<a href="http://9to5mac.com/2013/09/09/colorful-banners-go-up-at-apple-town-hall-ahead-of-tomorrows-iphone-event/">Image</a> via <a href="http://www.igen.fr"><em>iGen</em></a>
With Apple’s media event scheduled for tomorrow, we have rounded up what Apple is likely due to introduce. We previously published a round-table of 9to5Mac author hopes for the event, but this roundup will focus on our specific expectations for the keynote address. You can find our roundup below:
It seems that Apple’s beta release of iWork for iCloud has proven popular as some users are being denied access with a message stating that Apple has had an ‘overwhelming response’ to the service … Expand Expanding Close
Apple previously announced it was planning on releasing a public beta for iWork for iCloud this fall but perhaps is opening the beta today to help beta test the apps among a larger group of users ahead of an official announcement. Apple is expected to unveil new iPhones at an event next month on Sept. 10, and there is a possibility we’ll hear more about iWork for iCloud alongside details for Mavericks and possibly the new Mac Pro.
With the rumored September 10th Apple keynote just weeks away, the rumor mill is in high gear and, as per usual, expectations will be soaring higher than ever as the date nears. For some products, a refresh or introduction is all but confirmed. For others, there only exists speculation or mere wishful thinking for even a mention at the keynote. Below you’ll find the opinions of some 9to5Mac staffers. Expand Expanding Close
Previously, we covered Apple’s announcement that it had won a large contract to supply iPads to LA Unified School District. The program will equip students across the nation’s second biggest school district with iPads that include the Pearson Common Core System of Courses delivered via a new app as part of the integrated solution. Additionally, each iPad will come preloaded with Apple’s iWork (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) and iLife (iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand) suites in addition to a range of educational third-party apps. Apple noted that the $30 million commitment is only the first phase of a larger roll out for Los Angeles schools.
The first 31,000 iPads are only the initial phase of the program, which plans to buy and distribute iPads to all 640,000 students in the nation’s second-largest school district by late 2014, Mark Hovatter, the chief facilities executive for the LAUSD, told CITEworld.
“The most important thing is to try to prepare the kids for the technology they are going to face when they are going to graduate,” said Hovatter. “This is phase one, a mix of high school, middle school, and elementary students. We’re targeting kids who most likely don’t have their own computers or laptops or iPads. Their only exposure to computers now is going to be in their schools.”
That’s a huge number to add to Apple’s iPad numbers over the next year. As it stands, if Apple reaped $400 of revenue from each iPad, it would receive $256M for the deal. More importantly, it lays the groundwork for other school districts that may want to emulate this adoption.
Best of all, it exposes a massive amount of children to Apple’s technology that might not already have access to it.
While the iWork for iCloud beta has been available for developers and those who logged in with the current beta software for about a month now, it looks like Apple has begun inviting non-developers to the online document editing program. Tipsters have sent us in emails from the company asking them to try out the services and send in feedback.
We’d like to invite you to be one of the first to try it, so we’re giving you early access to the iWork for iCloud beta. All you have to do is sign in to iCloud on a Mac or a PC using the current version of Safari, Chrome or Internet Explorer. Then just click on Pages, Numbers, or Keynote and you’re off.
Users that have received the invitation don’t need to visit beta.icloud.com – they can just use the regular icloud.com address.
Back in June, we posted a video review of iWork for iCloud: Expand Expanding Close
We reported previously on the possibility of Apple making its iWork suite, and possibly its other premium content creation apps, available for free alongside iOS 7 and the launch of new iWork for iCloud web apps. It would make a lot of sense given it’s hard to imagine Apple allowing users to create documents for free on iCloud but not seamlessly transfer from iOS to Mac without having to throw down $30 for the three iOS apps. Today we get a little hint from the latest iOS 7 beta that Apple might actually be considering making the apps free this fall (via @nielskorte & iFun).
