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Chances for iWork 2012 soon?

Y

yongren

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 19, 2011
117
0
What do you guys think? An iWork update is long overdue, and the March 7 media event might be the perfect time to announce it. If not, then maybe in time for Mountain Lion?

I'm assuming the next update will bring better integration between the Mac & iOS versions of iWork, to make the iCloud functionality really useful. What other new features do you guys want to see?
 
I doubt Apple will waste time updating it. iWork does not bring in enough money for them to worry about it since it does the job it is supposed to do: Offer an alternative for Office. (Even though Office is still clearly superior)
 
I wouldn't expect to see anything related to the desktop to be discussed or unveiled on the 7th.

I've all but given up any hope to see any updates to iWork (on the osx)
 
miles01110 said:
They really shouldn't waste any more time than they already have with iWork. It's the MobileMe of Apple desktop software.
Click to expand...

You may believe that, but I and many others love iWork, and I for one am really hoping they do update it soon. That said, I doubt it'll get an update before Mountain Lion is released, and it may or may not be a significant update.

jW
 
A Hebrew said:
I doubt Apple will waste time updating it. iWork does not bring in enough money for them to worry about it since it does the job it is supposed to do: Offer an alternative for Office. (Even though Office is still clearly superior)
Click to expand...

Right... Load up the Mac App Store and then look at Top Paid Apps:

#2 Pages
#5 Keynote
#6 Numbers


Seems to be doing terrible!
 
A Hebrew said:
I doubt Apple will waste time updating it. iWork does not bring in enough money for them to worry about it since it does the job it is supposed to do: Offer an alternative for Office. (Even though Office is still clearly superior)
Click to expand...
Disagree: Apple, imho, likes to offer tools for people to create the content for viewing on Apple HW. They don't do a P&L (according to what I've read) for individual products - just the company as a whole.

And Office is not "clearly superior".... it may have more features - but that only makes it superior for people who need those features. For people like me, who have different office suite needs, the "features" of MS office get in the way and slow me down. For my needs iWork is clearly superior.

miles01110 said:
They really shouldn't waste any more time than they already have with iWork. It's the MobileMe of Apple desktop software.
Click to expand...
Disagree: Well, OK MobileMe was not up to expectations.... :) But Apple needs an office suite for the iPad.
maflynn said:
I wouldn't expect to see anything related to the desktop to be discussed or unveiled on the 7th.
Click to expand...
Agree: This isn't the event. Unless it is an iPad specific update to iWork.
maflynn said:
I've all but given up any hope to see any updates to iWork (on the osx)
Click to expand...
Buck up! We've all seen how Apple doles out announcements on it's own schedule. A schedule that suits their product release needs, and not ours.
Mal said:
You may believe that, but I and many others love iWork, and I for one am really hoping they do update it soon. That said, I doubt it'll get an update before Mountain Lion is released, and it may or may not be a significant update.

jW
Click to expand...
Agree: Though - it may be a significant update if it comes out with ML. This would give them something more to talk about during the ML release event. Not quite a "One more thing" update.... but perhaps significant enough to rate several slides?
 
If you simply compare "features" the MS Office wins.

I have to create a tri-fold brochure. I had MS Office on my MBP along with Pages. I tried to do it in Word and it was not easy. I found a template on Pages, swapped out content and finished it very quickly. For simple desktop publishing I think Pages works fine.

Sometimes we don't need a swiss army knife with 100 "blades" . . sometimes something simple and easy to use is much better. I like iWork. I don't have Numbers yet but I will at some point soon.
 
miles01110 said:
They really shouldn't waste any more time than they already have with iWork. It's the MobileMe of Apple desktop software.
Click to expand...

You've never really 'used' it extensively so. It's actually very versatile and a great set of applications.



I too am hoping for an iWork 2012 soon, because since Lion iWork '09 can often be dog slow and resource heavy, it was never like that with Snow Leopard.
 
A Hebrew said:
I doubt Apple will waste time updating it. iWork does not bring in enough money for them to worry about it since it does the job it is supposed to do: Offer an alternative for Office. (Even though Office is still clearly superior)
Click to expand...

I think you might be underestimating the value of Apple not having to rely on third-party apps for basic things like word processing. If there's one thing Apple is good at, it's integration... keeping iWork functionality in-house allows for a much better experience, especially when you think about the more thorough iCloud support that will come with Mountain Lion.
 
Both products, Office and iWork, are great Office Suites. I have both on my Mac. When I need something that is compatible with work stuff (which is mostly on a Windows computer) I use Office 2011. When I need something for personal use I use iWork.

iWork is a lot easier and is more intuitive to use than Office, which to me seems more rigid - especially in Word. The desktop publishing abilities are much easier and far superior in Pages. Excel offers a lot more features than Numbers, but Numbers is easier when you want more than one table on a page. Keynote is a better product than PowerPoint on any given day. Outlook on the Mac has potential, but right now it just doesn't cut it.

