Apple Updates Pages, Numbers, and Keynote With New Features

[BWhaler]

Love, love, love iWork. It’s some of the best software Apple makes

Great updates. So happy apple continues to invest in this productivity suite.

 

[T Coma]

Since we’re an almost entirely Apple household, I’d like to convert all my Office work to iWork but Office365 just has too much going for it. First of all, 25+ years working in Excel - the standard and master of the spreadsheet - is tough to switch away from. There are some clever features in Numbers for sure; we use it around here for simple shared household stuff just because, but when I need to focus on problem solving, Excel unfailingly provides the features and the muscle, unfortunately. Word processing and presentations are not much of a concern of mine at this point. But the big difference in my book is the online storage. I buy the Home license every year for about $80 or so on eBay, and in addition to the suite of updated apps on all household devices, i get 1TB of online storage for each of 6 users, including my parents 3 hours away. Even if you consider the Office Suite to iWork suite a wash, the closest one can get with ICloud storage is 2TB shared for $120/year i believe. And being a backup fanatic, I use the MS space as redundant storage for home photos and videos, among other things. Maybe if Apple was more competitive with storage cost, I would seriously consider a change, but pragmatically Office365 wins.

And honestly, a mere 5GB included per user ID is kind of insulting at this point. You can afford managing the space, Timmy. Show your funders a little love.

 

[dumastudetto]

Apple's productivity suite is so far ahead of Microsoft 365 it's actually funny. And best of all, we get all these goodies for free.

 

[ghanwani]

They should rename iWork to iPlay because no workplace supports it.

 

[sudo-sandwich]

I run a business through Numbers and Pages. It's fine. It's just different to Office.

The only thing that shafts me is the lack of engineering units in Numbers. Have to divide a lot of stuff regularly or use constant multipliers.

I used to use Pages and Keynote a ton before my needs became light enough to rely on Google's stuff, but nothing could replace Excel. Excel is more important than the entire OS for some people, and even if something could compete with its massive feature set, it would gain no traction just cause it's not Excel.

 

[Cognizant.]

Those apps are, in my opinion, awful. I can't work with the toolbar being to the right side, and the tables interaction is awful. I hate to say it, but make it look like Docs/Word

I hate Word and love how iWork looks and works and functions.

 

[Ashbash75]

They all suck compared to Wordperfect and Lotus123🤣

 

[LV426]

The updates are not showing up for me... yet. I tried on two machines.


Translated: I don't like Pages because it's not MS Word.

Updates sometimes take a little while to show up automatically. But if you search for a particular app by name in the app store and select it to see it’s details (rather than open), you should see a button “Update” appear.

 

[magicvash]

Keynote is the best presentation app bar none. Microsoft should consider shelving PowerPoint.

While I agree Keynote is an excellent presentation app (my go to for creating slides), most academic and professional conferences still use PowerPoint and so at minimum a conversion must be done. Also, I really wish Apple would add triggers to Keynote. This is a useful tool in PowerPoint for lots of things.

 

[iDento]

wat is UWD?

Ultra-wide display.

 

[Enclavean]

Office is ubiquitous, as is Google Docs. Who uses Pages?

Don’t get me wrong—I would if I could—no question

I love pages, its the best for note-taking, like 40-50 page note taking. No lag at all, very intuitive. The sidebars are my favorite features. Word is bloated and so much slower to use than Pages. My only problem is compatibility with those who don't use mac, if Apple made iWork for Windows I definitely think there's a market.

 

[RigSatMe]

Those apps are, in my opinion, awful. I can't work with the toolbar being to the right side, and the tables interaction is awful. I hate to say it, but make it look like Docs/Word

Docs/Word are things of the past with cluttered and awful UI.

 

[RigSatMe]

Office is ubiquitous, as is Google Docs. Who uses Pages?

Don’t get me wrong—I would if I could—no question

I use it for professional purposes on daily basis. Docs/Word is the thing of the past.
Editing, Formatting, Bookmarking, Calculations like in Numbers and so on, are implemented in the best way.
Just simple example: you can make all calculation in tables or between tables without the need of Numbers. In the Word or Google Docs it's nightmare. There are countless examples where Pages simply destroy Google Docs and Word!
And another really important feature: Apple ecosystem. Pages iOS version is just awesome. You can easily continue editing of a file in iOS version without any issues and constrains. Word or Google Docs mobile versions is a piece of crap, with very limited functions comparing to desktop versions.
You can easily share Pages with co-workers even with PC users which can easily edited via web browser.

 

[headlessmike]

To be fair it's also better at being abused into other jobs it wasn't designed for than PowerPoint is too.

Haha, I know. I work in academic research and here more people use PowerPoint to make posters than to make presentations. And speaking of making posters, that's actually one area where Pages is far superior to Word. Pages is a quite capable desktop publisher and has many useful features considering it's free.

