iLounge

By Jesse Hollington

Applications Editor, iLounge (Google+)
Published: Wednesday, October 12, 2011
News Category: Apple, iPad, iPhone, Apps + Games, iPod

Apple has released iOS 5 updates to its three iWork apps—Pages, Numbers and Keynote—adding support for sharing documents via iCloud. The latest versions allow users to automatically store presentations, spreadsheets and word procession documents in iCloud and automatically keep them up to date across all iOS devices. Documents can also be downloaded to a Mac or a PC from iCloud.com in either native iWork, PDF, or Microsoft Office compatible formats, and new compatible files can be uploaded to iCloud.com for automatic synchronization to iOS 5 devices.

Several other new features have also been added to each of the apps in addition to iCloud and iOS 5 support. Keynote 1.5 introduces the ability to stream presentations wirelessly to an Apple TV via AirPlay along with support for navigating slides, viewing presenter notes and using the virtual laser pointer while giving a presentation. Keynote also adds several new builds and transitions, advanced presentation controls including loops slideshows and autoplay and support for hyperlinks between slides.

Pages 1.5 adds voice dictation support for the iPhone 4S, the ability to create footnotes and endnotes in documents and character, paragraph and page counts. Numbers 1.5 improves formatting and data entry features adding sliders, steppers and pop-ups to simplify entering data and support for merging cells and hiding rows and columns. All three apps also improve compatibility with their iWork for Mac and Microsoft Office counterparts and include improved support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean language input.

Pages, Numbers and Keynote 1.5 are universal apps and require iOS 5.0 or later. Each is sold separately from the App Store for $10.