Apple Updates Keynote, Numbers, and Pages for iPad – Definitely Worth Getting!

If you ask anyone what their biggest complaint was about the iWork apps on the iPad (Keynote, Numbers, and Pages), for many it would be the lack of a simple way to interact with Microsoft Office files and a limited ability to get files on and off the iPad. With a new update to all three applications, those issues are fixed – as are many more!

MacRumors has a run-down of the features:

Keynote
– Export presentations to Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT) format.
– Copy presentations between Keynote and your MobileMe iDisk or a WebDAV service.
– Support for audio in builds when importing Keynote ’09 presentations.
– Ability to group and ungroup objects.
– Add animated builds to grouped objects.
– Lens Flare, Spin and Wipe build animations.
– Revolving Door, Swoosh and Wipe slide transition animations.

Numbers
– Export spreadsheets to Microsoft Excel (.XLS) format.
– Copy spreadsheets between Numbers and your MobileMe iDisk or a WebDAV service.
– Ability to group and ungroup objects.
– Open CSV files from Mail and other apps.

Pages
– Copy documents between Pages and your MobileMe iDisk or a WebDAV service.
– Option to display the word count for your document.
– Support for opening .txt files from Mail.
– Ability to group and ungroup objects.
– Import and export existing footnotes, endnotes, sections and tables of contents.
– Import and export Pages ’09 tables with image background fills in cells.

I took a bit of time and played around and found that each offered many improvements but still had plenty of room to be better:

• Pages – the added file format support is great, as are the online access options and things like word count. It isn’t new, but having the ONLY arrow-key support is also great! Wish there was DropBox support, and apparently there are some lingering PDF export issues.
• Numbers – I have always found Numbers ‘funky’ on the Mac, being a heavy Excel user. I like having much improved Excel supportI don’t like having to double-tap to just enter numbers in a sheet, and Numbers STILL doesn’t recognize the arrow keys on my keyboard dock!
• Keynote – I have only used this for on-device work, and import/export, and found it more polished than ever. However I have read that there is a lot of work still needed in the presentation mode.

I don’t want to get into a side-by-side comparison with other iPad office suites, but just to note that Documents to Go just added full keyboard support across all products – which makes the absence in Numbers even less excusable! QuickOffice – which looked competitive when it first arrived, now looks quaint compared to the others.

Are these worth buying? That depends on how much you use their Mac app equivalents. Like I said, I am an Excel user, so I prefer the Sheet to Go interface – but an iWork user should be quite at home. I would also have preferred broader online integration, but at least a move in that direction is welcome.

These iPad-only apps is still priced at $9.99 each. You can get more info on the iTunes App Store for Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

Source: MacRumors