If you prefer your productivity suites on the cloudy side, you’ll be glad to hear that Apple’s released a few updates to the beta version of its iWork for iCloud productivity suite on Tuesday. The list of updates appear as a subtly-animated splash screen that appears whenever you launch one of the apps.
Some of the many new font options.
Several of the most prominent updates apply to all three of the apps in the suite: You can now have up to 100 collaborators in a single document at the same time—which hopefully won’t be too confusing—and you can choose from almost 200 new fonts. There are also additional options in the color panel, and you can finally create and format both 2D and interactive charts.
For those who work with more intensive files, all three apps also can now handle editing documents of up to 1GB, as well as inserting individual images of up to 10MB.
Besides those changes, each of the apps also gets its own chance to shine: Pages gets the ePub export capabilities (see above), object layering, and the ability to insert and edit inline tables; Numbers gets CSV export and alternating row colors in tables; and Keynote now lets you show and hide slide numbers.
The new options for interactive charts.
Apple’s been pretty consistent about rolling out improvements for its Web-based productivity suite, while continuing to maintain interoperability with both the iOS and Mac versions of the software. Though the Web versions—which remain in beta for the time being—seem to still be the last to receive many of the features, it’s clear that Apple’s dedicated to continuing to bring updates to them.
Author: Dan Moren, Contributor
Dan has been writing about all things Apple since 2006, when he first started contributing to the MacUser blog. He's a prolific podcaster and the author of the Galactic Cold War series, including his latest, The Nova Incident.