Apple's iWork for iOS Apps Updated With Real-Time Collaboration

[MacRumors]

Apple today updated its iWork line of apps, including Pages, Keynote, and Numbers, for iOS 10. The new versions of the apps include a real-time collaboration feature, which is available as a beta.

With real-time collaboration, first announced on September 7, multiple users can edit an iWork document at one time using a Mac, an iOS device, or iCloud.com. Real-time collaboration allows all users to see what each person is doing inside the document, with multiple cursors and a list of document editors.

Also included in today's update is a new formatting pane designed for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, support for wide color gamut (a feature coming in the iPhone 7), improved downloading, and enhanced keyboard navigation and keyboard shortcuts.

What's New in Version 3.0
- Real-time collaboration (feature in beta)
- Edit a document with others at the same time in Pages on Mac, iPad, iPhone, and iCloud.com
- Share your document publicly or with specific people
- See who else is in a document
- See participants' cursors as they're editing

- A new format pane takes advantage of the display on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro
- Improved downloading - Pages now downloads documents from iCloud only when you're ready to work on them
- Wide color gamut image support
- Enhanced keyboard navigation and additional keyboard shortcuts

In Keynote, there's an option to present a slideshow that users can follow along with from their Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iCloud.com, and there's a feature for highlighting with the Apple Pencil while presenting on the iPad Pro. Pages and Keynote also both feature support for opening and editing Pages and Keynote '05 documents.

Apple's line of iWork apps are free to users who have recently purchased a new Mac or iOS device. Otherwise, each iWork app for Mac is available for $19.99 while each iWork app for iOS is available for $9.99.

Pages for iOS - [App Store]
Keynote for iOS - [App Store]
Numbers for iOS - [App Store]

Article Link: Apple's iWork for iOS Apps Updated With Real-Time Collaboration

 

[69650]

Why is there still no Pro version of iWork. I would love to make that switch from MS-Office.

 

[pcmacgamer]

Excited to try the collaboration features out. Most likely will stick with google drive apps as it what everyone I knows uses for collaboration.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Why is there still no Pro version of iWork. I would love to make that switch from MS-Office.

What features is it missing? I ditched Office a long time ago.

Keynote is far superior to PowerPoint. Pages and Numbers seem about par with Word and Excel - each has some features that its counterparts lacks, and none of those features are really deal-breakers.

 

[AJ5790]

What features is it missing? I ditched Office a long time ago.

Keynote is far superior to PowerPoint. Pages and Numbers seem about par with Word and Excel - each has some features that its counterparts lacks, and none of those features are really deal-breakers.

Numbers really doesn't work as well as excel in a medium to large sized business use case.

 

[2457282]

What features is it missing? I ditched Office a long time ago.

Keynote is far superior to PowerPoint. Pages and Numbers seem about par with Word and Excel - each has some features that its counterparts lacks, and none of those features are really deal-breakers.

Keynote - I agree
Numbers - No pivot tables is my biggest gripe (most of my accounting spreadsheets have them so I cannot move off Excel)
Pages - Missing Table of Content and Footnotes as my biggest gripes (My wife doing her Master's thesis means she is stuck with Word)

 

[arefbe]

Evidently only available if you're on iOS 10. Not quite ready to do that just yet!

 

[Richardgm]

I dumped iWork for Office.

 

[pat500000]

One person tries to work on the paper...but another guy disagree with the content of the paper...so he delete...person A says, "quit deleting our stuff!"

 

[CarlJ]

Pages - Missing Table of Content and Footnotes as my biggest gripes (My wife doing her Master's thesis means she is stuck with Word)

Bah! Write it in LaTeX, use PanDoc to convert to .docx for submission.

 

[Geeky Chimp]

Great New Features for iWork. I made the switch from Office when I moved to Mac and haven't looked back since.

Will be interesting to know if this only works with documents saved on iCloud Drive or whether it works on documents stored on OS X (soon to be macOS) Server.

 

[mtngoatjoe]

Do I need to share a document first, or can I open it on my iPhone and browser using the same account?

 

[CmdrLaForge]

Keynote - I agree
Numbers - No pivot tables is my biggest gripe (most of my accounting spreadsheets have them so I cannot move off Excel)
Pages - Missing Table of Content and Footnotes as my biggest gripes (My wife doing her Master's thesis means she is stuck with Word)

I entirely agree with your summary.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

I dumped iWork for Office.

I wouldn't touch Office with LibreOffice 5.2.1 out and its interoperability with iWorks.

Then again, I have TeXLive Complete for OS X, LibreOffice 5.2.1 and iWorks, not to mention other tools.

 

[Traverse]

Was excited to see iWork attention, but was disappointed that this is all we get. I guess they just want a Google Docs competitor, not a full on Office Suite.

