Apple today updated iWork for iCloud with support for up to eight new languages and more than 50 new fonts. The changes were added to the cloud-based versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote and were first reported by German blog Macerkopf.
/article-new/2014/11/iwork_icloud_deutsch-update.jpg?lossy)
New iCloud languages include French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese, Arabic (Pages only) and Hebrew (Pages only) with Pages receiving 8 new languages and Number and Keynotes now supporting six. Apple also expanded the number of available fonts, adding 50 new font types that improve the creative options available to users as well as add support for the new languages. Other changes include a revised main toolbar that now allows users to easily change the name of a document and other-app specific improvements like the ability to undo the deletion of section breaks while editing in Pages.
Apple introduced iWork for iCloud at WWDC 2013 and has been steadily improving the service with small, but regular updates. The company still maintains a desktop version of the productivity suite and recently updated its iWork apps with new features and a redesign for OS X Yosemite.
Top Rated Comments
It is WIDELY KNOWN that Apple butchered iWork in the recent redesign of it; just like they did to Final Cut. Final Cut has come along and finally a nice piece of software, but it took two years. I can only hope iWork will do the same. The first year of updates was OK, but there is still a long way to go with all the stuff that was gutted out of it.
As for iWork on iCloud, like most Apple services, it is lackluster. Over a full year in BETA (which it still is), and still lagging behind both Apple's own software and the competitions.
A case can be made for MS Office being better than iWork - that would be expected, given that it costs quite a bit more and Microsoft has been making Office for over twice as long as Apple has been making iWork. But saying Google Docs is better than iWork is laughable. They're missing far more features than iWork is.
The absolute only thing that Google does better than iWork is handle concurrent edits. I haven't needed to have multiple people edit a document concurrently with me since April 2014, but we initially tried Pages and just kept running into issues with it saying we made conflicting edits, even though the sections we were each working on were several pages apart from each other. Google Docs, on the other hand, is able to handle concurrent edits quite seamlessly.
On iWork vs Office, I find that iWork generally produces nicer looking results with less effort, while Office has more features. So if I need more exotic functions or complicated charts than normal, I go with Office. Otherwise, I go with iWork.
I agree. It's absolutely OUTRAGEOUS that you can't get everything you want from software that is completely free and for which you paid nothing. :rolleyes:
For basic word processing (and even mildly complex), the new Pages is still solid. I've used it a decent amount and what it does it usually does well. It's just that it doesn't do everything it used to.
I don't agree. It all depends on the intended audience. Microsoft is intended for the professional user whereas iWorks is intended for the casual user. At home I do not need or want all of the features in MS-office it complicates the product. If I am a publisher, then iWorks clearly won't do. But if I am at home just writing stuff or a student just writing a paper for class, then Pages can work just fine. Personally I like Keynote better than powerpoint even with its few limitations. The only thing were I really think Apple lacks is in Numbers because they have never provided a pivot table alternative. This is useful even at home for my budget and investment spreadsheets I create.
iWorks for the professional Publisher or Accountant/Statistian will not do. But they were not the intended audience. Maybe the partnership with IBM will yield a version that is more powerful for the workplace.
Even that is not quite right. I present and publish all the damn time, and I'm here to tell you that Keynote absolutely whips PowerPoint, for starters. Meanwhile Word and Pages each have their own use-cases, so I use one or the other depending on what I need to do. If I'm putting together a poster for a technical conference, Pages is the way to go, but if I need a multi-column, auto-flowing format for a published piece, I'll reluctantly open Word and put up with its crashiness and increasingly horrid user interface. Excel still dominates for spreadsheet work, but it's becoming less and less pleasant to use with every user-interface update Microsoft foists on us, and I've found a few occasions when I needed to make a spreadsheet look pretty, and it was much easier to do so in Numbers.
Based on the above, I'd say that in terms of relative merit for my particular professional usage,
Keynote >> PowerPoint,
Word ≈ Pages, and
Excel > Numbers
...But much depends on the user's work and what they need.