Microsoft Office isn’t the only way to build documents and run presentations, as Apple connects with iPhone owners through their working world.
Productivity may well be one of the main ways we all use our computers, but it’s also something we rely on from our phones and tablets. And while Microsoft Office costs money, if you have a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPad, you have access to another app suite, and it’s not just the free online equivalent that is Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
In the world of Apple and Mac, there’s the iWork suite, a combination of apps that comes free on computer and mobile devices, offering the Word equivalent that is Pages, the Excel equivalent of Numbers, and the PowerPoint equivalent of Keynote. And this week, it’s all getting a bit of an update.
“Whether they are in the office, at school or working remotely, users around the world love Keynote, Pages and Numbers for their powerful features, ease of use and seamless experience across iPhone, iPad and Mac,” said Bob Borchers, Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple.
“Today, we’re adding even more power and capability to these apps with new productivity and collaboration features that enable anyone to create more personal and compelling presentations, make working with documents on iPhone a breeze and bring full-featured pivot tables to mobile for the first time,” he said.
The new features expand on what people can do, either at the desktop, laptop, or even remotely on the go, with features rolling to multiple devices.
For people reading and writing, Apple’s update to Pages supports a “Screen View” toggle, which will reformat documents to the iPhone screen, shifting words to a single column layout while retaining the style of the document, and even supporting the text translation built directly into iOS 15.
That’s just the start, with Numbers getting support for pivot tables and radar charts, providing just that little bit extra for data and analysis.
However Apple’s presentation tool Keynote may well be getting the most interesting features, supporting a video camera directly in a presentation, allowing you to talk inside of a presentation rather than edit your video directly on top.
Keynote’s camera additions can work on video conferencing tools, meaning WebEx, Zoom, and so on and so on — tools we’ve all become quite familiar with during the work-from-home pandemic — and allows the camera to show up with frames, shadows, reflections, and more, with support for the FaceTime camera on Macs or an external camera, as well. What’s more, it seems Apple is allowing an iPhone or iPad to be shared this way, allowing you to plug them in directly and provide in-presentation iPhone and iPad demos.
Apple has also added support to let multiple people work on a presentation at once, though only one person can use the camera at once. That will come from whoever is presenting at the time, meaning if you want to share a WFH presentation with difference webcam videos, you’ll want to make sure to switch who’s sharing a screen at different points.
Regardless of what you do, the additions to Keynote, Numbers, and Pages are rolling out now, with updates on macOS and iOS available now.