The screenshot above shows the screen that Apple presents most users with when launching the App Store on their iOS device for the first time. Curiously, on iOS 7 beta 3, the recommended free apps screen includes Apple’s iWork suite in addition to other paid apps such as Garageband, iMovie, and iPhoto. In the past, Apple has only included free apps in the pop up such as iBooks, iTunes U, and Podcasts. This could signal Apple has plans to offer its premium apps for free in the future…
Apple presents itself as a company that ships hardware, software, and services that integrate together elegantly. While Apple makes the majority of its money from its hardware, Apple makes use of its free, popular internet services and software to sell their hardware. For example, the iLife suite of Mac apps that are included for free with new Mac purchases is a common reason that people choose to buy a Mac. On the iOS side, Apple offers free services like iCloud, iBooks, iMessage, Game Center, and later this year, iTunes Radio.
But on both the Mac and iOS Device side, one particular Apple service has stuck out as being a paid offering: Apple’s iWork suite that includes the Pages word processor, Numbers spreadsheet maker, and Keynote presentation creator. For years, Apple has sold iWork for Mac as a bundled suite, but with the Mac App Store, the company split the three programs into separate $19.99 downloads. On the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch side, the three apps are distinct $9.99 downloads. Apple, thus far, has kept iWork as a premium priced suite, but this fall, the company will introduce a free tier: iWork for iCloud…
The program will equip students across the nation’s second biggest school district with iPads that include the Pearson Common Core System of Courses delivered via a new app as part of the integrated solution. Additionally, each iPad will come preloaded with Apple’s iWork (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) and iLife (iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand) suites in addition to a range of educational third-party apps. Apple notes that the $30 million commitment is only the first phase of a larger roll out for Los Angeles Schools.
“Education is in Apple’s DNA and we’re thrilled to work with Los Angeles Unified public schools on this major initiative as they plan to roll out iPads to every student across 47 campuses this fall,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Schools around the world have embraced the engaging and interactive quality of iPad with nearly 10 million iPads already in schools today.”
For more details, check out the full press release below. Expand Expanding Close
One of Apple’s unsung announcements from its WWDC keynote on Monday was iWork for iCloud, a full, complete solution for editing and syncing documents in the cloud. iWork for iCloud, which will be going head to head with Google Drive, is already extremely polished and well done, even as a developer beta.
While fully updated iOS and Mac apps will be arriving later in the year, the web versions of the apps are available privately today.
In the above video, we walk you through the beta interface of iWork for iCloud, as it appears in Safari.
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.
(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: Expand Expanding Close
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.
The bundle includes 10 HIGH-QUALITY Mac apps valued at over $390 for an EXCLUSIVE price of $50!
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Roxio Toast 11 ($100) – Titanium makes it easier than ever to capture, burn, convert, copy and share digital media.
Set for iWork ($69) – Over 1100 unique designs for Pages, 100 spreadsheet templates for Numbers, 50 first-class slideshow themes for Keynote, and 1300 images for illustrating your content. All templates are available in the US and international paper sizes.
LaunchBar ($35) – Get instant access to applications, documents, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, media libraries, search engines and so much more – just by typing short abbreviations.
TasksBox ($25) – TasksBox is a simple and beautiful task manager that helps you to easily manage your daily tasks so that you can spend more time on what you love.
Animationist ($30) – Create perfect title art animations for your YouTube videos, iMovie or Final Cut projects, showcase videos and even TV broadcasts.
iFinance ($30) – Start recording your income and expenses right now, be it a coffee during lunch break or a brand new car – finally, you’ll get a clear overview of what exactly you spend your money on.
Habits ($20) – Habits is based on the scientifically proven principle that it takes a continuous chain or repetition of an activity to create a new habit, make a habit out of a resolution or replace an existing habit with a new one.
MainMenu Pro ($10) – Run daily, weekly and monthly maintenance scripts to keep your Mac strong.
Corel Paint it! ($40) – This photo painting software includes multiple painting styles, brushes and realistic effects that let you add a personal touch to any creative project.
Stationery Pack 2 ($25) – Turn your favorite photos into greeting cards and send them with Mail.
Plus a BONUS App if You Buy Right Now!
That’s right, if you buy this bundle RIGHT NOW, you’ll also get Trickster as an added bonus!
Trickster ($10) – Trickster is the ultimate productivity booster for you.
This bundle has been hand-picked to ensure that quality apps make it onto your desktop. There’s no better opportunity to start enhancing your Mac that with this Spring 2013 Bundle.