 

[Lionel Messi]

When will the updated iWork for Mac possibly release? Really keen to use the collaboration feature in Pages. As Pages is my primary text-editing application, also cannot wait for new features to release.

 

[Traverse]

I entirely agree with your summary.

What's horrible is when my students get assigned an excel project and they download the workbook, open it in numbers, and export it back for grading. Then they wonder why the system gave them a 54 -__-

It breaks all the formatting and formulas.

 

[CrystalQuest76]

What features is it missing? I ditched Office a long time ago.

Keynote is far superior to PowerPoint. Pages and Numbers seem about par with Word and Excel - each has some features that its counterparts lacks, and none of those features are really deal-breakers.

While I also prefer Apple's iWorks suite of applications, there are many things that MS Office apps can do that are beyond iWorks. From Spark charts in Excel to Word's Formating Citations and References by simply specifying Chicago, MLA, APA styles. As others have said, Pages is also missing TOC.
[doublepost=1473800704][/doublepost]

Bah! Write it in LaTeX, use PanDoc to convert to .docx for submission.

Does LaText have collaboration and tracking changes capabilities? When producing advanced academic papers, those features are currently a must. There are multiple iterations that are often needed in the work world as well as higher academic. Going back and forth between different file types as you suggest, is asking for problems. For people doing collaboration, its best if all those involved are using the same application (and preferably the same version).

 

[mtngoatjoe]

So, it looks like you actually have to turn on Collaboration and send a link (you can't just open the doc from your account in a browser and on your iPhone and have it work).

First I opened the spreadsheet on my iPhone and started Collaboration. I then sent a link to my iCloud account from my iPhone, opened the email on my PC via the browser, and clicked on the link. The spreadsheet opened in iCloud in the browser. That meant the spreadsheet was open on my iPhone and on my PC in a browser. I could see edits made in either place in almost real-time (however, cell edits weren't shared until I clicked out of the cell).

Selecting a cell shows the other users that the cell is being edited, but multiple people can select and edit the cell at the same time.

 

[CarlJ]

Does LaText have collaboration and tracking changes capabilities? When producing advanced academic papers, those features are currently a must. There are multiple iterations that are often needed in the work world as well as higher academic. Going back and forth between different file types as you suggest, is asking for problems. For people doing collaboration, its best if all those involved are using the same application (and preferably the same version).

There was a wink at the end of the comment. It was meant humorously. LaTeX and nroff are old school text-only formats, where one writes in plain text and then essentially compiles the source into the necessary output format, you don't go back and forth between formats. As plain text formats, they're highly compatible with any version control system (Git, Subversion, etc.). Computer folks of a certain age did a lot of their research papers and such in nroff or LaTeX. They have the advantage that one can use any preferred plain text editor with complete portability, rather than being tied to a single vendor's whims, and you don't have to fight with the word processor to get things to look the way you want, you put text formatting commands in the plain text that leave no guesswork as to how things are formatted.

 

[NapoleonIV]

Pages - Missing Table of Content and Footnotes as my biggest gripes (My wife doing her Master’s thesis means she is stuck with Word)

I wrote my dissertation pages and had no difficulty creating a table of contents or using footnotes. I am still annoyed that apple hasn’t brought back all the features form Pages 4, but at this point, the things that annoy me most are not missing features, but bugs in the way it displays in full screen mode.

 

[BWhaler]

I love iWork. Even for all its missing features, I love it and am always excited to get an update hoping the update is a major update.

I really hope Apple fills in the functionality gaps in both Mac and iOS versions. I think it's strategically important for Apple to have a strong Office product and cloud offering.

 

[2457282]

I wrote my dissertation pages and had no difficulty creating a table of contents or using footnotes. I am still annoyed that apple hasn’t brought back all the features form Pages 4, but at this point, the things that annoy me most are not missing features, but bugs in the way it displays in full screen mode.

to my surprise I just went in and saw that the features in there on my Mac. Need to see if they are also on the iPad. When did they bring back these features?

 

[jonsmith2000]

Keynote - I agree
Numbers - No pivot tables is my biggest gripe (most of my accounting spreadsheets have them so I cannot move off Excel)
Pages - Missing Table of Content and Footnotes as my biggest gripes (My wife doing her Master's thesis means she is stuck with Word)

Maybe its time to revisit pages my friend. Both footnotes and table of contents are found under insert.

 

[NapoleonIV]

to my surprise I just went in and saw that the features in there on my Mac. Need to see if they are also on the iPad. When did they bring back these features?

They were never gone, the problem was that they were so poorly implemented that they barely worked, and worse, if you started a document in Pages 4, the formatting of the table of contents would be ruined when the document was updated to work with Pages 5. Also, if I remember correctly, the linking of the of the chapter titles to the actual pages they represented was also broken. This was one of the reasons I didn’t abandon Pages 4 until last year.