I’m surprised Tim hasn’t moved to turn iWork into a subscription service yet. He’s that greedy.
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Apple Updates iWork Apps With New iOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4 Features
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I saw his disagreement earlier and thought the same thing.
I have to thank him for letting me know that I don't use Office
.You can search for it in the App Store. When you view the app listing, there should be an Update button.
thanks had to click on the icon in App Store to see the update button. Only clicked on open before and it opened the older version - updating now many thanks for your quick advice.
The subs to that service would be so low it wouldn't pay for a single software developer to design it.
I guess all those books I wrote in Pages aren't actually published and on bookshelves around the world.
Yes yes, and George RR Martin famously still writes his books on a DOS machine with WordPerfect 5.1....which I still think is the best word processing software ever made.
Meanwhile, I currently have a 1.5gb Excel file open, with 12 people on it and full change tracking. It is tied to a medication software database to automatically pull in numbers from all over the hospital I work at. Numbers doesn't offer anything close to that, nor could I use it on Windows even if it did have those features.
These are fine free apps and I'm glad they exist....but they aren't terribly useful in the corporate world.
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I'm not saying it's not still a great feature. I just mean they don't seem to promote it as one of the tentpole reasons to get a Mac like they used to. And that people seem to have to still have Office anyway even if they prefer iWork.
"...for definitions of 'corporate world' that fit my use case," I'm sure you meant to add.
Yes, there are people who absolutely MUST have Microsoft's products for many good and valid reasons. But to claim that anything LESS than those use cases isn't "terribly useful" is reductive as hell. Assuming that all corporate uses must, perforce, have the same requirements is, well, ridiculous.
As far as I can tell, no one is saying that the iWork apps can suffice in every single scenario and to hell with Microsoft. Only that they're good apps, with more utility than most people imagine, and can be used in a lot of situations.
Including, yes, SOME in the corporate world.
I'm happy you found something that works for you, but also mildly scared.
About a decade ago, I was tasked with rewriting one of those Excel "applications" connected to Access into ... an Excel "application" doing PL/SQL against Oracle DB with OBDC. It's so common that an end-user makes a small tool in Excel that gradually grows & grows in functionality until it becomes indispensable
On the plus side, maybe that would entice Apple to actually improve the iWork suite. Time to be competitive for a change.
I'd actually love to use Pages and Numbers if they could easily and naively save to a generally USABLE formate, idk like .docx and .xlsx. I love the interface for iWork apps, and I use Pages for any personal writing I do but it's worthless to me for writing or editing work docs.
Seriously Apple, you lost the war on the file format wars decades ago, recognize it and make iWork usable and let's move on. On Numbers, a slightly easier way to drop in formula's, like auto sum in Excel, would be nice.
Also, yes, I realize I can export the docs into docx. I shouldn't have to exports to save in the original format if its not a .pages format first. It just adds extra streps that don't need to be there.
Seriously Apple, you lost the war on the file format wars decades ago, recognize it and make iWork usable and let's move on. On Numbers, a slightly easier way to drop in formula's, like auto sum in Excel, would be nice.
Also, yes, I realize I can export the docs into docx. I shouldn't have to exports to save in the original format if its not a .pages format first. It just adds extra streps that don't need to be there.
Excel - easy choice. I use it at work so it's a no brainer to use it for personal use too.
I might use Numbers for some super simple stuff, but it's rare.
I’d use excel because the input and navigation experience on keyboard is about 50x less irritating than Numbers.
Also xlsx files are fully documented and portable between platforms. Numbers documents are neither.
Iwork is much better than office. And is free
I actually wrote and edited 200 pages book in Pages, formatted it into pdf and it was published without any Word formatting problems. Pages were superior in managing the large 200 pages manuscript with multiple graphs and tables. Word’s file became unmanageable by about 90 pages i think
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These apps are fantastic and I use them all regularly. But I'm astounded they still don't include basic functionalities. Such as, for Pages, having the ability to have long footnotes that would continue on another page. Pages should at least be on par with Word, in terms of features.
Also, even though I've been using it for 12 years, I'm getting some issues on Apple silicon Macs: it overloads CPU (because of corespotlightd) and drains the battery when using for too long or too big files. It used to "just work". Apple controls the hardware and the software: shouldn't it be a smooth experience?
I still have faith but I hope they can put more love into these.
Also, even though I've been using it for 12 years, I'm getting some issues on Apple silicon Macs: it overloads CPU (because of corespotlightd) and drains the battery when using for too long or too big files. It used to "just work". Apple controls the hardware and the software: shouldn't it be a smooth experience?
I still have faith but I hope they can put more love into these.
I used to like WordPerfect and Lotus 123. Shame to see them all go. It’s Office or freeware as the main choices now.
Hmmm. How many people do you figure Tim has working on the iWork Suite? And to what end and purpose? Office and Google apps are more widely used an accepted, and more powerful. Dump it and put your development dollars elsewhere, like Siri which continue to be a total disappointment.
Will Numbers ever be able to save a spreadsheet in Excel format?
It can. And I think for a long time, too.