Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Apple Promises More Advanced Features for iWork

Source:  TC.

Apple got some blow-back from some quarters regarding the new iWork, you know, the office suite that they made free to everyone (almost everyone).  And while it was not surprising that in order to make iWork seem seamlessly across the two plaetforms, iOS and OS X, Apple would have to strip out some of the more advanced features in the previous versions.

However, it did hit a nerve for some folks.

This reminded me of when Apple released the new Final Cut Pro a couple of years ago that not only stripped out a lot of features pro users came to rely on but also made the projects incompatible between the new and older versions of the professional video editing app.  Eventually, many of the features did come back.

So, I expected the same thing to happen with iWork as well.  And Apple pre-announced what they would be (Apple).  Here are the key updates that will be coming in the next 6 months:


Pages

  • Customize toolbar 
  • Vertical ruler Improved alignment guides 
  • Improved object placement Import of cells with images 
  • Improved word counts 
  • Keyboard shortcuts for styles 
  • Manage pages and sections from the thumbnail view 

Numbers

  • Customize toolbar 
  • Improvements to zoom and window placement 
  • Multi-column and range sort 
  • Auto-complete text in cells 
  • Page headers and footers 
  • Improvements to AppleScript support 

Keynote

  • Customize toolbar 
  • Restoring old transitions and builds 
  • Improvements to presenter display 
  • mprovements to AppleScript support
The biggest outcry I've read is the loss of Applescript support.  It'll be interesting to see how this is implemented on iOS devices.  As far as I'm aware of, Applescript isn't supported on the iPhone or iPad.  

There are two things about this debacle.  First, it's manufactured.  By Apple screwing up and not communicating to the public about it and the media picking over something that that 90% of iWork users don't care about.  Second, it's been a while now with Tim Cook at the helm and Apple is just as bad at communicating this type of changes to users as they were under Steve Jobs.

That's gotta improve.

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