Apple Updates iWork Apps for Mac and iOS With New Features

[Enclavean]

I've never seen a single person ever use Number or Pages in my 20 years of Mac Support. Only Keynote. I'm actually surprised that they haven't dropped Pages/Numbers yet and just added support for Google docs/office to Keynote.

Almost my whole class are Macbook users, and from what i've seen most of them use Pages for notes and Keynote for presentations. Its often a problem where someone forgot/doesnt know how to convert a .keynote to a .pptx so the file doesnt work on the PC hooked up to the projector.

Numbers though I've never seen anyone use ever. Unlike the other 2, it seriously lags behind its competitors. Google Sheets is quite popular because of how easy it is to collaborate with others on it. We use it all the time as a sign-up sheet for exams and classes.

 

[menneke]

I use Numbers and Pages. I have never used Keynote. Numbers and Pages do everything I need.

I thought I was the only one in the world who used Numbers and Pages intensively. Keynote never ever.
Are you me?

 

[precogincog]

I've never seen a single person ever use Number or Pages in my 20 years of Mac Support. Only Keynote. I'm actually surprised that they haven't dropped Pages/Numbers yet and just added support for Google docs/office to Keynote.

If they had a good web integration with Safari, I think they would get uptake, but agree. I hate having the native MS Office apps locally, but don't hesitate to upload to sheets / docs.

 

[TheOldChevy]

I still miss AppleWorks, with its database and its drawing modules.

 

[PeteBurgh]

I disagree, Apple clearly tried to compete for a while, even came up with a website (maybe it is still up) comparing features and even formula by formula to MS Excel. They finally gave up and made the apps free (they were all paid apps in both iOS and MacOS before).

Well, we are using different tenses here, past and present. Perhaps at one point Apple (in the 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' era 15 years ago?) marketed them as direct competitors. This was pretty tenuous at the time, and they clearly diverged much more since.

I continue to think they are basically different tools for different tasks, albeit with some overlap.

For example, I use Numbers for simple domestic tasks, or when I want to create an attractive chart quickly. I use Excel all day at work, sometimes doing things than are impossible with Numbers (e.g. co-editing across platforms, collaborating with multiple users with different editing privileges, etc). Both have different strengths and different use cases.

 

[w5jck]

Numbers sucks. I much prefer Excel. Numbers is a cheap toy in comparison to the highly professional Excel.

 

[wordsworth]

I use Pages daily and Word only as a complement to what I do in Pages.

Like JosephAW I too was a user of AppleWorks and ClarisWorks during the many years preceding iWork. And I was pleased to see Analog Kid saying that iWork can still do a better job at importing old Office files than, er, Office. Twenty years ago it was good at that, too! A recall a business acquaintance unable to get a Windows PC to open his Word files for love nor money. He sent the floppy disk to me and my Windows guy failed, too. On the off chance, I tried to open the Word files on my Mac and sure enough, no problem for Apple's software. And not just on my then new iMac G3, but on an older Performa 6400 too. Both handled the 'challenge' like champs. It's great that some traditions are maintained. Well done, Apple.

 

[jayducharme]

I use Pages nearly every day for desktop publishing, and the main change that for years I've been begging Apple to make is to allow me to set "Page Layout" as a default, rather than having to manually "convert" to it every time I start a document.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

While Numbers app isn’t Excel, it’s probably one of the best apps Apple makes.

I used to live for Excel, until I got an iPad mini that went everywhere with me and MS hadn't brought office to iOS yet. I moved my personal spreadsheet work over to it to try out, and once I got used to Nums, I quit using Excel altogether and just make everyone deal with my partially compatible problem self.
That said, Apple really screwed up iOS Numbers usability with regard to the formatting options a while back when they bought into the "drive engagement" nonsense and buried simple tasks under as many layers of taps as possible. Honestly I'd almost forgotten about Excel, but may have to give it another look.

 

[doolar]

I just updated these on my iMac 2017 with Monterey, but I'm not seeing the updates on my Mac mini 2014 with Monterey. Any reason the Mac mini is not seeing these updates? Even when I specifically search out Pages for example, the Mac App Store says the latest version is 11.2. OTOH, Numbers is listed as version 12, and the update is showing up, but only if I specifically search for it.


I use Pages on some of my machines, since my need for word processing in my current job is no longer restricted to Word.

It's nice not having to pay for extra Office licences.

Yep! I use Pages and Numbers on my own Mac. I do a bit of voluntary work, and it’s great not having to keep an O365 license just for that.

On my work Mac I have the full Office suite, anything else would be incredibly cumbersome.

I’m really glad that the iWork suite is around still, and free. It wasn’t free from the start IIRC.

 

[txscott]

I use Excel at work and Numbers at home. I wish Numbers allowed for transparent use of the XLSX format without the import/export process. Open an XLSX format in Numbers, change the file, save back as XLSX. You lose some Numbers "features" in the file, but generally I don't use Numbers features. I don't have a personal need for pretty spreadsheets or charts and being able to specify fonts to two decimal places leaves me cold.

I am working hard to use Numbers because it integrates better with iCloud and Files than MSFT products and I trust APPL more than MSFT. My wife, frankly, will not touch Numbers because she does not believe that, for $100 per year, it is worth her time to figure out how to use Numbers when she already knows how to use Excel.

