Apple today released updates for its suite of iWork apps on iOS and Mac, introducing new features for Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. All of the apps have access to a new library that includes more than 500 professionally drawn shapes, and there's a new feature that allows users to reply to comments and join threaded conversations.
Apple is also introducing new auto-correction and text replacement options that are designed to save users time when typing, and these new features are available in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers across both iOS and Mac.
Pages for iOS and Mac now support linked text boxes, and there's a feature allowing users to export documents as fixed layout ePub books. When collaborating with other users on a document, there are new options for changing margins, headers, footers, and paper size in both apps, and in Pages for iOS specifically, there's a new page thumbnail view for better navigation.
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In Pages for Mac, Stock and Currency functions will now return data from the previous market day's close.
The same Stock and Currency update is coming to Keynote for Mac, and there's also a new option to edit notes while displaying slides in Light Table view. Also new to the Mac version of Keynote are new pan and zoom options. Light Table view is expanding to Keynote for iOS, and there's an option to edit presenter notes when viewing slides.
Both versions of Numbers are being updated with support for print preview when working on collaborative spreadsheets, and the Insert Stock Quote feature and the Stock and Currency functions now use data from the previous market day's close.
All of Apple's iWork apps are available from the iOS App Store and Mac App Store for free. The apps have been fully free for download since April of 2017.
- Pages for Mac - [Mac App Store]
- Keynote for Mac - [Mac App Store]
- Numbers for Mac - [Mac App Store]
- Pages for iOS - [App Store]
- Keynote for iOS - [App Store]
- Numbers for iOS - [App Store]
Top Rated Comments
- Responsiveness
- Font rendering
- Making tables
- Graphic heavy documents
- Generating equations (since last update)
Add that to a simpler user interface, and Pages becomes a really good app.
* a "skinny" Word Processor
* a "skinny" DTP (Page Layout) Program
The Word Processor side worked pretty similar to how Pages has worked in the last few years (and yes, you could just type into a page).
The DTP side gave people who wanted to make something that looked like magazines, fancy newsletters, etc extraordinarily good control over where text could be placed... and flowed page to page. It seemed to have many of the best features of "fat" DTP software via a relatively easy-to-use Apple UI.
When Apple decided to feature-sync Pages between Macs & iDevices, the DTP side features that separated it from being "just a word processor" were many of the popular features that were dropped. And this one- linked text boxes- was one of the biggies that was dropped. Glad to see it's finally come back again. I hope it works as well as it did 8 years ago.
Many of the gripes about missing Pages '09 revolve around missing the DTP-side features of Pages '09. It was a really good "skinny" DTP program (and still is).
Move a text box by 5 pixels and it shifts four pages down, inside out and upside down.
Grrrrrrrr.
Numbers has nothing on Excel for flexibility and depth, and the same is true for Pages on Word outside of desktop publishing ...but Microsoft has Publisher which is more powerful for desktop publishing too. In that case - do you want a simple tool that does a little of both, or two separate tools that are more complicated but do much more? Are you working on a brochure/one-off item? Or is it a monthly 125 page magazine? (not that you'd use Microsoft Publisher for professional magazine work either!)
And of course, are you more comfortable with Apple's UX approach or Microsoft's UX approach? You can click between a dozen panes till your fingers are sore, or handle more ribbons than a rhythmic gymnastic competition. Pick your poison.