Why does Apple's iPad Pro website feature Office and not iWork?

[iGeek2014]

One thing about Pages (in particular) that irks me is when you select a font on the desktop version and open it on your iDevice.

Pops up a message about it not being installed and may display differently. Umm... How about making it available cross device Apple??

Another annoying feature... You can export to Word on Pages for OS X but not iOS.

So I'm not at all surprised Apple are showcasing Microsoft Office on their iPad Pro page.

 

[\-V-/]

The Mac app store is showing $20 each for Pages and Numbers. How is this free?

It's free when you buy a new Mac, as well other Apple software.

 

[jeremiah256]

Aha, ok...so I wan't imagining things at least. They did give it away at some point

I believe my Surface 3 also came with Office 365 for free.

 

[jbs-horn]

I believe my Surface 3 also came with Office 365 for free.

A one-year subscription was included in some bundle deals. Otherwise, the Surface 3 came with the same 30-day trial version every other copy of Windows comes with these days.

 

[sracer]

One thing about Pages (in particular) that irks me is when you select a font on the desktop version and open it on your iDevice.

Pops up a message about it not being installed and may display differently. Umm... How about making it available cross device Apple??

Another annoying feature... You can export to Word on Pages for OS X but not iOS.

So I'm not at all surprised Apple are showcasing Microsoft Office on their iPad Pro page.

Not the best solution but one that works well for me: AnyFont for iOS. It allows me to install on iOS the fonts that I use on OSX. When those fonts are installed, Pages on iOS displays my documents exactly as they appear on OSX. That is very helpful because I have some moderate-to-advanced formatting and with those fonts installed, the formatting is perfectly preserved.

 

[Aluminum213]

I doubt even Apple executives use iWork, it's that bad compared to office, why else would apple give Microsoft the stage at their own product reveals to introduce office

 

[Night Spring]

You can export to Word on Pages for OS X but not iOS.

On iOS, you can export to .docx, but not to .doc. But Microsoft Word for iOS doesn't let you save in .doc format, either.

 

[Michael Goff]

I wonder for some turn now if Apple is moving out of software.

I don't think they're moving out of it completely, but iWork was always about trying to get a better Office and/or Office at all. It served it's purpose. If Microsoft dropped iOS or macOS support, it'd probably get an update quickly.

 

[dysamoria]

Clearly Pages has been completely stripped of any usability. Look at the current reviews on the App Store. The iOS version is garbage anymore. If Apple hadn't trashed Pages '09, it would be competitive with MS Word. But 2013 happened and Apple is continuing its downward plunge in software quality. So they have to show MS Office as the "pro" applications...

 

[sracer]

Clearly Pages has been completely stripped of any usability. Look at the current reviews on the App Store. The iOS version is garbage anymore. If Apple hadn't trashed Pages '09, it would be competitive with MS Word. But 2013 happened and Apple is continuing its downward plunge in software quality. So they have to show MS Office as the "pro" applications...

Holy Thread Resurrection Batman!

Your hyperbole of "completely stripped of any usability" and "iOS version is garbage anymore" (what does that even mean?) does not reflect the reality of the situation. Feature for feature, Pages was NEVER competitive with MS Word. Not even close. Not even Pages '09.

Having said that, it's no surprise to the regulars here that I'm a big fan of iWork ('09 in particular, but even the latest version in general). I still use both versions on a daily basis and it is one of the things that keeps me in the Apple ecosystem. It can't do everything that MS Office can do, but what it does well it does far better than Office. In my opinion.

For working on documents from multiple places... smartphone, tablet, desktop, and cloud, iWork is better suited than MS Office... especially when using custom fonts and styles. But for documents with advanced structures, there's no substitute for the desktop version of MS Office.

 

[Adelphos33]

After decades of work, Microsoft Office on iOS and MacOs are pretty good. I actually think the iOS versions are better. Office on the iPad is one of my major use cases, so much that I switched from iCloud Drive to DropBox because Office works better with DropBox on iOS. My day job is based on Windows and Office, so I don't really have a choice to use iWork (or Google Docs). And frankly, I find both iWork and Google inferior to Office.

 

[SigEp265]

After decades of work, Microsoft Office on iOS and MacOs are pretty good. I actually think the iOS versions are better. Office on the iPad is one of my major use cases, so much that I switched from iCloud Drive to DropBox because Office works better with DropBox on iOS. My day job is based on Windows and Office, so I don't really have a choice to use iWork (or Google Docs). And frankly, I find both iWork and Google inferior to Office.

I feel the iOS MS apps work better then their Windows companions. (MS Word, OneDrive, OneNote)

 

[Osty]

Ah, this old chestnut!

