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iWork for iOS and Mac Updated, Keynote Gains New Transitions

Nunyabinez said:
You're assuming that the undelying code for iWork was already in xcode.
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Why wouldn't it have been? How do you propose they made it if not with Xcode? I realize there are other ways, but they would entail so much extra work and be so much more prone to bugs that I can't imagine Apple would have ended up being able to make a functioning office suite.
 
I hope this is a sign that Apple will be updating software more frequently. And hopefully it includes things like mail, calendar, notes etc.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Why wouldn't it have been? How do you propose they made it if not with Xcode? I realize there are other ways, but they would entail so much extra work and be so much more prone to bugs that I can't imagine Apple would have ended up being able to make a functioning office suite.
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I might be wrong here but I think he meant Cocoa, not Xcode.

Work 09 was released back in '09 with tiny updates each year to support newer OS X release. This was also long before before Obj-C 2.0 was even out. At that time, any move to 64-bit meant the app was being moved entirely to Cocoa.

In addition, iWork is also sandboxed, which by itself, is a beast to work with.
 
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I actually like Pages again....just waiting for more Newsletter layouts though. I really enjoyed those in the old version. Thanks for the hard work Apple!
 
JackieTreehorn said:
Bring back 'Facing pages' and perhaps I will start using it again. I did not buy a 27" iMac just so that I could scroll down single pages, Apple.

Microsoft Word allows me to have 4 pages on one screen. Your screen.

Fix it.
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For Jackie (as well as everyone else who gave this a thumbs up), I offer the following free advice (worth at least what you paid for it) as a former Apple engineer:

Stuff that's not in Radar is invisible.

My suggestion would be:

1. Go to developer.apple.com and sign up for a free developer account if you don't already have one (using your existing Apple ID).

2. Go to bugreport.apple.com and file a bug. Take note of its number.

Notes:
a) Make the scope of your bug as narrow as possible -- two different things may be assigned different engineers, different teams, different milestones, and it's frustrating to have to break things into pieces all the time as it makes bug reports confusing to read

b) If you get a response asking for more information, please answer it (so many do not)

c) System configs are wonderful things

d) Be polite

3. Go to openradar.appspot.com and add a description of what you filed. That way, other people can say, "Oh, yeah. THAT." And they can then write another bug report referencing yours.

When there are reports that have more duplicates than others, they tend to get higher priority.
 
efktd said:
Nice. Keep 'em coming :apple:
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Yes because at this rate if will take 100 releases to make Pages do what it used to do, I think 163 features were removed in the last real ease. I only noticed a few of them, like outlines and good compatibility with MS Word.

What I hope is that Apple has a large staff working on this and they have a detailed road map for taking iWork from where it is to being the best, bar none.

But I doubt that. It's likely a small staff that is reacting in panic mode with no plan.
 
MikhailT said:
I might be wrong here but I think he meant Cocoa, not Xcode.

Work 09 was released back in '09 with tiny updates each year to support newer OS X release. This was also long before before Obj-C 2.0 was even out. At that time, any move to 64-bit meant the app was being moved entirely to Cocoa.

In addition, iWork is also sandboxed, which by itself, is a beast to work with.
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Thanks for the clarification on my behalf. Not having developed for Mac, I'm not totally familiar with the process and technologies.

I was simply going from the statements Apple made such as:

"In the process of delivering the most requested feature, collaboration, we had to rewrite our applications from the ground up. We used this as an opportunity to bring feature parity across the OS X, iOS and Web platforms. During this initial release, we had to remove some of the more advanced features from the OS X version of the product. In doing so, we build a much stronger foundation for the future of this product. Going forward, we plan on introducing a series of releases that will bring additional functionality to all versions of this product."

I assumed that this meant that they really had to rewrite all the code, not just copy it and recompile it at 64bit.
 
Pages: text box link is still omitted

I was hoping they would fix it by now. Maybe the feature is intentionally left out.
What a glaring mistake!
 
mdelvecchio said:
this is not an official apple support forum. this is a user-to-user rumors site.
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Knowing the official Apple forums, people who work at Apple probably have more incentive, provoking, and entertainment to come here. We just gotta supply the popcorn is all.
 
Pages has a long way to go before close to matching Word.

I need vertical rulers ( on their way apparently )

Insert proper boxes and tables

More versitile image editing and colour correction.
 
Nunyabinez said:
Thanks for the clarification on my behalf. Not having developed for Mac, I'm not totally familiar with the process and technologies.