 

[Gnik Nus]

I'm a huge fan of Numbers. So easy to make beautiful tables. It totally fits my needs. Pages is also nice to work with, a lot better than MS Word as far as layout flexibility is concerned. Downside of Pages is the terrible hyphenation, spelling, and grammar in any language other than English. Also, I still don't understand why they took out the ability to select non-contiguous text pressing Command in the Mac. Just why? Because it is not possible on touch-screens? C'mon! Totally ridiculous. Any third-party app lets you do that on the Mac.

 

[headlessmike]

While I agree Keynote is an excellent presentation app (my go to for creating slides), most academic and professional conferences still use PowerPoint and so at minimum a conversion must be done. Also, I really wish Apple would add triggers to Keynote. This is a useful tool in PowerPoint for lots of things.

That varies a lot between fields. Most people in my field (astrophysics/physics) use Macs and here Keynote and PowerPoint are about equally popular. The problem is, as you say, conferences where the local machine are often PCs running Windows. I alway use my iPad for presentations and haven't had to make a PowerPoint file in years. Transferring a presentation file to the venues' often archaic machines always results in compatibility issues anyway.

 

[tomtad]

They should rename iWork to iPlay because no workplace supports it.

I genuinely curious if Apple use it internally or if they're secretly on MS Office.

 

[hagar]

Cool Apple still bothers to update it. They have ignored it for so many years and now it’s bedome irrelevant. The competition took the entire market.

 

[IllinoisCorn]

I use it for professional purposes on daily basis. Docs/Word is the thing of the past.
Editing, Formatting, Bookmarking, Calculations like in Numbers and so on, are implemented in the best way.
Just simple example: you can make all calculation in tables or between tables without the need of Numbers. In the Word or Google Docs it's nightmare. There are countless examples where Pages simply destroy Google Docs and Word!
And another really important feature: Apple ecosystem. Pages iOS version is just awesome. You can easily continue editing of a file in iOS version without any issues and constrains. Word or Google Docs mobile versions is a piece of crap, with very limited functions comparing to desktop versions.
You can easily share Pages with co-workers even with PC users which can easily edited via web browser.

"Docs/Word is the thing of the past" You've clearly never been in a law office.

 

[IllinoisCorn]

I love pages, its the best for note-taking, like 40-50 page note taking. No lag at all, very intuitive. The sidebars are my favorite features. Word is bloated and so much slower to use than Pages. My only problem is compatibility with those who don't use mac, if Apple made iWork for Windows I definitely think there's a market.

It's a fantastic app, no doubt. I much prefer it to Word.

 

[alphaswift]

Threads like this always surprise me (maybe I'm still new here). I thought everyone would be using Microsoft or Google at this point. I might have taken a cursory look at iWork 10 years ago but since 100% of people I deal with use Office, using iWork is not even a consideration.

 

[IllinoisCorn]

Since we’re an almost entirely Apple household, I’d like to convert all my Office work to iWork but Office365 just has too much going for it. First of all, 25+ years working in Excel - the standard and master of the spreadsheet - is tough to switch away from. There are some clever features in Numbers for sure; we use it around here for simple shared household stuff just because, but when I need to focus on problem solving, Excel unfailingly provides the features and the muscle, unfortunately. Word processing and presentations are not much of a concern of mine at this point. But the big difference in my book is the online storage. I buy the Home license every year for about $80 or so on eBay, and in addition to the suite of updated apps on all household devices, i get 1TB of online storage for each of 6 users, including my parents 3 hours away. Even if you consider the Office Suite to iWork suite a wash, the closest one can get with ICloud storage is 2TB shared for $120/year i believe. And being a backup fanatic, I use the MS space as redundant storage for home photos and videos, among other things. Maybe if Apple was more competitive with storage cost, I would seriously consider a change, but pragmatically Office365 wins.

And honestly, a mere 5GB included per user ID is kind of insulting at this point. You can afford managing the space, Timmy. Show your funders a little love.

It's just stupid how much cloud storage you get with 365. I agree--Apple needs to give people more than 5 GB.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

Whats amazing about pages vs google docs is its a native app. I can open and save files without downloading and uploading.
Personally, I'm ridding myself, my clients and my family of MS Office as they upgrade their macs to avoid the license fee, showing them there's no drawback.
And for design focused individuals, iWork blows MS Office out of the water. Try and make a PowerPoint slideshow with 100 pictures. In Keynote, you drag photos into the left sidebar and it makes a slide per image. Easy!

iWork and iCloud are hot garbage compared to the cheapest Office 365 offering, the personal version.

iCloud is the worst cloud offering in the business.

 

[phenoplastic]

I wonder if these will fix the horrendous problems I've been having with saving, opening and moving Pages and Numbers files? Problems that first appeared on my old Mac mini and have persisted with a brand new Mac Studio.

 

[headlessmike]

I wonder if these will fix the horrendous problems I've been having with saving, opening and moving Pages and Numbers files? Problems that first appeared on my old Mac mini and have persisted with a brand new Mac Studio.

Like what exactly? I've been using the iWork apps continuously since 2005 and have never encounter issues like those.