Apple Releases Updates for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote on iOS and Mac

[JosephAW]

Just think. We have to wait four more years for facing pages.
I need that and horizontal/vertical font narrowing, not kerning but width compression and then I should be able to retire ID and Quark.
I was able to put in varying headers per page but was not very intuitive. And having weird movement of grouped items horizontally distributed when grouped and duplicated, the original changes but the duplicated is correct.
It's really close to replacing dtp applications.

 

[riverfreak]

The iWork apps are free.
They have an Apple-style about them, and familiarity is important in productivity apps.

Ummm, not sure if there are specific features that keep users loyal..?

Otherwise, yes, Office is superior, ubiquitous and integrated into many systems, workflows, work environments, universities and quite simply more widely liked and used.

I think there's a reason there is zero mention of iWork in any Apple keynotes/releases..

You know what is superior? Google Docs, not MS Office. Ever try to share and collaboratively edit anything in the iWorks suite? It's a total and complete exercise in frustration.

And to get around the inadequacy of their collaborative features they say, oh, it's a feature that your docs are stored in the cloud until you are ready to edit them. That is a cop-out since they haven't figured out how to do merges yet.

They need to focus on the stuff matters. Being able to share and collaboratively edit documents in real time across platforms. Otherwise the whole iWork suite is just a monumental waste of time.

 

[satchmo]

Back then, you could not just type text onto a page - it had to be in a text box.

Sounds like Ready Set Go! (The real old timers will know what I'm talking about!)

 

[sracer]

As a diehard fan of iWork, I am delighted with this update. Yes it is long overdue, but it helps to be able to transition more docs from iWork 09 to this version. And if Apple can squeeze one more iWork update before iOS 11 drops, it could really juice things up.

Btw, it s a common misconception that iWork Numbers doesn't support pivot tables. That is not exactly true. It's not called "pivots" but "categories". That offers at least basic pivot table functionality. That will work for creating pivots in a new Numbers sheet, but it won't convert pivots from an xls file into categories.

 

[Verita]

It took them four years to re-implement this. Four. Years.

It is really sad. What does this team do every working day???

 

[tardegrade]

It's true! Linked Text Boxes are back!

I created all of our corporate brochures in Pages '09 back in the day. When the new Pages was released it seemed that in order to maintain compatibility with the iOS app many of the features were dropped or crippled. This made it unworkable for me and I've stuck with Pages '09 ever since.

It'll be interesting to see how many other features have been restored and if it's worth using over the old Pages yet. It's kind of ridiculous that so many people are still using the older software because the newer offering doesn't have the required feature-set for many people. Instead of going back to basics they could have split the product and kept developing the DTP side of the software as a separate entity.

 

[harriska2]

Excel lets you see multiple rows at once for the work I do. It can sort and filter very quickly. I don't see it slowing down in popularity anytime soon.

 

[bobmepp]

Is there actually an advantage to using this applications when Office seems so much more superior?

I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything I'm sincerely curious as to what the benefit would be to using them vs office.

They're free, and I'm so used to them now that I rarely miss Office.

 

[sir1963nz]

And you STILL can not have vertical text in numbers.
Having a vertical text "header" for a column of check boxes make a LOT of sense if you are trying to keep the sheet compact. It dead easy to do in Excel.

 

[ramm24]

Aside from pivot tables, I can perform a lot of functions such as vlookup, if statements, statistical computation and slicers.
You can actually have multiple tables in one worksheet.

 

[hmmfe]

It would be great if "show print view" would return to Numbers. It was really easy to get my Numbers documents print ready. Now, it's trial and error. The way iWork did page layout (for both Pages and Numbers) was one of the primary reasons I started using iWork to begin with.

 

[nwcs]

As a person that used Apple Works on a Mac Classic I for undergrad school, I have been feeling oddly nostalgic and amazed at how things have changed.

Yep, remember ClarisWorks as well. Used to print out papers on my ImageWriter II. I remember seeing ClarisWorks at my local MUG (mac user group) and had to get it. I think I got it legally, I can't remember. Things really have changed! The Mac Classic was my second Mac after a used original 128K.

 

[convergent]

They're free, and I'm so used to them now that I rarely miss Office.