I was simply going from the statements Apple made such as:

"In the process of delivering the most requested feature, collaboration, we had to rewrite our applications from the ground up. We used this as an opportunity to bring feature parity across the OS X, iOS and Web platforms. During this initial release, we had to remove some of the more advanced features from the OS X version of the product. In doing so, we build a much stronger foundation for the future of this product. Going forward, we plan on introducing a series of releases that will bring additional functionality to all versions of this product."

I assumed that this meant that they really had to rewrite all the code, not just copy it and recompile it at 64bit.
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'Rebuild/rewrite/rearchitect from the ground up' is a phrase Apple used a couple of times before. It's in part just marketing to signify that a lot of work has been put into it and that a better experience is implicated, despite the (temporary) loss of features. I am not sure how much had to be done, but it sounds more comprehensive than it actually is.
 
Where am I supposed to put them?

Do these multi-hundred megabyte updates replace some of the application's code, or just keep adding to it? With updates like these, I think I'm gonna need a bigger phone. :(
 
I was listening to a podcast - either the Accidental podcast or Debug, I can't remember which - and someone had mentioned that the old iWork still had Appleworks code!

In order to have complete file parity between the mac, ios and the webapp, a complete re-write had to be done. Even the file format is different (Google Drive and Dropbox don't even recognize it as a file, just a folder).

So yeah, it's not just a question of porting it from 32 to 64; this was a complete re-build of the entire app and file format.

And yes, it was released a tad unfinished, but I'm sure the team had the iOS7 / Mavericks release as a deadline in order for Apple to show off iCloud syncing across platforms.
 
nagromme said:
They're still not done with the planned additions. Weeks, even months more work likely remain. They COULD have waited, but had nothing ready anywhere near the release of iOS 7. And the benefits of the new versions would have been delayed along with the things that were missing.

Nothing they could do would have kept 100% of people happy; I think they made the best call.

This is why it's risky to rebuild and streamline an existing app--a risk few companies dare take. It's a move with huge long-term benefits and a few short-term problems (except keeping the old versions is a nice stopgap). Apple dares face the short-term tempest in a teapot for the sake of a better end result.
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mdelvecchio said:
if you work in software, or creative writing, then youll know -- nothing is ever finished. most often the deadlines eventually get set at some point, but because it's not a hard science and is instead a bit of guesstimation, not everything makes it...you try to get as much as possible. lower-priority items (like these additional transitions) get bumped to future releases.

in a perfect world we'd all produce our code in a neat little dependable way that makes scheduling 100% accurate. but that aint this world. every programmer i know tends to underestimate how long it takes us to do things, whether due to enthusiasm or unexpected challenges.
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gatearray said:
The new iWork apps were tied to the iPad keynote presentation, which of course was tied to the new iPad release. When the date is contingent on a hardware release, waiting until the software is "just right" is not an option. :)
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Good points made by all. I sell software for a living so I have a sense of understanding and a bit of empathy with companies releasing it. I still have two bugs; one with Apple and one with the current attitude regarding software.

It seems today every company has taken the attitude of "release now-fix later". I'm not talking about general bugs inherent in all software. I'm talking about releasing product to meet a deadline knowing the product is really not ready for prime time. Just not a fan.

My bug with Apple concerns the complete lack of information regarding the changes to the iWork suite. I'm not going to get all hyperbolic with edge case examples of "I had 6 years worth of work that...." I do think a simple blurb stating we've reworked the suite, some things you're used to using aren't there. Some of those missing things are being re-worked and we'll bring them back better than ever (they are much better at communicating than I am). I just think they should have told us something BEFORE everyone got all up in arms. An ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.
 
Nunyabinez said:
I see many people making this same mistake. Apple did not "remove" any functions. This version of iWork was completely re-written in 64 bit, using Apple's most current development tools.

What happened was they couldn't include every existing function in time for the release. So, people say "then wait till it is finished to release it." But if they did that then there would be just as much bitching about why it is taking too long.

So while on the surface it seems like an "undo" would restore functions, it is really a complete "rewrite" to bring back these functions.
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Excuse me? The elapsed time between the previous version and this version was four years. This long, total silence caused lots of people (actual iWork users) to wonder about Apple's commitment to developing the apps. How long it will take for Apple to restore the missing features and bring the apps back to where they were four years ago is a legitimate question, even assuming that this is the goal. Apple has not said one way or another on either score.

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Nevaborn said:
Pages has a long way to go before close to matching Word.

I need vertical rulers ( on their way apparently )

Insert proper boxes and tables

More versitile image editing and colour correction.
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It has a long way to go now. It mopped the floor with Word before.

