspective that counts. There's no IT explanation that can deny that.
I updated to the new Pages not knowing that a ton of features I use for school every day were removed, notably Pages' great note taking templates. Not all of us can wait 6 months to get the features we need back.
I still have the old versions of the software, but they don't work with iCloud anymore.
There is a lot of sense in this. Apple are rather capricious and ruthless when it comes to cutting features that people have come to rely on. In business this is even more of an issue.
I agree that compatibility is important, but "80%+ of people" is a bit too optimistic.
Apple's global Desktop/Laptop market share is barely 3%.