Not sure what else Apple could do to upgrade iWork and keep it simple. Sure there are features in Office I like and wish were in Numbers, but at the same time I think that they would weigh down iWork and make it as cumbersome to use as Office.

I was a early Mac adopter in the 80's, but in the mid 90's switched to Windows because I just couldn't afford a new Mac after a component of my Mac died. I used to love using a "Works" program that Apple made back then. When I went to Windows I started using the Windows version of Office and became comfortable with Excel and Word and lived by Outlook with it's task and calendar management. A year ago I switched back to Mac and my Mac came with iWork, and through Microsoft's HUP program at work I was able to get Office:mac 2011. Using iWork brought back the "ease of use" factor that I remembered from my previous stuff. Dragging and dropping things in place and arrange them til they look just right is easy. I prefer Pages to Word for that respect. I do however prefer Excel to Numbers, only because I used Excel the most on Windows Office and it is more compatible at work.

Everyone has their preferences and both iWork and Office are both great products. Office just happens to be a little more bloated than it really needs to be, while iWork seems to be just right, but could be better with a few tweaks and a few new features as long as they don't hinder it's ease of usability.
 
iWork update for new iPad. Called it! ...sort of. This is just Retina support, apparently. I'm still hoping for a new Mac version this year.
 
iWorks

Apple should be updating its iWorks and iLife on a yearly basis either with whole new software or free updates and templates.:mad:

A Hebrew said:
I doubt Apple will waste time updating it. iWork does not bring in enough money for them to worry about it since it does the job it is supposed to do: Offer an alternative for Office. (Even though Office is still clearly superior)
Click to expand...
 
Stuipdboy1000 said:
An update will be out with Mountain Lion in the Summer to support Documents in the Cloud. Whether it's iWork '12 or not, we'll have to wait and see.
Click to expand...

They released a minor update for Lion, I wouldn't be surprised to see just a minor update for ML
 
I am sure that Apple will update iWork sometime soon. One of the reasons for the delay is Apple likes to have small development teams. This team got diverted to work on the iPad versions of iWork. Now that that was done sometime ago, hopefully we will see a new version of iWork soon.

Apple has a different philosophy than Microsoft - Apple takes the approach 'what can we leave out to make the application elegant and easy to use' rather than load the application with every function that they think the users might want. iWork is very much a Home / Small office suite, where Office is more for corporate power users, who need the additional functionality or compatibility with Windows users.

Numbers is the application that is in greatest need of an update, as it is a relatively young and underdeveloped product. It is currently only in it's second generation. It's fine for simple charts and tables, but is not much use for serious number crunching, compared to Excel.

Pages is a very competent work processing application, but could use some additional functionality to extend is capability to produce long documents (better TOC and footnote management).

Keynote is a better Presentation application that Powerpoint, but could do with the something like Smart Art to simplify and speed up the creation of documents that utilise a lot of shapes, as these can be quite time consuming using the present toolset in Keynote (although I tend to use Omnigraffle - then cut and paste).
 
snberk103 said:
No one disputes whether Office outsells work... the point however is - does iWork sell enough to make it worthwhile for Apple to continue developing it? The stats indicate that it likely does.
Click to expand...

I have both suites, and I'm way much better in MS Office. But for some reason I prefer iWork.
It's much more document oriented, very intuitive and clean from al, the junk MS Office brings.
 
I'm forced to use Office on a PC at work and can't stand it. It's like they've managed to incorporate every feature everyone's ever requested... Ever!

It obviously has its place. And I do appreciate it's integration with SharePoint, but if it was up to me I'd choose iWork, hands down.

With that said, I don't really see a need for a new version. The existing suite does everything I need it to do.

What I'd like to see them focus on is real iCloud document syncing, ala Dropbox.
 
I still have to use Word for compatibility -- not much point using Pages if I have to export everything to Word format and hope it looks OK -- but I'm still hoping for an update at some point in the next decade.

Numbers has potential, but craps out if you use more than about 10 rows and columns (slight exaggeration)

Keynote is the star of course, and is pretty mature at this point but I'm sure there could be improvements
 
jackc said:
I still have to use Word for compatibility -- not much point using Pages if I have to export everything to Word format....
Click to expand...
Luckily - virtually everything I do is for internal use, or goes straight to print or PDF. No compatibility issues for me....
jackc said:
Numbers has potential, but craps out if you use more than about 10 rows and columns (slight exaggeration)...
Click to expand...

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a power-user... but even I've gone way beyond 10x10..... :)
 
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