I know this thread got necro-bumped but seriously, use the tool that works for your needs. Most people cling to Office because its the entrenched standard and that's what they know.

iWork is fine for basic-to-intermediate use. They load fast, look nice, have enough features and are free. FWIW, I actually find iWork much better at handling formatting and graphics. I even prefer the way Numbers handles cell formatting and data types over Excel.

For advanced or specialist use cases both Office and iWork fall way short -- like any general purpose toolkit.

iWork doesn't pretend to be more than it is. Office meanwhile tries to be all things whereas I prefer the approach of finding the right tool for the right job.

 

[dysamoria]

Holy Thread Resurrection Batman!

Your hyperbole of "completely stripped of any usability" and "iOS version is garbage anymore" (what does that even mean?) does not reflect the reality of the situation. Feature for feature, Pages was NEVER competitive with MS Word. Not even close. Not even Pages '09.

Having said that, it's no surprise to the regulars here that I'm a big fan of iWork ('09 in particular, but even the latest version in general). I still use both versions on a daily basis and it is one of the things that keeps me in the Apple ecosystem. It can't do everything that MS Office can do, but what it does well it does far better than Office. In my opinion.

For working on documents from multiple places... smartphone, tablet, desktop, and cloud, iWork is better suited than MS Office... especially when using custom fonts and styles. But for documents with advanced structures, there's no substitute for the desktop version of MS Office.

I would love to know what work you get done on the ios version of Pages. I've never had trouble doing advanced documents in Pages '09, but the ios version ... I can't even work with it. Every time i want to do something, that feature is missing (or hidden??). Just the other day i wanted to change the three section header and there's apparently no way to do so on the ios version of Pages. The Mac version i haven't opened much at all because of its inferiority to Pages '09. And yes, i think iWork was competitive with MS Office to some degree. It depends on what you needed to do with word processing. Luckily, it did everything i wanted, more comfortably than Office... but that was the '09 versions of everything. The new ones have so much stripped out of them and such an asinine GUI... i can't even get started with them. I'm surely not going to destroy my older documents by "upgrading" them to this new world of crippled software.

 

[Night Spring]

I would love to know what work you get done on the ios version of Pages. I've never had trouble doing advanced documents in Pages '09, but the ios version ... I can't even work with it. Every time i want to do something, that feature is missing (or hidden??). Just the other day i wanted to change the three section header and there's apparently no way to do so on the ios version of Pages.

I just use Pages to write. I don’t do much formatting. I just noticed this problem you mention with not being able to edit section headers a few days ago, only because I was editing a document someone else sent me. In documents I create, I hadn’t ever tried to use section headers.

I can understand how people who had been using the advanced features of iWorks ‘09 are upset they were taken away. But Pages still has some functionality as a simple word processor, and it's free, and it lets me switch working between my Mac and iPad seamlessly, opening the document exactly where I left off on the other device. I wouldn’t pay the subscription for Office — I don’t use it enough to justify that kind of price. So I’m grateful that a free alternative is available.

 

[sracer]

I would love to know what work you get done on the ios version of Pages. I've never had trouble doing advanced documents in Pages '09, but the ios version ... I can't even work with it. Every time i want to do something, that feature is missing (or hidden??). Just the other day i wanted to change the three section header and there's apparently no way to do so on the ios version of Pages. The Mac version i haven't opened much at all because of its inferiority to Pages '09. And yes, i think iWork was competitive with MS Office to some degree. It depends on what you needed to do with word processing. Luckily, it did everything i wanted, more comfortably than Office... but that was the '09 versions of everything. The new ones have so much stripped out of them and such an asinine GUI... i can't even get started with them. I'm surely not going to destroy my older documents by "upgrading" them to this new world of crippled software.

The greatest benefit to the latest version of iWork (even with its reduced feature set) is the ability to edit the same document on different Apple devices while perfectly preserving formatting. I generally start my documents on my iMac and throughout the course of the week may find myself using my Macbook Air, iPad Pro, iPad Mini 4, and on rare occasions my iPhone SE to edit those docs.

These documents have unconventional formating, custom fonts, and heavy use of character and paragraph styles (for consistency).

I completely agree with your frustration over missing features of iOS iWork (compared to the macOS version). For example, there is no direct way in iOS Pages to assign a character style to highlighted text. Only paragraph styles appear in the menu. My workaround is to have a single sample line in my template file that has the names of the character styles with that character style applied to that name. This is created in the macOS version of Pages. Then when editing the document in iOS Pages, I highlight the character style text, Cmd+Opt+C to copy the style, and then highlight the desired text and Cmd+Opt+P to paste that style.

But I can't do everything I need to with the latest version of iWork. For those situations where I need linked text boxes that span over pages (the current Pages can only do linked boxes on the same page) or pivot tables in Numbers, I'll go back to using iWork '09. Thankfully, iWork '09 still works perfectly on macOS Sierra.