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Apple beefs up iWork for iCloud with bolstered collaboration, more file storage

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Apple today has enhanced its iWork suite of iCloud apps to include much improved collaboration, new document options, and more file storage. iWork includes the Pages word processor, Keynote presentation maker, and Numbers spreadsheet manager, and it is likely that supporting apps for iOS and OS X will become available in the near future…

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The new collaboration features allow for over 100 people to collaborate on a single file in either Pages, Keynote, or Numbers. Apple introduced collaboration with iWork for iCloud last year, and the feature matches Google Drive’s ability to allow multiple people to work on a single file simultaneously. This 100 number is up from the previous limit of 50 simultaneous users.

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Apple has also improved file storage on iWork for iCloud, allowing individual documents to be 1GB in size and allowing for individual image sizes of up to 10MB. The 1GB file size is vastly improved over the earlier 200MB per document limit and the 10MB image file limit is double the previous limit of 5MB.

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The trio of applications also now have the ability to create 2D and interactive charts with formatting improvements and make more color changes. Pages has also gained exporting to ePub support, improvements to tables, and object layering. Numbers has added exporting to CSV (which allows easier integration with Microsoft Excel), and Keynote has gained the ability to show or hide slide numbers.

Last month, iWork for iCloud gained an improved design and new sharing options. Even with these improvements, Apple still calls the software beta apps, but perhaps we will learn more about the future of iWork for iCloud at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference in early June. Thanks, Chris!

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Comments

  1. irelandjnr - 10 years ago

    This comes before their WWDC announcement of storage increase to 15 GB.

    • yuniverse7 - 10 years ago

      Increased storage is a good news! However, 15GB is too “little”, too late. They should at least offer 50GB

  2. Mizzo (@Mizzopi) - 10 years ago

    Still No equation editor…still a fail!!!!

    • Should give a try to some LateX editor. Just copy&paste the output as a pdf image. I have even stopped using the built-in eqn. editor in MS-Word. Just check this online free editor:
      http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php
      I like the LateX output the best. And I you keep the source code (something as y(x)=\int_{0}^{x}\frac{e^x}{x} dx) pasted in comments you’ll get maximum compatibility.
      Some free LateX desktop Apps, such as LaTeXiT are more powerful and will let you build your database.

    • Tallest Skil - 10 years ago

      No, not really.

  3. Laurent Seroude - 10 years ago

    still forced to use a browser on mac instead of the desktop apps (as done on iPad), still many bugs remain ignored in the desktop version (despite filling bug reports every week for months now).

    • Greg Brown (@gk_brown) - 10 years ago

      Yeah. I don’t understand the emphasis on the web version myself. I much prefer to use native apps when possible.

      • markpetereit - 10 years ago

        The web apps come in handy for folks like me that are stuck in a PC-only work environment.

    • Brent (@TattooedMac) - 10 years ago

      No-one forces you to do anything, and as Bugs go, its still in Beta so thats understandable. Got me buggered why some people want everything yesterday and to top it off ITS FREE so why complain ??

      • Scott (@ScooterComputer) - 10 years ago

        Ugh, therein lies the problem with making software “free”, folks like you then start to tell people not to complain about it.

        First off, the OP was speaking about the bugs in the desktop versions of the apps, which are not, nor should be considered, “beta”. The bugs in the desktop versions are unacceptable, mostly because a LARGE number of people had PAID for those apps in the past. The bugs were introduced ex post facto, and pushed down paying customers’ throats (as literally as can be done in the digital realm). So no, not “understandable”. And yes, Apple “forced” the updates on users, by various methods: lack of interoperability between versions, App Store limitations, automatic update “feature”, et al.

        But getting back to the “ITS FREE” thing…this is just unhelpful. It allows (bad) companies to act unaccountably (because good companies don’t do such things to begin with), and promotes the bad behavior of apologists like you. Apple might have made iWork not cost anything to download, but since the products only work on devices they manufacture and sell, the “price” is rolled up into the cost of purchase for the user. The price of your Mac OS/iOS device reflects their cost of development, and users should be holding Apple to account to develop good, bug-free software, if for no other reason than Apple itself engages in a Marketing/PR campaign that trumpets their superiority. But by giving them a pass and letting them get away with shoddy software, you are, in fact, undermining the excellence for which Apple claims to strive. Steve Jobs had said at one time, about the MobileMe suite IIRC, that Apple needed to be held to the higher standard that the company expects; when it falls short, it must be held to account (might have been the AntennaGate, something around that time). Don’t fail Steve Jobs, hold Apple accountable. Apple must do a better job of returning desktop iWork to the standards that had existed before the 5.0 “downgrade”, and then make it even better. That process has taken significantly longer than users should realistically expect to wait.

  4. Zachary (@ziptied) - 10 years ago

    something to ponder when looking at the progress in development of the native vs web; Typically these would be two different teams working in parallel. I do agree however that a equation editor is over due. Hopefully they are just putting the apple touches on it and we see it get a note @ WWDC.

  5. Mr. Grey (@mister_grey) - 10 years ago

    I wish we could delete the apps we don’t want. I never have and never will use presentation software like Keynote, but I still have to look at the stupid thing every time I open the iCloud page.

    This is fast becoming my major gripe of all of Apple’s products. You can’t control what they present to you in terms of apps and lists of apps. You can’t delete apps you don’t want from the cloud or from iOS, and you can’t delete apps, music, or media that you’ve already bought.

    Managing the apps on my iPad would be so much easier if I could simply delete things off of my “purchased” list. Most of them don’t even work on iOS 7 anyway. Just last week I got tricked into downloading a POS copycat app called “2048.” Now, because of the name, it stays at the top of my purchased list, mocking me for all eternity.

    Apple really needs to give people more control over their stuff. It’s their stuff after all.

    • Oflife - 10 years ago

      Indeed. Similar probs with Android in certain circumstances.

    • Reed Michaelsen - 10 years ago

      You can delete things off your purchased list by “hiding” them. You have to do it in iTunes on a Mac or PC, but yes, it can be done. I’ve hidden lots of old TV shows I bought from iTunes in the pre-iphone, pre-Netflix era when all I had was an iPod Video, all of which I can now stream on Netflix without taking up space on my devices.

      http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4919

    • WaveMedia (@WaveMedia) - 10 years ago

      I’ll go out a limb here and say that you’re in the tiny minority of people who want to remove purchases from their account history. You can delete and hide things if you don’t want them showing up but I can guarantee you right now that if they let you actually remove purchases from your account there’d be FAR FAR FAR more people complaining that they lost access to something they didn’t think they’d want to use again than there are people complaining they can’t get rid of them from a list.

  6. Howie Isaacks - 10 years ago

    It sure will be terrific when iWork for iCloud FINALLY gets out of beta. I’m a paying customer. I don’t like paying for beta software with no end to the beta in sight.

  7. Does anyone else have this problem? I save a document in Pages in word format. When I open the doc in word, it has several issues, formatting is wrong, etc. I want to use all Apple products, but can not submit my documents written in pages due to how word translates the doc.

    • Andy Casciato - 10 years ago

      If formatting is your issue, this is why we have PDF

      • Lisa Grant - 10 years ago

        Yes, but many people, mostly instructors, will not accept pdf documents.

    • Lisa Grant - 10 years ago

      Every app will have some variation when you convert it to another format. Pages documents will convert better to word when you use only the word processing templates and stay away from the page layout functions. Use Pages ’09 if you ever had it. The the update didn’t get rid of it. It’s still in your applications folder. I’ve seen more issues with the new version.

  8. We need automatic figure captioning and auto references. Without that, I will never use Pages to write serious academic documents.