William Gallagher
Apple has released new versions of its three iWork apps, with Numbers getting performance improvements while Pages and Keynote gain refined features.
Two months after releasing version 12 of its three productivity apps, Apple has released a 12.1 version that brings substantially greater additions. Initially released for iOS and iPadOS, the macOS Monterey versions are now also rolling out.
The Numbers update is the least significant. Apple says only that it gains "improved performance when inserting rows and columns in large tables."
Pages has three updates:
- Use mail merge to quickly create personalized letters, cards, and envelopes for multiple recipients
- Select from stylish new templates for event invitations and students certificates
- Export your Pages documents as TXT files
Of these, really only the first is significant. Pages users have previously had to create Automation workarounds to achieve mail merge features, for instance.
Whereas Pages has long been able to export what it calls Plain Text files, as opposed to RTF, Word or Pages. So it isn't clear what difference this makes.
Keynote's updates are clearer, however, as well as needing more explanation.
- Add subtle movement and visual interest to your presentation with dynamic backgrounds that move continuously as you transition from slide to slide;
- Select from new animated themes featuring dynamic backgrounds;
- Skip or unskip all slides in a collapsed group
The updated versions of all three apps on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS are now rolling out to users worldwide.
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
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12 Comments
Mail merge!?
It took them A DECADE to reinstate this?
It used to be that you could just drag a contact group directly from Address Book and drop it into an address field in any Pages or Numbers document, and - presto! - it would auto-generate a mailing to all of those recipients, including the proper salutation.
No, I'm not imagining this — they removed the feature (along with super easy trackpad-based resize and rotate) back when they feature-synced iOS and Mac versions of iWork.
So cool that they finally re-implement this essential functionality, years after it has almost entirely ceased to be useful, as paper mailing lists have long died for anything except weddings and funerals…
A huge improvement for Numbers would be basic scripting and allowing for the creation of custom functions. Creating long formulas with the cell editor is too error prone.