News: New Apple Update Brings Collaboration Features to Pages, Keynote & Numbers Apps

With the hype surrounding the iPhone 8, Apple's announcement that it's developing driverless software, and the new iOS 11 beta out, it seems like the tech giant is constantly in the news. Today, Apple's continuing this streak with updates for its iWork app suite on iOS and macOS.

The Pages, Keynote, and Numbers apps for iOS are loaded with new features that provide users with more visuals while easing collaboration.

A major update to the iWork suite is the addition of a new shapes library showcasing over 500 professionally drawn shapes. In any of the three apps, users can select shapes depicting images of food, nature, and more, in addition to the basics shapes that were there before.

Another big feature is that all three apps now incorporate ways to join threaded conversations and reply to comments. For both updates, each person who posts in a thread or comment receives a unique color and author identification. These upgrades are intended to assist workplace collaboration and mirror features already present on iWork competitors like Google Drive.

Also, all three apps now give users the capability to set up auto-correction and text replacement settings. All you have to do is simply enter in corrections and replacements in advance, and then you won't have to go back in later to make each individual change.

There are additional improvements to each individual app as well. In Pages, users can now export documents as fixed layout ePub books, as well as link text boxes to make text flow easily from one place to another.

Both Keynote and Numbers are updated with more minimal changes. Keynote improved support for Hebrew and Arabic languages. Additionally, users can rearrange slides — as well as edit presenter notes — in Light Table View.

On Numbers, you now can insert a stock quote from the close of the previous market day. To do this, simply search for a company and insert the quote. Also, Numbers now provides increased support for print preview in collaborative spreadsheets.

These improvements aren't the only updates to the iWork apps suite that we've seen this year. In March, iWork was upgraded alongside the release of iOS 10.3, most notably providing users with the ability to unlock password-protected files with Touch ID. The suite was also made free to users on iOS and Mac in April, thus expanding its reach.

It appears that Apple is working hard to increase the popularity of the iWork apps, and I suspect that there will be more changes to come in the near future.

Stay tuned with us here at Gadget Hacks as we uncover and explore more details surrounding these new Apple updates. And as always, don't hesitate to let us know what you think in the comments below!

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