Hot off the heels of Microsoft launching an iPad version of it’s famous office suite and making the iPhone version free to view and edit, Apple have released updates to its office suite - iWork. The update includes new features for Pages, Numbers and Keynote and includes better support for Microsoft Office documents.
The biggest change to come with this update is the ‘view only’ feature which allows you to share a document, spreadsheet or presentation with others without allowing them to be able to edit the document. Apple have also made the overall compatibility with Microsoft office much better particularly with password protected documents. The update also brings with it full compatibility with the newest version of Microsoft Office which has just been recently released.
Apple have also updated the desktop version of iWork and added some new transitions in Keynote, new design tools in Numbers and some new tools for creating charts and editing documents in Pages.
As for the web (iCloud) version of iWork the suite has now been updated with full retina support and a slightly refreshed design for the documents editor.
The mobile apps also received updates and enhancements such as Keynotes remote feature, documents in Pages and sheets in Numbers can now be searched by file name from within the mobile apps.
It’s no surprise that Apple have started to make updates to it’s iWork suite of apps after Microsoft released it’s subscription based iPad app. However it seems unlikely that hardened Apple fans will be won over when they have a free option with iWork which although not as feature rich as Microsoft Office it’s more than capable of getting the job done.
For a complete list of features in this update checkout Apple’s website.
