Following a short beta testing period, Apple's iCloud.com website has been updated to make its iWork suite of apps accessible to all users, even those without an Apple device.
As of today, anyone can sign up for an Apple ID to access Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for free. The software suite lets users create and edit text documents, presentations, and spreadsheets from their browsers. Signing up for a free Apple ID account entitles users to 1GB of complimentary iCloud storage to be used with the apps for storing documents.
Previously, access to Apple's iWork suite of apps was limited to users who owned an iOS device or a Mac, but with Apple's new web-only iCloud access, the company can draw new users to its platform and compete with more universal software offerings like Microsoft's Office Suite.
iCloud.com's web-only apps can be accessed from recent versions of Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. Free accounts are limited to 1GB of storage and users will need an iOS device or Mac to acquire more storage or access iCloud's full set of features.
I think I speak for most users when I say I would prefer to see active advancements in the development of Apple software - especially in areas that are actually important to users. Who out there asked for web versions of iWork? Nice, I guess… but there are a zillion things I'd prefer to see first. Too much of Apple's software is missing core features, there are a few bugs and most things go for long dry periods with no improvements.
Software is Apple's weakest area, especially professional software —which seems unacceptable for a technology company worth over $700 billion…
Hire more developers and designers: a few more dedicated JDI, enhancement and bug hunting teams would do Apple software wonders.
I think I speak for most users when I say I would prefer to see active advancements in the development of Apple software, rather than reductions of features, bugs, or long dry periods with no improvements. Software is Apple's weakest area, especially professional software —*which seems unacceptable for a technology company worth over $700 billion.
Hire more developer and bug hunting teams.
Count me as one who was disappointed with the last update (downgrade) to Keynote. I'm all for making Apple software available to everyone to bring more people into the fold but I wish there was an offline Pro version of Keynote for us in the professional presentation business. Keynote lost too many good features dumbing it down for the masses iCloud, although I don't know why we had to give up animations and transitions on master slides to put it on iCloud.
If only I could have the design capabilities of Keynote and the operating ease of ProPresenter, I would be in hog heaven!
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You speak of 1GB as if it were 1MB. It would take a lot of "office" documents to fill up 1GB. Apple wants to encourage users to "upgrade" to an Apple device in order to get more out of the suite. Easy decision for many consumers and businesses.
Not if you include embedded video on your slides...
... Software is Apple's weakest area, especially professional software —which seems unacceptable for a technology company worth over $700 billion…
Hire more developers and designers: a few more dedicated JDI, enhancement and bug hunting teams would do Apple software wonders.
It's important to pay attention to what _is_ actually happening. Apple has progressively been opening up public betas of its various offerings. This will improve the bug hunting process without hiring additional developers. The development tools are constantly being updated and improved upon, and this directly benefits Apple's own developers, not just third-parties. More cooks in the kitchen (ie. paid employees) isn't always the solution. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Apple is becoming too big for their own good, a problem that we know all too well can have a negative effect on companies. It's up to Tim and Co. to manage this properly and not become another Microsoft.
A year and a half ago, Pages was updated to version 5.0 and it dropped ONE much-needed feature for our team. I've made several attempts to voice this concern to Apple through various channels, but it's all fallen on deaf ears. That is a very frustrating experience. Some might say "just use the older version of Pages", but they fail to realize that it won't even launch on Yosemite! I did manage to find a hacked version online that would launch, however, but solving this problem took weeks of effort. Totally unnecessary. If Apple were only more responsive to customer feedback, and had a more responsive development workflow for its software, this "black eye" could've been avoided. That's my take.
This is a no-brainer for Apple, which is great. However, the 1GB of free storage seems stingy. Realizing this will only work with iCloud apps, how far will 1GB go for most standard users?
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Top Rated Comments
I think I speak for most users when I say I would prefer to see active advancements in the development of Apple software - especially in areas that are actually important to users. Who out there asked for web versions of iWork? Nice, I guess… but there are a zillion things I'd prefer to see first. Too much of Apple's software is missing core features, there are a few bugs and most things go for long dry periods with no improvements.
Software is Apple's weakest area, especially professional software —which seems unacceptable for a technology company worth over $700 billion…
Hire more developers and designers: a few more dedicated JDI, enhancement and bug hunting teams would do Apple software wonders.
Good for us :)
If only I could have the design capabilities of Keynote and the operating ease of ProPresenter, I would be in hog heaven!
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Not if you include embedded video on your slides...
A year and a half ago, Pages was updated to version 5.0 and it dropped ONE much-needed feature for our team. I've made several attempts to voice this concern to Apple through various channels, but it's all fallen on deaf ears. That is a very frustrating experience. Some might say "just use the older version of Pages", but they fail to realize that it won't even launch on Yosemite! I did manage to find a hacked version online that would launch, however, but solving this problem took weeks of effort. Totally unnecessary. If Apple were only more responsive to customer feedback, and had a more responsive development workflow for its software, this "black eye" could've been avoided. That's my take.
That's why I asked. You're a reasonable person, but according to the Joker it just takes one bad day to drive a man insane. ;)