Excel and office 365 generally (including One Drive), are by far the superior products both for ease of use and feature set including on iOS. Their web based counterparts are also way better than AAPL's. However, I trust MSFT less than AAPL with my data.

 

[Kikjou Delatour]

They are significantly poor compared to those two. The only one that has a chance is Keynote, but Numbers and Pages cannot compete with Excel and Word, or Google’s offerings.

I am not sure what your requirements are abut I personally would not ever touch anything Microsoft or Google. I have designed brochures and flyers in Pages for my local municipality. And I use Pages as a a pre-publishing tool for my lab's grant proposals and papers. The end result is far better than what Word can output (and it saves some crucial lines to stay within requirements). As far as Numbers, every time I have to use a friend's Windows box, I am appalled to see how little Excel's look and feel have changed since the 1990s. I especially like that you can have several tables on one sheet. I also use Numbers for my scientific calculations.

 

[ivanpasic]

I've tried to use Pages, Numbers and Keynote many times because of better integration into Apple's ecosystem, but keep going back to Office because some critical features are lacking such as line numbering and the ability to break one cell of a table over two pages in Apple Pages.

 

[CLS9]

I've never seen a single person ever use Number or Pages in my 20 years of Mac Support. Only Keynote. I'm actually surprised that they haven't dropped Pages/Numbers yet and just added support for Google docs/office to Keynote.

I've used all three for as many years as they've been available, beginning with ClarisWorks. iWorks translates to all the others more easily than anything else I've ever used and I've used them all. Google Docs crap is useless to me.

 

[ivanpasic]

I am not sure what your requirements are abut I personally would not ever touch anything Microsoft or Google. I have designed brochures and flyers in Pages for my local municipality. And I use Pages as a a pre-publishing tool for my lab's grant proposals and papers. The end result is far better than what Word can output (and it saves some crucial lines to stay within requirements). As far as Numbers, every time I have to use a friend's Windows box, I am appalled to see how little Excel's look and feel have changed since the 1990s. I especially like that you can have several tables on one sheet. I also use Numbers for my scientific calculations.

I just posted a comment, I see you are likely in science given that you write grants etc, I am in medicine/science and write papers and grants, but how do you number lines in Pages? Do you export into Word then number them? Most journals require line numbering when submitting manuscripts.

 

[CLS9]

I've tried to use Pages, Numbers and Keynote many times because of better integration into Apple's ecosystem, but keep going back to Office because some critical features are lacking such as line numbering and the ability to break one cell of a table over two pages in Apple Pages.

You're not using them correctly. They have those abilities. I can appreciate that Office is just a familiar habit, but I'm a copy editor and I've found the Apple system to be far more useful to me in all of my endeavors.

 

[sracer]

I've used all three for as many years as they've been available, beginning with ClarisWorks. iWorks translates to all the others more easily than anything else I've ever used and I've used them all. Google Docs crap is useless to me.

I was a longtime user of ClarisWorks.... on Windows. I was able to do things with it that people using MS Office were envious of. I then moved on to AppleWorks on Windows. When they stopped supporting it on Windows, I made the switch to Macs specifically for AppleWorks... only have them discontinue it on OSX. iWork+Bento was the closest thing to it but still not as good.

I heavily use iWork (in addition to MS Office, LibreOffice, and Google Docs) and while I appreciate the cross-platform nature of the newest iWork, there are still features missing from it that were present in iWork '09.

Because of the tight Mac OS requirements placed in iWork, I'm migrating away from it and toward LibreOffice and Google Docs. (my Mac OS systems are on Mojave, and will remain there.)

 

[ratspg]

Before iWork was a heavy user of AppleWorks and before that ClarisWorks.

Represent ! an OG .

 

[rpallred]

I just posted a comment, I see you are likely in science given that you write grants etc, I am in medicine/science and write papers and grants, but how do you number lines in Pages? Do you export into Word then number them? Most journals require line numbering when submitting manuscripts.

I would use Pages except for it's lack of support for Zotero for managing references...so it's Word of LibreOffice for me.

 

[satchmo]

Keynote is a like a Swiss-army knife. You can do so many things with it.

It however has one irritating flaw in that you can't scale grouped text. You can scale grouped objects, but not text. Sad.

 

[BWhaler]

iWork is nothing short of spectacular.

 

[cgsnipinva]

I use iWork every day for home needs and for our real estate investment company (small business). Keynote and Pages are far easier to work with than PowerPoint and Word. I can put together very professional documents in both.

Numbers is catching up and I actually have a pretty complicated model put together to determine profitability per property that also produces reports. It now has Pivot Tables, Categories, and a much enhanced filter toolset. I find it just as good as Google's Spreadsheet if not better.

I think it is very smart for Apple to keep investing in it as it can support small businesses. If they were smart, they would buy OmniPlan and get a their tools in as a pro-set.

 

[eyeseeyou]

I could totally use Apple's "office" apps if the files were completely compatible with Microsoft which my company uses.

 

[jonnysods]

I just ditched O365 and started using iWork - I have to say, its come a long way!

 

[TinaBelcher]

I really hate how to Pages app is constructed with the tools on the right side, and on iOS you have to click on the brush tool for a pop up menu of more tools. Apple is trying so hard to be visually so different from Word and Docs without it having any advantages. I wish they would’ve just pin all the tools in a horizontal bar above the document like Word and Pages. The app also feels show, it’s iOS it should’ve feel like butter!