Feature

Apple announces iWork for iCloud, new apps for Mac and iOS coming later this year

Jordan Kahn

Confirming our earlier suspicions, Apple today showed off some new features for its iWork suite of apps, which includes both Mac and iOS versions of the Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps. While Apple confirmed that new versions of the apps for Mac and iOS would be coming later in the year, it spent its presentation today showing off brand new web versions of the apps designed to run right in the browser through iCloud.com. The new web apps, available initially only to developers starting today, will be dubbed ‘iWork for iCloud’ and bring web apps to iCloud that will compete directly with Google Docs and Google’s other suite of web apps.

Apple execs spent much of the time on stage showing off the new Pages for iCloud app, demoing how users can drag and drop Microsoft Word files and other documents directly into the iCloud.com UI in their browser to begin editing a document. Apple also briefly demoed presentations and spreadsheets running in web versions of the Numbers and Keynote apps.

During the demo of the new iWork for iCloud apps, Apple also made a point of noting that the new apps run in any browser by showing off the apps running on Windows 8.

The new apps are available as developer beta starting today. A public beta of the new iWork for iCloud apps will be arriving later this year. Apple didn’t mention any details regarding pricing, or whether or not the web apps will be a separate purchase from the apps currently available on Mac and iOS.

Some surprises we might see at WWDC 2013 next week

Jordan Kahn

(Preparations for Apple’s 2013 WWDC developer conference / Image via Nick)

There’s a lot we already know about what we’ll be seeing next week at WWDC– we’ve already brought you exclusive details on iOS 7, OS X 10.9, a MacBook refresh, Apple’s new Radio service, and much more. What else might we see Apple show off next week? Below are a couple of our best predictions based on what we think Apple is most likely to show off as well as few things we’ve been hearing: Read more

Tips: Use little-known gestures to arrange photos and shapes in iOS Pages

Benjamin Mayo

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Although the touch-centric UI makes getting to grips with Pages for iOS straightforward, the interface does not appear well-suited to precise positioning of objects, which is necessary in more complicated documents. Luckily, Apple’s iWork suite extends the default iOS set of gestures to provide options for finer-grained control. Learning these more-obscure techniques makes doing ‘real work’ with Pages for iOS an enjoyable experience, rather than an annoyance.

Nudging objects

The natural way to position an object with an iPhone or iPad is to drag it, but this method is not really suitable when doing pixel-accurate alignments. With Pages for Mac, you can achieve one-pixel ‘nudges’ with the arrow keys. To do a nudge on a keyboard-less iOS device, you have to use a special two-finger gesture. Start by placing one finger on the photo you want to nudge to select it. Then, swipe in any direction outside of the photo’s bounds with another finger, to move the object in the respective direction. Add on another ‘swiping finger’ to shift by 10 pixels, rather than single pixels, at a time.

Locked movement

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Two great Mac Bundles headlined by Parallels 8 and Roxio Toast 11 for $50/ea

9to5 Staff

It’s Bundle Season at 9to5Toys.com again where there are currently 4 solid bundles happening simultaneously:

First up, we have MacUpdate’s Parallels Desktop 8 bundle which effectively knocks $30 off the price of Parallels 8 and then hooks you up with 9 additional Mac applications for free (normally $618). A free demo is also available.

Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 6.20.26 AM.

Not to be outdone, MacLegion/Stacksocial has their Spring 2013 Bundle which is headlined by the normally $100 Roxio Toast Pro 11 media creation software for $49.99 but also includes nine other great apps valued at over $390 below:

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Don’t forget the $45 Lifehacker bundle is still happening as well as the $50 ‘PickaBundle’ which allows you to choose 10 of 25 quality apps including a Mac Blu-ray player. Read more

Apps & Updates

Apple updates iWork suite, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, for iOS and Mac

Jake Smith

Image (1) iwork-09_large.jpg for post 9713

Apple updated its entire iWork suite this afternoon. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for iOS were all updated to version 1.7 with improved compatibility with Microsoft Office and iWork. Each iOS app also got bug fixes and minor updates, as seen below. Additionally, available via software update and directly from Apple’s website, iWork for Mac has been updated to version 9.3. It mainly features support for the new iWork for iOS apps. The full release notes are below: Read more

Small number of users report total iCloud email loss, Apple working on the problem (Update: Apple acknowledges)

Author profile

A discussion thread on Apple’s support forum appeared last night from a user who claimed all of his iCloud content disappeared without warning. A further glimpse at the following comments revealed the same situation occurred for a number of iCloud users.

One commenter, npascual, said an Apple support representative “acknowledged last night’s outage,” and then suggested the user “turn off all iCloud-related services on my iPad (Mail, Contacts, Calendars, etc.), wait a bit then turn them back on.”  The representative apparently indicated “everything would return after a short period of re-synching.” However, npascual noted it had been a few hours since the call without any repair.

Check out the full thread here.

9to5Mac reached out to Apple on this matter, and we will update when more is known.

UPDATE: Well, Apple is owning up to the problem, according to its System Status page, but the company is neglecting to give an explanation as to what is happening.

More thread comments are below.

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