iWork Suite gets major updates alongside iOS 12

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September 17, 2017: iWork Suite gets major updates alongside iOS 12

Right on the heels of the launch of iOS 12, Apple also announced an update to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. It's more than just compatibility with the new operating system. Here's what's changing:

What's new in Pages

• 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.

What's new in Numbers

• 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.

What's new in Keynote

• 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.

In addition, iWork for macOS has received a big update even though Mojave isn't scheduled to launch until September 24. Guess they're getting ahead of things. Here are the changes:

What's new in Pages

• 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.

What's new in Numbers

• 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.

What's new in Keynote

• 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.

Out of all of the iWork apps, Pages seems to have received the most updates, with probably the most exciting being Smart Annotation (launched today in beta). With Smart Annotation, users can easily and effectively give, receive and incorporate feedback in a document with their Apple Pencil. Each mark, correction, and note stays dynamically anchored to the word or words it's added to, so even if you move the word word or phrase around within the work, the annotation follows. It's "not just a superficial layer" atop the piece — it's actually tethered to the elements within. That essentially means that when used in the classroom, teachers can mark up a student's paper in a way that they've never been able to before.

In addition, the Pages update is bringing digital book creation to the iPad. (That means no more iBooks Author, as it's being integrated directly into Pages.) Now, students and teachers can create interactive digital textbooks, travel books, short stories, and pretty much any other book projects their beautiful minds can conjure, then make their work even more immersive with galleries, captions, music, illustrations, and video. What's more, Pages gives users the ability to collaborate on all projects including books, so multiple students (or colleagues, or artists, or writers) can work on a masterpiece together in real time. Once a project is complete, you can share it directly to iBooks.

Finally, new Pages has been outfitted with what Apple calls Presenter Mode, which essentially allows iPad and iPhone users to turn their device into a virtual teleprompter for "distraction-free reading" — a feature that's great for sharing important excerpts in a classroom setting. According to Apple, the text can auto scroll at an adjustable speed, and users can customize text size, spacing, font, and background color so that whatever is being presented is as accessible as possible.

Susan Prescott, Apple's VP of Apps Product Marketing, the company's enthusiasm for the opportunities the changes to iWork provide in a statement:

iWork is a powerful suite of apps designed for iPhone, iPad and Mac that is used in classrooms around the world. With Apple Pencil support on iPad, the new Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps now let students bring a whole new level of creativity to their documents, spreadsheets and presentations, while the innovative new Smart Annotation feature gives students the ability to give, receive and incorporate feedback easier than ever before. Students can also use the built-in, real-time collaboration tools available in iWork to explore and learn together.

Updates to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are all available today, and will also come with every new iPad for no additional charge.

Thoughts? Questions?

Have any burning questions about the iWork suite that we didn't cover? Share them with us in the comments and we'll do our best to answer them for you.