Free is not usually an attribute of something that is high value. This is simply an area that Apple has failed in the market. Microsoft and Google own this now and are in the same type of battle that Apple is in with Google on the smartphone OS. If you do a search on "office suite marketshare", you don't even see Apple in the discussion.

 

[kazmac]

Pages is miles ahead of Word in:
- Responsiveness
- Font rendering
- Making tables
- Graphic heavy documents
- Generating equations (since last update)

Add that to a simpler user interface, and Pages becomes a really good app.

Thanks for this. I will definitely upgrade on my Mac and install on my iPP. I do not want to subscribe to Office on my iPP. Pages always drove me nuts with formatting (especially a few months ago in helping a now former acquaintance with her resume), but I am always willing to give it another go.

 

[DanielDD]

Free is not usually an attribute of something that is high value. This is simply an area that Apple has failed in the market. Microsoft and Google own this now and are in the same type of battle that Apple is in with Google on the smartphone OS. If you do a search on "office suite marketshare", you don't even see Apple in the discussion.

To be sure, marketshare was never and never will be a good assessment of a quality product. Keynote is ahead of the competition. Pages has its drawbacks, but it is more than fine for the majority of people.
People that do need more features than Pages has to offer should rely on software like LaTex, and not on messy WYSIWYG word processors.

I agree though that Excel is in a whole other league compared to numbers, but to G sheets as well. Yes, G sheet has add-ons, but Numbers has built in support for Apple Script. You can actually do some serious automatization with it.

 

[supremedesigner]

My concern is - why is it taking so long for them to update it? Why not update it regularly, like 4x a year instead of every 4 years?

 

[sracer]

Yep, remember ClarisWorks as well. Used to print out papers on my ImageWriter II. I remember seeing ClarisWorks at my local MUG (mac user group) and had to get it. I think I got it legally, I can't remember. Things really have changed! The Mac Classic was my second Mac after a used original 128K.

It was ClarisWorks for Windows that pulled me away from Windows and onto Macs. Clarisworks was the only application that was able to pull me away from GeoWorks Ensemble (then NewDeal Office). Sadly, it was a short time after moving to Macs that Apple killed ClarisWorks/AppleWorks.

Thanks for this. I will definitely upgrade on my Mac and install on my iPP. I do not want to subscribe to Office on my iPP. Pages always drove me nuts with formatting (especially a few months ago in helping a now former acquaintance with her resume), but I am always willing to give it another go.

The greatest impediment to using iWork is shifting FROM an MS Office mindset TO the iWork mindset. The two software packages have different approaches to tasks and a lot of the frustration of users comes from attempting the MS Office approach to a task rather than to understand and relearn the iWork style.

It took a while for me, but the effort has really paid off. For documents that I create, with extremely rare exceptions, I am able to do the things in Pages that I need to do. I have MS Office around for those times when I need to interact with others who use Office. The similar experiences are true for Numbers and KeyNote.

KeyNote is probably the easiest of the 3 apps to switch over to because it straight-up knocks PowerPoint out.

Numbers is a bit more of a challenge, but I'm making progress there too.

If you don't give up quickly when you get frustrated, and work things through, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results.

 

[EliasM]

I tried Pages and Numbers when they first came out but I gave up on both. Pages didn't (still doesn't?) allow basic things like changing the orientation of particular sections in a document. Numbers is seriously limited in conditional formatting (which I use all the time because I need visual clues to better grasp what's going on in my spreadsheets).

I recently made the swith to Office 365. So much more powerful, it includes a crazy amount of cloud storage and it even looks good. I could hardly believe it but the current generation of Microsoft products (Windows 10 and Office) appears to be the first that is pleasing to the eye. Let's hope they keep it that way.

 

[mtngoatjoe]

Btw, it s a common misconception that iWork Numbers doesn't support pivot tables. That is not exactly true. It's not called "pivots" but "categories". That offers at least basic pivot table functionality. That will work for creating pivots in a new Numbers sheet, but it won't convert pivots from an xls file into categories.

I thought this feature was removed in 2013. Am I wrong?

 

[wwchris]

Numbers is seriously limited in conditional formatting (which I use all the time because I need visual clues to better grasp what's going on in my spreadsheets).

