New in OS X: Get MacRumors Push Notifications on your Mac

Resubscribe Now Close

Apple Shutting Down iWork.com on July 31 Amid Transition to iCloud

Friday March 9, 2012 11:30 am PST by Eric Slivka

Apple today sent out an email to users registered for its iWork.com beta noting that it will be discontinuing the service as of July 31. The discontinuation comes as Apple places its focus on iCloud, which offers users ways to keep documents in sync among their various iOS devices.
Dear iWork.com user,

Thanks for participating in the iWork.com public beta.

Last year, we launched iCloud, a service that stores your music, photos, documents, and more and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices. Today, there are already over 40 million documents stored on iCloud by millions of iWork customers. Learn more about iCloud.

With a new way to share iWork documents between your devices using iCloud, the iWork.com public beta service will no longer be available. As of July 31, 2012, you will no longer be able to access your documents on the iWork.com site or view them on the web.

We recommend that you sign in to iWork.com before July 31, 2012, and download all your documents to your computer. For detailed instructions on how to save a copy of your documents on your computer, read this support article at Apple.com.

Sincerely,
The iWork team
iWork.com launched as a free beta in January 2009, with Apple eventually intending to offer the service with tools for collaboration on iWork documents for a fee. The service never exited beta, however, and with iCloud offering new options for moving documents around the company has decided to eliminate the program. But while iCloud does offer a number of new features, it does not offer the level of collaboration tools envisioned for iWork.com.

The elimination of iWork.com will come a month after Apple officially shuts down its MobileMe services. Apple has continued to support MobileMe since the introduction of iCloud last year in order to give users time to move over to the new service. But as of June 30, MobileMe and several of its features such as iDisk, Gallery, and iWeb publishing will no longer be available.

[ 82 comments ]


Top Rated Comments

(View all)

Avatar
BJB Productions
94 months ago
Anyone else see this coming the day it was launched?
Rating: 13 Votes
Avatar
kendals
94 months ago
Sounds like a new version of iWork is coming

Obviously since you cannot access iWork beta from Pages, Numbers & keynote after July 31st, sounds like an update to remove iWork and add iCloud will FINALLY be coming!
Rating: 10 Votes
Avatar
mattwolfmatt
94 months ago
Dear Apple,

Not everyone has Lion.

Sincerely,
Your customers

--------------------
Seriously, my MBA is owned by my employer, who does not want to upgrade to Lion. Despite my telling them that it's an easy upgrade (and I'll pay for it) they don't want the possible headache of incompatible software.

If apple would make iCloud work with Snow Leopard, this would be acceptable. I mean, iCloud works with Vista for crying out loud.
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
Radio
94 months ago
Is anyone else still displeased with iCloud?

It's so stripped down and not very functional compared to google and more or less ms office
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
andiwm2003
94 months ago
well, apple has never been good or consistent with their online services. i would not invest too much time and effort in setting up a professional or even a consumer/semipro workflow with iWork or iCloud. There is simply a too high probability that they change or remove features in two years from now.
Rating: 8 Votes
Avatar
andrew.bussman
94 months ago
It's really no big surprise for me. iWork.com has been beta for 3 years with no major changes or updates. I kind of felt like they already abandoned it with iCloud anyways.
Rating: 7 Votes
Avatar
MikeyTree
94 months ago
This would be fine, except that iWork for Mac still doesn't sync with iCloud.
Rating: 7 Votes
Avatar
2bikes
94 months ago
Can we assume that Mountain Lion is going to be released before July 31st?
Rating: 6 Votes
Avatar
rorschach
94 months ago

Thats fine as long as they get their heads out of their...clouds, and get document handling fixed for iCloud. Great, so I can have my docs in the cloud, if I create them on an iOS device. On my mac, I have to manually upload and download them? Very very very unApple.

If I create a doc in Pages on my mac, it should go to iCloud, unless I tell it not to. It should show up just like if it was created on an iOS device. I'm really not sure why it isn't already like that.


No doubt coming with Mountain Lion.

In Mountain Lion, several apps (Text Edit and Preview) have "iCloud" as an option in the Save As dialog. And when you open Preview you get a window with the images you have saved in iCloud.



July seems about right for the ML release.
Rating: 5 Votes
Avatar
mattwolfmatt
94 months ago

Apple shouldn't be held back from moving the operating system forward just because some people don't want to upgrade.

Should Microsoft hold back updating Office or Internet Explorer because some companies don't want to upgrade from Windows 98, NT, or XP?


I'm not asking them to hold back the OS, just asking them to include iCloud in Snow Leopard. I'm all for them bringing out Lion and Mountain Lion and whatever the next big cat is. Like I said, if they can do it for Vista, they can do it for SL.
Rating: 4 Votes

[ Read All Comments ]