Category — iWork

Adam Engst of TidBITS has a smart piece on the demise of iWork.com, the never-out-of-beta sharing site for iWork files. Go read Apple Finally Puts iWork.com Out of Its Misery. It’s a good piece, but there’s this really smart observation at the end:

Put bluntly, Apple has never understood how to support collaboration, and technologies like iCloud and sandboxing seem to be headed in the opposite direction.

I think this is very true. iCloud does syncing, mostly, but it really needs to go beyond that. Other than the utility of storing and being able to re-download content purchased from Apple, and the usefulness of iTunes Match, Dropbox offers me more ease of use and functionality than iCloud. I can sync, backup, share and collaborate.

Share/Bookmark

First, the big news.

Apple is taking orders right now for March 16 shipping for their third version iPad. The specs are here. The crude details:

• Retina display with 3.1 million pixels (2048-by-1536-pixel resolution at 264 pixels per inch)
• New rear-facing iSight camera offering 1080p HD video recording, 5 MP images, stabilization, Auto focus (tap to focus)
• Also 2nd FaceTime camera with VGA-quality photos and video at up to 30 frames per second.
• Voice dictation (this is NOT Siri)
• An A5X CPU with quad-core graphics
• Both WiFi 4G LTE versions (buy the model for either AT&T or Verizon) and WiFi only. See Glenn Fleishman’s explanation of LTE and why you should care.
• Form factor a tiny bit larger (fractions of a millimeter larger), includes Bluetooth, battery life about the same, storage (16G, 32G, 64G) and pricing identical to the iPad 2. Black and white bodies both offered.

Apple’s shiny pictures and tasty videos are here. Smart coverage from TidBITS here, Jeff Carlson in the Seattle Times here.

Other announcements included the refreshed Apple TV, iWork updates, the $4.99 iPhoto for iOS (which is available now from the App store, and looks very very sweet, but requires iPad 2 or the new iPad), and iOS 5.1, with updates to lots of Apple’s apps, available now.

Share/Bookmark

Apple’s iWork apps for iPad were updated to version 1.2 yesterday, bringing the apps many refinements and additional document import and export capabilities.

Here are the details as listed in the iTunes Store:

Pages 1.2

• Copy documents between Pages and your MobileMe iDisk or a WebDAV service.
• Option to display the word count for your document.
• Support for opening .txt files from Mail.
• Ability to group and ungroup objects.
• Import and export existing footnotes, endnotes, sections and tables of contents.
• Import and export Pages ’09 tables with image background fills in cells.
• Improved export of tables with customized borders.
• Improved font matching when importing a Pages or Microsoft Word document.
• Improved creation and editing of hyperlinks.
• Improved text options for tables including font, size and color settings for individual cells.
• Improved usability and reliability when sharing documents via iWork.com public beta.
• Improved reliability when importing documents with large images.
• Improved reliability when importing and exporting documents with overlapping objects.
• Improved handling of fonts when exporting documents to Microsoft Word.
• Improved reliability and performance when importing Microsoft Word documents.

Numbers 1.2

• Export spreadsheets to Microsoft Excel (.XLS) format.
• Copy spreadsheets between Numbers and your MobileMe iDisk or a WebDAV service.
• Ability to group and ungroup objects.
• Open CSV files from Mail and other apps.
• Import and export Numbers ’09 tables with image background fills in cells.
• Improved export of tables with customized borders.
• Improved font matching when importing Numbers ’09 or Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
• Improved creation and editing of hyperlinks in text boxes.
• Improved text options for tables including font, size and color settings for individual cells.
• Improved usability and reliability when sharing spreadsheets with iWork.com public beta.
• Improved reliability when importing spreadsheets with large images.
• Improved reliability when importing and exporting spreadsheets with overlapping objects.
• Improved reliability and performance when importing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

Keynote 1.2

• Export presentations to Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT) format.
• Copy presentations between Keynote and your MobileMe iDisk or a WebDAV service.
• Support for audio in builds when importing Keynote ’09 presentations.
• Ability to group and ungroup objects.
• Add animated builds to grouped objects.
• Lens Flare, Spin and Wipe build animations.
• Revolving Door, Swoosh and Wipe slide transition animations.
• Improved slide size conversion when importing Keynote ’09 presentations.
• Import and export Keynote ’09 tables with image background fills in cells.
• Improved export of tables with customized borders.
• Improved font matching when importing Keynote ’09 or Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
• Improved creation and editing of web hyperlinks.
• Improved text options for tables including font, size and color settings for individual cells.
• Improved usability and reliability when sharing presentations with iWork.com public beta.
• Improved reliability when importing presentations with large images.
• Improved reliability when importing and exporting presentations with overlapping objects.
• Improved reliability and performance when importing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Share/Bookmark