Alongside a number of other exciting announcements at Apple’s WWDC keynote today, Apple unveiled a new version of iWork, and this time, it’s all based on the cloud – iCloud, that is! iWork for iCloud brings Apple’s full productivity suite to your browser, complete with full compatibility with Microsoft Office, the ability to create, edit, and share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and more.
From Apple’s iWork for iCloud page:
Pages for iCloud
Create great-looking letters, reports, flyers, and more in your browser — using the power of Pages for iCloud. Go ahead and think big. Whether you’re wrapping text around an image or editing a document you imported from Microsoft Word, Pages responds so quickly and fluidly that you may forget you’re working on the web.
Numbers for iCloud
Numbers for iCloud makes it easy to bring simplicity, clarity, and even beauty to your spreadsheets in your browser on Mac or PC. With prebuilt functions, tables, and formulas, you can organize and analyze just about anything. Need to work with
Microsoft Excel files? Just drag them in and start editing.Keynote for iCloud
Keynote for iCloud gives you the flexibility to put together great presentations, and even present them, directly in your browser. With incredible transitions and slide animations, Keynote brings presentations to life on Mac or PC. You can even import and edit Microsoft PowerPoint files.
More features coming soon.
iWork for iCloud is in beta. Future features and enhancements to the service will include:
- Sending a link to a document
- Version history
- Chart editing
- Table editing in Pages and Keynote
- Presenter notes in Keynote
- Support for additional browsers
- Printing
The new service directly challenges services like Google Docs/Google Drive and Micrsoft’s Office 365. The service is designed for and works best on Apple’s own Safari browser, but will also be available for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Google Chrome as well. Apple is expected to launch a developer beta of iWork for iCloud in the very immediate future, and a public beta will launch sometime this fall.
To check out all of our WWDC coverage, head on over to our official WWDC Summary!
