Mikey Campbell
Reports are coming in saying Apple is rolling out iWork for iCloud Beta access to non-developers, suggesting the company is offering the online productivity suite to anyone with a valid Apple ID.
A number of AppleInsider readers have received email invitations from Apple to try out a "new iCloud feature" in iWork for iCloud, including non-developers. It is unknown at this time how many invites Apple is sending out, or how the participants are being selected.
Available for developers, including those with free dev accounts, since early July, iWork for iCloud is Apple's online productivity suite that offers up Pages, Numbers and Keynote in an experience optimized for the Web.
The service was first announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and works with Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer.
iWork for iCloud beta running in Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
A portion of the email sent by Apple's iWork Team:
We'll soon be introducing a new and exciting feature to iCloud. It's called iWork for iCloud and it's a suite of apps — pages, numbers, and keynote — that make it easy for anyone with an iCloud account create and edit great-looking documents, spreadsheets, and presentations right on the web.
We'd like to invite you to be one of the first to try it, so were giving you early access to the iWork for iCloud beta. All you have to do is sign in to iCloud on a Mac or a PC using the current version of Safari, Chrome, or Internet Explorer. Then just click on Pages, Numbers, or Keynote and you're off.
It appears that the service is nearly fully functional, with syncing and document imports intact. Apple has not set a release date for the final version of iWork for iCloud.
Wesley Hilliard
Marko Zivkovic
Oliver Haslam
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
42 Comments
I didn't receive any e-mail(s) from Apple, but i can access beta.icloud.com with my non-dev Apple ID. FYI. http://i.imgur.com/IdWHtdX.jpg
Also those are screenshots from Google Chrome not Internet Explorer.
Just log into icloud.com, the new web apps are already there.
I'm looking forward to giving this a go. If Apple can get the security right and an elegant balance of powerful features without compromising ease of use this could easily replace the Microsoft Office suite for a lot of corporate users. Office is really the only feather in their cap these days.
No invite, but I logged into iCloud and the iWork apps were there. Pages can import Word documents, and share as Word documents. Same with Numbers and Excel documents, and Keynote and Powerpoint documents! So basically everyone with an Apple ID has a free version of an excellent Word/Excel/Powerpoint compatible office suite in the cloud! This is NOT GOOD for Microsoft!