Apple Updates iWork Apps for Mac and iOS With New Features

[oldoneeye]

Apple today updated its iWork suite of apps, introducing new features for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote on both iOS devices and Mac. These are major version 12 updates, but each app has received only a couple of changes, as outlined below.

Keynote

On iOS, Keynote now features an option to enlarge slides to a maximum zoom level of 400 percent, plus there is a new feature for editing font size more precisely with up to two decimal places.

On Mac, the Shortcuts app can be used to create create or open presentations, rehearse a slideshow, or start presenting.

Numbers

On Numbers for iOS, users can now copy a snapshot of table cells without formulas, categories, or hidden values, plus formulas and cells can be filled with autofill using VoiceOver. Numbers also supports editing font size more precisely with up to two decimal places.

On Mac, Shortcuts can be used to create or open spreadsheets and add rows to a table, plus VoiceOver can be used to create formulas and fill cells using autofill.

Pages

Pages for iOS now features an option to publish directly to Apple Books with file sizes up to 2GB, and there is an option to quickly start writing a new document on iPhone by touching and holding the Pages app icon on the Home screen. Comments can be read and changes can be tracked with VoiceOver, and font size can be edited more precisely.

On Mac, Pages has the same VoiceOver support, plus Shortcuts can be used to create and open documents.

The iWork apps for iOS and Mac are available for free from the App Store and Mac App Store.

Article Link: Apple Updates iWork Apps for Mac and iOS With New Features

I used to work at Sun Microsystems and we always used OpenOffice on Solaris Unix. I imagined how much better the productivity suites must be in the "rest of the world". Imagine my disappointment when we moved to Windows and Office ....

 

[RedWeasel]

my only gripe with Pages is that they don’t have horizontal compression of letters but only the spacing between the letters.

Why would you use that over a proper condensed variant of a font?

 

[RedWeasel]

Google pretty much only gives results for Excel, as it turns out "numbers" is not a great name for a piece of software.

Or Google isn't the sophisticated search engine it touts to be

 

[RedWeasel]

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.

Meh. When it comes to not overly complicated use cases and a focus on nice looking spreadsheets, Excel stands no chance.

IMHO, Excel is in an awkward position as a tool. It's much too bloated for a spreadsheet and it's by far not powerful enough for proper and structured analysis. So you're better of using simpler tools (like Numbers) for the former and proper analytics tools or languages for the latter.

 

[svish]

Minor improvements! Pages is a good alternate to Microsoft Word for basic tasks.

 

[JosephAW]

Why would you use that over a proper condensed variant of a font?

Narrow fonts don’t always cut it and sometimes you need to use a custom font with unique letters and pages can only adjust the kerning between the letters and not the horizontal width of each letter.
The work around for pages is to create a pdf of the type and then import as graphic and adjust only the X parameter of the image and it will fit but to edit that type you have to edit the pdf. That’s a lot of extra steps.

 

[cgsnipinva]

I don't believe that Numbers yet has announced Pivot Table support. This is a deal-breaker for me and why I'm still on Google Sheets. please Apple - Pivot Tables are important to some of us!

Incorrect - Numbers has Pivot Tables (implemented last update) and Categories.

 

[Bazza1]

Yes, Pages can open / save an existing Word document, or export a new one to Word format (and I'm guessing the same holds true for Numbers and Excel) with sometime success, but really you'll be hard-pressed to find many companies (even those that are all Apple in the office) that would ever use iWork - especially if communicating with other companies. In a pinch, they'd probably go with Google Docs instead.
And it might have changed since, but I had initially had issues with docs created in MacOS transferring seamlessly to iOS - or vice-versa. Always font or format issues.

I'm afraid that Pages might be suitable for a hobbyist letter writer with an interest in cute graphics or a personal journal writer (also see ClarisWorks), but really, it's the aging equivalent to Microsoft Works in that regard.

 

[nt5672]

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.

Yep, every time I try I use the stupid stuff that Apple skipped in Pages and Numbers, I end up back to using (Oh my God, no) Word or LibreOffice depending on the client.

 

[harriska2]

I used to use Word with it’s simple but powerful search and replace and Excel for some more advanced formulas along with search and replace. But the mac version is so crappy I ended up learning Numbers and Pages and I’m happy with it. If I need excel to do something complex, I’ll just break out my Windows 7 machine with Office 10.

As MS moves to a pretty expensive subscription service, I wonder if more people will move to Pages/Numbers/Keynote.

 

[orl2222]

I used to use Word with it’s simple but powerful search and replace and Excel for some more advanced formulas along with search and replace. But the mac version is so crappy I ended up learning Numbers and Pages and I’m happy with it. If I need excel to do something complex, I’ll just break out my Windows 7 machine with Office 10.

As MS moves to a pretty expensive subscription service, I wonder if more people will move to Pages/Numbers/Keynote.

I agree. Subscription software is getting out of hand. I'm glad Apple is offering this for free. Back in the old days you had to pay for iWork. When I was working, retired now, I was in the corporate world where it was all Microsoft office. Microsoft is going the way of Adobe, where everything is a subscription service. At 10 bucks a month it may seem cheap. but after a couple of years it really adds up.

 

[cgsnipinva]

Pages has evolved into a really nice package. We develop property brochures for investments and it has a lot of desktop publishing features in it. Numbers has most of what I need in Excel - there are a couple of minor data tools I would like to see - but I would expect these to be added in the next couple of releases. it has as good or better functionality than google's sheets and about 95% of Excel's capabilities. The key features I would like to see are:

1. Text to column
2. Remove Duplicated
3. Spark Lines/Trend Lines
4. Matrix functions
5. Some additional charting options

 

[chamkila]

I love Numbers app and I use it every day for work.

