Along with the official release of macOS Sierra, Apple on Tuesday released major updates to its iWork apps, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. The main feature included in the update is real-time collaboration, which allows for multiple users to work together on a document, presentation, or spreadsheet.
According to the release notes, multiple users can edit a file at the same time, through the iWork app on the Mac or iOS device, and through iWork for iCloud for PC users. You can see the participant’s cursor as edits are happening, and you can see who else is working on the file.
Curiously, Apple lists in the release notes that the real-time collaboration feature is in beta. What this means in regards to the status of the feature is unknown, but it seems like the beta label is more of a flag to tell people that real-time collaboration is a feature that’s a work in progress and that there could be performance issues.
On the Mac, Keynote 7.0, Pages 6.0, and Numbers 4.0 require macOS Sierra (version 10.12) or later.
Last week, Apple released updates to the iOS version of iWork that include the real-time collaboration feature. Keynote 3.0, Pages 3.0, and Numbers 3.0 require iOS 10, which was released last week.
Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor
Roman has covered technology since the early 1990s. His career started at MacUser, and he's worked for MacAddict, Mac|Life, and TechTV.