I'm curious which parts of Numbers conditional formatting are not up to snuff for you? It is actually one of the things I vastly prefer in Numbers over Excel. I find conditional formatting in Excel to be cryptic and difficult comparatively. Have you looked at Numbers in a while?

The other things I prefer in Numbers is locking columns and rows in formulas, I find it to be way simpler than in Excel. Also, I LOVE the ability to have multiple tables on the same page! I can see the table I am using to generate inputs and then just copy and paste it to another page when I am ready to hide it. I mean once you know how to do these things in either app, they are not difficult, but for the average user, I find Numbers much simpler.

The real worry for Microsoft should be Google though, they are making serious inroads in the professional/business world.

 

[DanielDD]

I thought this feature was removed in 2013. Am I wrong?

You're right

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I worked with the text boxes a little now and they do seem to bring back the benefits of text boxes in Pages '09. At first I thought one couldn't flow text across many pages. For example, text boxes on page 1 to start a story... then continue a story on the back page of a newsletter (say, page 16).

I had noticed in some experimentation that if a text box is positioned higher on a page than an earlier-numbered text box, Pages would auto renumber and reflow text. For example, think 3 text boxes stacked roughly on top of each other. Drag box 3 above box 2 on the page and box 3 seemed to become box 2 and vice versa, with text reflowing accordingly. However, today, I can't seem to make that happen again (box 3 can be positioned above box 2 on the same page).

To the first issue, I noticed that text boxes use color coding across pages. So several boxes on page 1 were numbered with green backgrounds. Then I created some new boxes on page 2 and they have red backgrounds. Pages '09 showed connections between text boxes with blue lines but this numbering approach seems just as good to me.

Once created, it looks like one can freely move different stories in different text boxes onto the same page. For example, the 1-2-3 with green background text boxes could share a page with the 1-2-3 with red background text boxes on the same page.

Edit: Now I see that ones a thread is created, one can click one of the text box thread numbers and "create new thread" to start a different set of text boxes on the same page. In other words, one doesn't have to use a separate page to start a separate group of linked text boxes.

All this seems very good to me. Comparative experiments continue.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Correction to prior content here:

I worked with the text boxes a little now and they do seem to bring back the benefits of text boxes in Pages '09. At first I thought one couldn't flow text across many pages. For example, text boxes on page 1 to start a story... then continue a story on the back page of a newsletter (say, page 16).

I had noticed in some experimentation that if a text box is positioned higher on a page than an earlier-numbered text box, Pages would auto renumber and reflow text. For example, think 3 text boxes stacked roughly on top of each other. Drag box 3 above box 2 on the page and box 3 seemed to become box 2 and vice versa, with text reflowing accordingly. However, today, I can't seem to make that happen again (box 3 can be positioned above box 2 on the same page).

To the first issue, I noticed that text boxes use color coding across pages. So several boxes on page 1 were numbered with green backgrounds. Then I created some new boxes on page 2 and they have red backgrounds. Pages '09 showed connections between text boxes with blue lines but this numbering approach seems just as good to me.

Wait. Are you saying that the flow order is set automatically? If so that probably won't work for me. In Pages 4.x and previous the flow order was set by linking the boxes. Move the box and the link follows.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Wait. Are you saying that the flow order is set automatically? If so that probably won't work for me. In Pages 4.x and previous the flow order was set by linking the boxes. Move the box and the link follows.

That appeared to be the case when I did some experimenting yesterday but I can't replicate that problem today (and corrected my original post accordingly). So I must have been doing something wrong yesterday.

It seems that this implementation of text boxes- while different than how they did it in Pages '09- is just about as useful. However, I'm still experimenting...

I believe in Pages 09 when a text box was overflowed (full of text and then some), a new box could be created by clicking an overflow box on the (full) text box outline. I don't see that option here. Instead, you create a new text box, click one and the other to link them together, so 3 steps instead of 1. Maybe there's some more efficient way to create a new linked text box?

 

[cgsnipinva]

I was happy that Pages in iOS also got the linked text boxes and now they have thumbnail view which was previouslu only on the Mac version.

It seems Apple is investing in functionality of its key software applications.
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Wait. Are you saying that the flow order is set automatically? If so that probably won't work for me. In Pages 4.x and previous the flow order was set by linking the boxes. Move the box and the link follows.

It allows you to link boxes on your own.