Apple Adds New Features, Languages to iPad iWork Apps

May

2010

Derek Walter, iPadNewsDaily Contributor
03:25 PM ET

Apple pushed out a major update yesterday to its iWork apps for the iPad. Pages, Numbers and Keynote are used for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, respectively. The suite of applications was re-designed by Apple for the iPad and is a core component of Apple’s effort to convince consumers the iPad could be used for productivity.

The biggest enhancement to Pages, Apple’s word processing app, is the addition of the toolbar and ruler in landscape mode. Previously, when typing in landscape, a user could not access any of these commands without turning the iPad back into portrait mode. With one tap a user can now change the font, text alignment, or add in a tab, line break, column break, or page break. The update also now scales a document to fit the screen when typing in landscape mode. However, the ruler and toolbar can be hidden in order to reserve more screen real estate for text.

Pages also include a more consistent formatting delivery when importing and exporting documents to Microsoft Word. There is also a fix for an issue with text wrapping around frames, and a resolution to an error with scrolling after inserting and playing a movie. Apple also includes an “enhanced” back/front slider in the Arrange panel.

Spreadsheet app Numbers also included some stability and formatting updates to make it play nicer with Microsoft Excel and the desktop version of Numbers ’09. Numbers should now have more consistent formatting while sharing the document between the different spreadsheet applications. Also, a fix is applied to resolve formulas not properly updating when dragging and dropping cells.

The presentation app Keynote sees the same update to the back/front slider in the Arrange panel along with reliability tweaks to presentations imported from Microsoft PowerPoint and Keynote ’09. Those who prefer to use Keynote in landscape mode may appreciate the fix that now allows access to all the cell color fills when in landscape mode. There is also a change that resolves chart font sizes not rendering properly when presentations are originally imported from PowerPoint.

All three apps now have support for French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish. The upgrades are free for those who already purchased a version of Pages, Numbers, or Keynote. Each app is priced at $9.99 in the App Store.