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FirstNTenderbit said:
My bug with Apple concerns the complete lack of information regarding the changes to the iWork suite. I'm not going to get all hyperbolic with edge case examples of "I had 6 years worth of work that...." I do think a simple blurb stating we've reworked the suite, some things you're used to using aren't there. Some of those missing things are being re-worked and we'll bring them back better than ever (they are much better at communicating than I am). I just think they should have told us something BEFORE everyone got all up in arms. An ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.
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While this is generally true and correct, people who liked and adopted iWork when it was first released are not "edge cases" and their complaints are based in real, not "hyperbolic" issues. It is not even close to an exaggeration to report that complex documents created in previous versions of Pages are completely and instantly obliterated when opened by the new app, and totally without warning, because that is exactly what happens.
 
Nunyabinez said:
I see many people making this same mistake. Apple did not "remove" any functions. This version of iWork was completely re-written in 64 bit, using Apple's most current development tools.

What happened was they couldn't include every existing function in time for the release. So, people say "then wait till it is finished to release it." But if they did that then there would be just as much bitching about why it is taking too long.

So while on the surface it seems like an "undo" would restore functions, it is really a complete "rewrite" to bring back these functions.
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Well, if it is a complete re-do then don't call it an upgrade to iWork as iWork 6 (or 13, depending how you count the releases). Call it something different so it is clear.
 
FirstNTenderbit said:
If they are starting the updates this quickly wouldn't it have made more sense to release a finished product? Updates re-introducing old/new features doesn't make sense to me. Was anyone really clamoring for a redesign of the iWork suite so badly that releasing an unfinished product was necessary?

It's their product and they know way more than I do about it.

Just an outside-in observation.:confused:
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But still a good observation. :cool:

---------------------

Switched so far (because of Mavericks):

OpenOffice 4.0
Opera 18.0
Opera Mail 1.0
And I'll be dumping the iPhone soon for a Samsung Galaxy Mega. Thanks for that, Apple.

Still using (beats using a Windows PC):

iMac 2.7 GHz i5, 16 GB RAM, 3 TB HD

And no...I never switched. Been an Apple user since 1981. Although if Apple keeps hacking away at useful features it will be a switch to Ubuntu.
 
I've been thinking a lot about this, and I've posted my thoughts on the situation on other threads so I won't go in to them again in depth.

It's good that Apple are beginning to address some of the problems, but it has becoming clear that the new iWork (I'm focussed on Numbers especially, though this will apply to Pages also) will probably not get ht e functionality of the professional features in iWork '09.

I've talked to other users and the common consensus seems to be that too much was sacrificed for the sake of collaboration - something which doesn't really work well enough in a work environment enough to justify the 'cross platform' move.

Personally I can do without it. The last thing I want is someone changing a document or spreadsheet I'm working on while I'm trying to get things done. It's like having two people play one guitar at the same time to write an acoustic death metal ambient number.

If Apple can sort out the compatibility issues then there might be another option; an iWork that doesn't need iCloud or collaboration. An iWork Pro - a standalone desktop application as it was before with functionality and updates to bring it into 2014. You can still share documents. You can still read documents. You can still open documents. There just isn't the need to base the fundamentals on cloud and cross platform.

It's not really fragmentation - think Photoshop elements vs Photoshop CS6, iPhoto and Aperture. 2 perfectly good applications that do roughly the same thing, can talk to each other, but are the best at what they do depending on your needs.

It's what we need. To split the two iWork suites (iCloud and Pro) would mean that the new version can focus on what it's designed for (Mobility, Collaboration, simplification) and the Pro version can be a solid update to iWork '09 with powerful industry leading features and tools, that can crunch through spreadsheets, workflow, at professional standards. I'd pay for it, just like I pay for Aperture over iPhoto for example.

Give us the pro App, Apple. Give us the choice.

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acedout said:
Numbers is a LONG LONG way off Excel! It's merely a toy in comparison. It doesn't even have a pivot table.
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Numbers '09 was my preference over excel. I've used both. It's a matter of taste.
 
IJ Reilly said:
While this is generally true and correct, people who liked and adopted iWork when it was first released are not "edge cases" and their complaints are based in real, not "hyperbolic" issues. It is not even close to an exaggeration to report that complex documents created in previous versions of Pages are completely and instantly obliterated when opened by the new app, and totally without warning, because that is exactly what happens.
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I wasn't being dismissive to the multitudes who've lost valuable work. What I should have said is I won't use any hyperbole to bolster my point. Full stop. It can be devastating to lose work so my sympathies to those in that boat.

My whole point is they should have said something... before, not after.
 
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