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: Expand Expanding Close
Apple introduced iWork.com at Macworld in 2009 as a beta web service for sharing and collaborating on documents created in the iWork ’09 productivity suite. Since then the site has remained in a perpetual “beta” state, never becoming the full product Apple envisioned.
Like MobileMe, which was shut down one month ago, most of iWork.com’s features have been moved to iCloud, thus removing the need for iWork.com to exist any longer. As of tonight, Apple no longer will allow users to login to the web interface, and although the iWork apps were updated to support iCloud last week, the option to login to iWork.com through the Mac version still exists.
Considering the fact that the current suite is over three years old, many are hoping to see an updated version launch later this year. Apple’s next media event is rumored to be on September 12, and while it will likely be focused on the next-generation iPhone, it’s possible that Apple could surprise us with iWork ’12.
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.
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.
Update: Apple has now updated its Podcasts app with the expected bug fixes. Release notes below:
What’s New in Version 1.0.1
Podcasts 1.0.1 provides a number of improvements, including:
• Significant improvements to performance and stability
• Podcasts in your library now show the number of unplayed episodes
• Top Stations now show the podcast title if artwork is missing
• Playback speed is now remembered when playing the next episode
• Fix for a problem where the Subscribe button is inactive
• Resolution of an issue where Top Stations artwork may not appear
Podcasts:If you have experienced issues with Apple’s Podcasts iOS app that released last month, as many have, you will be happy to know Apple plans to release an update today that brings a number of fixes to common bugs. According to a report from AllThingsD, “Apple has been hard at work tweaking the app to fix the problems that currently plague it” and the update expected today should “vastly improve it.”
AutoCAD WS version 1.5: Autodesk’s app for viewing, editing, and sharing AutoCAD drawings on iOS devices was updated today with two new “powerful collaboration tools that transform design creation, review, and approval into a social experience.” The two features include: Expand Expanding Close
We covered the release of Microsoft’s new SkyDrive for Mac and updated iOS apps last month, and today the company is once again trying to convince iCloud users to make the switch. On the Office for Mac blog and SkyDrive blog, Microsoft posted a video today titled “iCloud not enough? Try SkyDrive,” alongside the following three reasons to choose its cloud service over Apple’s:
Access files and Office docs, anywhere:
With iCloud, you can only access certain files across devices—like iWork files or photos you take on your iPhone.
With SkyDrive, you can access or manage any file from anywhere. It doesn’t matter whether the file is a document, photo, video, PDF, or anything else—just drag files to theSkyDrive folder on your Mac and they’ll automatically be available on youriPhone, iPad, or PC. If you don’t have your devices with you, you can still access, view, or edit any file by signing in to SkyDrive.com on any browser.
Share and work toegether with anyone:
With iCloud, you can only collaborate with people who have the right software.
But with SkyDrive, you can share any type of file—even big ones up to 2 GB—with anyone. SkyDrive works seamlessly with Office. Anyone you share with can view or edit Word,PowerPoint, or Excel files using Officefor Mac, Office for Windows, or withOffice Web Apps in their browser (it’s free!).
Your notes, everywhere:
With iCloud, you can access notes across your devices but can’t share them.
SkyDrive and OneNote, both free, are integrated so you can take notes, track to-dos and lists all in one place, and share your lists with friends and family so they can coordinate shopping or other tasks you’re working on together. You can share and keep your lists automatically updated from any device.
As pointed out byMacStories, Apple recently removed trials for the iWork suite and Aperture 3 from Apple.com. The webpage formerly home to the iWork trial now includes a message informing users that iWork apps, such as Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, are available through the Mac App Store.Apple removed the trial for a short while last year before returning it; however, the company also informed users last month that the iWork.com Beta service would shut down July 31. Apple does not currently offer trial versions of the $20 Mac Store apps.
While Apple does not have a booth or keynote at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company is on the show floor scouting the competition. PaidContent’s Tom Krazit spotted Apple’s head of iOS product marketing Greg Joswiak at Sony’s booth. Joswiak talked to PaidContent, with a grin on his face, and said he was on location to see “How other companies present their products at events such as CES, from things like booth layout and aesthetics to which products are highlighted within a company’s booth.” Interesting.
