It looks like Apple has been giving the iWork apps on iCloud some new features. The entire list, including those made to iWork for the Mac, and the iOS apps can be found here. Many of the updates apply to all three apps, rather than specific functionality change to each. Document handling, text formatting, and collaboration seem to be areas of focus. A few examples are;
- Add passwords and share password-protected documents
- Export documents to ePUB format
- Print your documents directly from the Tools menu
- Collaborate with up to 100 people at the same time
- See cursors and selections for everyone in a document
- Watch images and shapes animate as your collaborators move them around
- Almost 200 new fonts
- More color options in the format panel
- Folders
- Edit documents up to 1 GB in size
- Support for Retina display
When you open an online app for the first time since the changes, the first one will present you with a screen listing a variety of changes. Opening the other apps afterwards give you a “Getting Started” before taking you to your list of documents.
These are great additions, although I get the feeling Apple is focusing more time on the iCloud versions rather than the Mac versions. I think the collaboration features are great, and it’s one of the reasons I use Google Docs at all. How does iWork currently fare again Google’s online apps? How many Pages, Numbers, or Keynote users are actually using the online versions? If you have any thoughts, let us know in the comments or on the Facebook page.