iWork updates for iOS and macOS deliver support for Siri Shortcuts, dark mode, more

Apple on Monday updated its iWork suite on iOS and macOS with several new enhancements and features designed for their latest operating systems, including support for Siri Shortcuts on iOS and dark mode on Mac.

On iOS, feature highlights include added support for Siri Shortcuts and Dynamic Type for adjusting font parameters, while Mac users benefit fromsupport for Mojave's new dark mode.

Here are the full release notes:

Pages 4.2 (iOS)

Animate your drawings and watch them come to life in a document or book.
When using Smart Annotation, lines connecting text to annotations in the side margins stretch and move with edits.
Annotations now anchor to table cells.
Easily save drawings to Photos or Files, or share them with others.
Support for Siri Shortcuts. Requires iOS 12.
Adjust the line spacing before and after a paragraph, and set the width for columns of text.
Pages now supports Dynamic Type.
Enhance your documents with a variety of new editable shapes.
Performance and stability improvements.

Keynote 4.2 (iOS)

Adjust text size in presenter notes and invert colors while presenting.
Easily save drawings to Photos or Files, or share them with others.
Support for Siri Shortcuts. Requires iOS 12.
Keynote now supports Dynamic Type.
Enhance your presentations with a variety of new editable shapes.
Performance and stability improvements.

Numbers 4.2 (iOS)

Use Smart Categories to quickly organize and summarize tables to gain new insights.
Group your data based on unique values and date ranges, including day of week, day, week, month, quarter, and year.
Instantly show count, subtotal, average, maximum, and minimum values for columns in each group.
Create charts of your summarized data.
Easily reorder categories to see your data in a different way.
Easily save drawings to Photos or Files, or share them with others.
Support for Siri Shortcuts. Requires iOS 12.
Numbers now supports Dynamic Type.
Enhance your spreadsheets with a variety of new editable shapes.
Performance and stability improvements.

Pages 7.2 (Mac)

Easily record, edit, and play audio right on a page.
Support for Dark Mode gives Pages a dramatic dark look. Toolbars and menus recede into the background so you can focus on your content. Requires macOS Mojave.
Support for Continuity Camera allows you to take a photo or scan a document with your iPhone and have it automatically appear in your document on your Mac. Requires macOS Mojave and iOS 12.
Enhance your documents with a variety of new editable shapes.
Performance and stability improvements.

Keynote 8.2 (Mac)

Support for Dark Mode gives Keynote a dramatic dark look. Toolbars and menus recede into the background so you can focus on your content. Requires macOS Mojave.
Support for Continuity Camera allows you to take a photo or scan a document with your iPhone and have it automatically appear in your presentation on your Mac. Requires macOS Mojave and iOS 12.
Easily record, edit, and play audio right on a slide.
Enhance your presentations with a variety of new editable shapes.
Performance and stability improvements.

Numbers 5.2 (Mac)

Use Smart Categories to quickly organize and summarize tables to gain new insights.
Group your data based on unique values and date ranges, including day of week, day, week, month, quarter, and year.
Instantly show count, subtotal, average, maximum, and minimum values for columns in each group.
Create charts of your summarized data.
Easily reorder categories to see your data in a different way.
Support for Dark Mode gives Numbers a dramatic dark look. Toolbars and menus recede into the background so you can focus on your content. Requires macOS Mojave.
Support for Continuity Camera allows you to take a photo or scan a document with your iPhone and have it automatically appear in your spreadsheet on your Mac. Requires macOS Mojave and iOS 12.
Easily record, edit, and play audio right in a spreadsheet.
Enhance your spreadsheets with a variety of new editable shapes.
Performance and stability improvements.

Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free downloads from the iOS App Store. The Mac App Store also offers free downloads of Pages, Numbers and Keynote for Mac users.

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4 Comments

AF_Hitt 144 comments · 7 Years

About 6 years ago

If only Pages, Keynote, and Numbers could format correctly when converted to Office documents. Alas, I have no confidence at work or in my Master’s that anything created in those programs will look correct when my boss or professor looks at it. If they could fix that one issue, I’d be done with Office for good, at least at home.

dewme 5738 comments · 10 Years

AF_Hitt said:

If only Pages, Keynote, and Numbers could format correctly when converted to Office documents. Alas, I have no confidence at work or in my Master’s that anything created in those programs will look correct when my boss or professor looks at it. If they could fix that one issue, I’d be done with Office for good, at least at home.

Is this an iWork issue or a MS Office issue? Microsoft Word is totally schizophrenic about formatting even when your entire document is created and edited entirely in Word. It's a borderline form of torture that Microsoft has been inflicting on its users for 30+ years. I'm not being glib about this, Microsoft Word is truly a mysterious and evil beast that will munge your best work into an indecipherable mess with the tiniest possible provocation. One little slip with a backspace delete and your entire document is rendered in 48 point Cambria. Become very familiar with Command-Z (or Control-Z on Windows).

If you're a dirt poor student LibreOffice is not a bad choice either.

libertyforall 1417 comments · 16 Years

On Mojave PB, but the updates are not showing up for download, but I can see them on the AppStore... odd.

Rayz2016 6957 comments · 8 Years

AF_Hitt said:

If only Pages, Keynote, and Numbers could format correctly when converted to Office documents. Alas, I have no confidence at work or in my Master’s that anything created in those programs will look correct when my boss or professor looks at it. If they could fix that one issue, I’d be done with Office for good, at least at home.

They can’t fix that issue. No one can. No word processor in existence can convert the OOXML format with absolute fidelity, and that is a deliberate strategy MS has adopted to protect the cash cow. Microsoft can’t even guarantee that documents will look exactly the same between versions on the Mac and the PC.

Why?

Well, here’s a clue:

What you’re looking at is the specification for the Office format. Even taking into account that anyone using it still has vast amounts of proprietary stuff to rebuild for embedding images and the like, the spec is about 7000 pages.

Frankly, I’m amazed at what Open Office and Pages have managed to get translation to work at all.

If you want to help your university, then get involved with a campaign to Support LibreOffice.