 

[danielsutton]

Apple today updated its iWork suite of apps, introducing new features for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote on both iOS devices and Mac. These are major version 12 updates, but each app has received only a couple of changes, as outlined below.

Keynote

On iOS, Keynote now features an option to enlarge slides to a maximum zoom level of 400 percent, plus there is a new feature for editing font size more precisely with up to two decimal places.

On Mac, the Shortcuts app can be used to create create or open presentations, rehearse a slideshow, or start presenting.

Numbers

On Numbers for iOS, users can now copy a snapshot of table cells without formulas, categories, or hidden values, plus formulas and cells can be filled with autofill using VoiceOver. Numbers also supports editing font size more precisely with up to two decimal places.

On Mac, Shortcuts can be used to create or open spreadsheets and add rows to a table, plus VoiceOver can be used to create formulas and fill cells using autofill.

Pages

Pages for iOS now features an option to publish directly to Apple Books with file sizes up to 2GB, and there is an option to quickly start writing a new document on iPhone by touching and holding the Pages app icon on the Home screen. Comments can be read and changes can be tracked with VoiceOver, and font size can be edited more precisely.

On Mac, Pages has the same VoiceOver support, plus Shortcuts can be used to create and open documents.

The iWork apps for iOS and Mac are available for free from the App Store and Mac App Store.

Article Link: Apple Updates iWork Apps for Mac and iOS With New Features

I wish that Apple would make the iWork suite a real productivity tool in the same league as Microsoft Office. Apple could really be doing a lot more with its pro and work offerings.

 

[tavsingh]

My Life literally runs on Numbers. (No, I'm not an accountant, I'm an artist)

Check this post from Mac Power Users

 

[maxoakland]

I wish that Apple would make the iWork suite a real productivity tool in the same league as Microsoft Office. Apple could really be doing a lot more with its pro and work offerings.

What do they need to add?

 

[EdwardC]

I have Perpetual licenses for Office 2021 for both Mac and Windows but personally I don't care at all for Office on the Mac at all and don't use it, obviously it's great for Windows. On my Mac I prefer Pages and I find it does everything I need to run my business on and has for as long as it has existed.

 

[Isengardtom]

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

Excel sucks too. Yes it’s feature rich and you can do a lot more with it but it also crashes all the time. I’m glad we’re moving more and more to BI for my work related reporting

For simple home use like a personal budget, numbers is just fine.

 

[Bazza1]

...As MS moves to a pretty expensive subscription service, I wonder if more people will move to Pages/Numbers/Keynote.

I think if people are going to move away from MS, they're more likely going to try Google (if their Office needs are more collaborative and can be done largely online) or via standalone Suites like the free LibreOffice. Apple's products just too proprietary to be of any value in a work environment.

 

[harriska2]

I think if people are going to move away from MS, they're more likely going to try Google (if their Office needs are more collaborative and can be done largely online) or via standalone Suites like the free LibreOffice. Apple's products just too proprietary to be of any value in a work environment.

I use google docs. But for Docs over 60 or so pages it bogs down. For spreadsheets, it gets clunky with lots of columns and rows.

 

[MacAddict1978]

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.

Honestly, I always wished Microsoft would rip off Numbers and innovate Excel a little more.

Numbers really shows how a spreadsheet should be. Most of us using spread sheets have to present or report data, and that's where Numbers is awesome.... until it isn't.

Unless you export it to a PDF, the benefits of Numbers go poof as no one you are sharing data with is using a Mac, and it's a bit silly to invest time in duplicating data in numbers to use as a printed report.
Having pivot tables with expandable fileds (and the best looking pivot tables I've ever seen) it super cool if you could share it that way with anyone... but sharing with others is a no go. If you export to Excel, it becomes ugly and loses functions.

It would be awesome if there was a way to create an Excel add in that would display a Number file in Excel as it is in Numbers, but that's never happening.

 

[MacAddict1978]

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've used Pages to create print materials as an alternative to InDesign and it does a great job in that regard. Word and Google Docs cannot create decent looking print documents like catalogs, brochures, or even a decent looking newsletter for that matter.

Aside from some slap on features, Pages hasn't really had any updates since inception. The inspectors and such were kind of intuitive in their day compared to Word before the ribbon, but now.... it's clunky and not so quick/easy to find settings and options. Microsoft adding the tell me what you want to do box was a game changer.

Apple just doesn't develop their office suite. Visually, Pages kicks ass... functionally and feature wise, it's crap.

 

[MacAddict1978]

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.

You can have several tables in one sheet in Excel too, but you can't just move them around like Text boxes and have essentially a page layout that is a hybrid document editor as well. Numbers look and polish and modular design are awesome.... but only useful if others were actually using Numbers.

Microsoft's Loop (formerly Fluid) components eventually will be kind of what Numbers is, but allow a canvas to drop elements from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other office apps into a canvas with each element being collaborative. Will be interesting to see how Microsoft does with it.

 

[usagora]

I've never seen a single person ever use Number or Pages in my 20 years of Mac Support.

Well, after reading through this thread, apparently a whole lot of people here have never used your services 🤣

 

[Just sayin...]

Numbers does have Pivot Table support, it was added a few updates ago. You’ll find it by tapping the “Cell” button in the bottom right corner (Dutch screenshot attached).

View attachment 1988303

Wow - don’t know how I missed that one! Thanks for the pointer. I’m spending part of today to see how well it works for my needs and then…well…there doesn’t seem to be anything remaining that ties me to Google. Thanks again!