Since the launch of iCloud, Apple has been hard at work updating their apps to work with their new cloud service: Photo Booth and Aperture were updated with Photo Stream support; Pages, Keynote, and Numbers brought cloud-based document editing and storage to iOS; OS X was quickly updated to support the service.
One major piece of Apple software has so far been entirely left out of the iCloud party so far, however: iWork for Mac. Apple hasn’t released a new version of their Mac productivity suite since 2009, leaving many to wonder what the company has in mind for their popular word processing, spreadsheet, and presentations apps.
Fortunately, it appears we may not have to wait long for an answer. MacTrast reader Mark Van Woert discovered hints in the latest update to OS X Mountain Lion Preview 3 suggesting that Apple is working on an updated version of iWork, which will finally bring full Documents in the Cloud support to the Mac.
I was able to confirm Mark’s observations in my own Mountain Lion install. After finding that the “All my Files” view in the Finder showed documents I had previously viewed that were stored only in iCloud, I attempted to open them. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to get me anywhere: Launching the files launched Terminal, which hit a dead end.
Attempting to copy those files from iCloud to the desktop, however, yielded a very interesting result: First, I received a message confirming that I actually wanted to move the files out of iCloud. After confirming, I attempted to open the files from the desktop, and received a very interesting alert stating that the document could not be “converted,” and required a newer version of iWork.
Considering that I was using the latest update to iWork ’09, that seems to be a clear reference that Apple is working on an iCloud-enabled update to iWork. It also seems to suggest that an updated release will probably be launched prior to or alongside OS X Mountain Lion this summer.
Thanks for sending this in, Mark!