It is worth noting that Apple has not participated in a trade show since MacWorld 2009, where the company announced iWork ’09, new MacBook Pros, and more. In recent years, Apple has stuck to announcing new products at its own events.
Roaming the floor does not seem like the only thing Apple is doing at CES. At 9to5Mac, we have been independently contacted through email by someone who seems to be seeking information on Apple competitors, including information on what 9to5Mac thinks about the technology being showcased at CES. The contact also wanted to know specifics on how journalists viewed companies’ product marketing practices. This probe certainly sounds similar to Mr. Joswiak’s recent activities on the show floor, right?
We’re receiving numerous reports from disgruntled users claiming iCloud deleted their documents from iWork apps on their iPhones, iPod touches and iPads after restarting devices. Worse, documents from the Pages, Numbers and Keynote iOS apps are also wiped out from the iCloud servers and cannot be found using the web interface. Sure enough, a bunch of threads on Apple’s Support Communities site (here and here) highlight the issue which affects an unknown portion of users.
A forum user NickFro describes the catastrophic bug:
I can reliably reproduce the error as follows. Create a document in Numbers on an iOS device, or upload to iCloud.com manually. Wait for sync. Restart iOS device. Launch Numbers. The document will be deleted. If you have iCloud.com open, the file will still appear but clicking on it generates a “File not present on server” error. Pretty serious bug, but I can’t tell if it’s in iCloud or the iWork apps. Or both.
He also offers this remedy:
Delete the iCloud account at both the main level of Settings (i.e., by selecting iCloud) AND by deleting the account in the Mail, Calenders, and Contacts section of Settings. Have it remove everything from your device. Once it’s done. Go to the main level, select iCloud, and re-enable your account there and set all settings there for sync. Let the sync happen.
If that didn’t help, try the solutions described here and here.
If you backup your iOS devices with iTunes instead with iCloud, you’re in luck: Just restore to a device backup containing your files and launch Pages, Keynote or Numbers on your device – but don’t enable iCloud in any of those apps. As you know, iTunes creates a device backup at each sync (unless iCloud backup is enabled in iTunes or Settings on your device). This lets you use Time Machine to go back in time and retrieve a specific backup file containing your device’s settings, app data, documents and more. The affected users who enabled iCloud Backup on their device (Settings > iCloud > Storage and Backup) are in a much worse situation as any document created on their device and synced with iCloud gets deleted from both places without a warning, as shown in the below clip.
For some, the problem stems from migrating MobileMe accounts to the iCloud ones so deactivating the “old” MobileMe account on every iOS device, Mac or PC should help.
As long as there is still one machine with a functioning “MobileMe” in the System Preferences, this will erase all files on startup. I found it out when I turned on my wife’s machine, having forgotten that I had created a temporary user account there to store some of my MobileMe information. As soon as I switched to that user account, zap!, all iWork files disappear. Now that all former MobileMe panels have been deactivated, the remote reset is no longer occurring. or at least so it seems.
For others, iWork documents are disappearing upon syncing with a computer, too. This happens after a document has been created on an iOS device or uploaded from the computer. Here’s one possible remedy… Expand Expanding Close
Finding the perfect instant messaging client on the App Store is a pretty big challenge, but a new app called Verbs is pretty close to it. Verbs is available on both the iPhone and iPad and includes support for Google Talk, AIM, MobileMe, and Facebook. With all of these services bundled in one, Verbs becomes the perfect place to chat with friends. Instant messaging is really direct and sleek and the WebOS cards-like feature (seen after the break) makes switching between chats easy. But, Verbs has a lot more to offer.
Other supported services included in Verbs are CloudApp and Droplr for sending images, an iWork and Office document viewer, Instapaper, and the ability to link your AIM and Gtalk buddies with your Address Book.
Verbs Pro in-app update costs a one time fee of $5 and includes Push Notifications (a biggie while chatting) and encryption.
This app blows every other IM app out of the water, because it’s simple, but yet feature packed. Verbs is available on the iTunes App Store for $.99. If it makes you feel better, most of the 9to5 Staff uses this app on a daily basis. Two promo codes are after the break (get them while they last):
