The iPad isn't just a big toy, dig? Yes, it's an amazing e-reader and rocks for watching videos, but it's very possible to get some work done with the iPad too. Apple's iWork productivity suite has been redesigned for the iPad, with Keynote, Pages, and Numbers available in the App Store for $9.99 each. These apps let you create documents that can be synced to your Macs and shared via iWork.com, although if you're familiar with the Mac versions of these apps, there are constraints you're bound to hit quickly.
Keynote comes with 12 themes, including commonly used choices like Black, White, Parchment, and Modern Portfolio, along with others that are variations on themes included with iWork for the Mac. Not as many slide masters are included and some capabilities have been excised too. You'll notice fewer transition choices, for example, and perhaps more seriously, an absence of presenter notes--a function we use extensively in the Mac version of Keynote.
Keynote lets you add photos, transitions, and animated objects to your presentations.
However, if you're using the $29 iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter to connect the iPad to a TV, monitor, or projector, you can screen your presentation on a larger screen while controlling the slide playback, and even tap and hold on the iPad's screen for a laser pointer effect over the slides.
Keynote on the iPad makes it possible to create a serviceable Keynote presentation complete with slide-to-slide transitions, text effects, and animations. Edge guides can be turned on and off, along with slide numbers. Spell checking is also included. And of all the iWork iPad apps, Keynote is the only one that forces you to work in landscape orientation.
Like Keynote, Pages includes a subset of the same sort of templates you get with its Mac counterpart--16 altogether, including letters, projects, resumes, and some page layout offerings like a poster, party invite, and more. A toolbar and style ruler appear when the iPad is in Portrait mode; you can use this to adjust paragraph and character styles, text alignment, tabs, pages and column breaks, custom fonts and colors, or to activate features like spell checking.
When you're composing a word processing document, Pages is easiest
to use in Landscape mode, though it may take some retraining for you to
keep your palms or wrists off the iPad's glass. If you get lazy with
the vast expanse of Apple laptop wrist areas, any incidental contact on
the screen can result in a spelling error or worse. It's also worth
noting that Pages will zoom moderately when you switch from Portrait to
Landscape--it can be disconcerting to see your text grow larger after
you've set specific font or paragraph styles in Portrait mode.
Pages is solid, especially with a Bluetooth keyboard for faster typing.
Look up words right within pages to make sure you're using cromulent language.
Numbers has been similarly scaled down to be approachable and usable on the iPad without causing too much confusion or consternation. You can zoom in and out of spreadsheets by pinching; create charts instantly by selecting the type you want to use and then just selecting the cells you want to chart and dragging and dropping them into place; and rotate between landscape and portrait modes to get the best view.
Numbers includes more than 250 mathematical functions, in all the same categories as the Mac version of Numbers--chronological, engineering, logical and numeric, statistical, trigonometric, and more--and you can create your own formula based on those functions. If you haven't invested in FileMaker's Bento app, you can also create simple input forms using Pages--helpful for taking inventory, counting attendance, or performing various other tasks where you have to enumerate or categorize based on specific input criteria.
Numbers makes it a snap to graph your data.
All of the iWork iPad apps enable you to import and export pretty easily. A new File Sharing pane appears in the Apps menu of iTunes on your Mac when your iPad is tethered. This allows you to transfer documents between your Mac and the iWork apps you've installed on your iPad. You can also send your iPad iWork apps to iWork.com, to share with others. And iWork for iPad lets you import Microsoft Office docs, too.
One thing that ultimately hampers the iWork iPad apps' functionality, however, is not a limitation of the apps but rather of the iPad itself--no built-in printing functionality. Third-party apps do allow the iPad to print, but after spending almost $30 to get iWork, we resent being nickeled and dimed to gain what ought to be core functionality. Sure, I can publish to iWork.com or sync to my Mac and then print, but it's an extra step that requires an entirely separate device--much less elegant than we've come to expect and demand from Apple products.
iWork will go a long way to making you more productive with the iPad, though it's unlikely to entirely replace its Mac equivalent. Some scaled-back features and the absence of built-in printing are the biggest limitations of the iWork apps, but on a whole, you're getting a tremendous value for $29.97.
Keynote
COMPANY: Apple
CONTACT: www.apple.com
PRICE: $9.99
Pages
COMPANY: Apple
CONTACT: www.apple.com
PRICE: $9.99
Numbers
COMPANY: Apple
CONTACT: www.apple.com
PRICE: $9.99
solofx7
April 11, 2010 at 6:24pm
I am still very confused with the way that people rip the iPad and its apps.
Clearly this is a portable device, not a full laptop or a laptop or even desktop replacement.
It is meant for quick mobile computing.
I have a desktop for full computing.
I think that the reviews are spot-on, if not a bit low given what they can do and how polished they are.
I have created tremendous docs with these apps and love each one.
charles61
April 10, 2010 at 8:51am
I hope this review does not appear in Mac|Life. It is very apparent that the reviewer of iWorks did not actually use iWorks to do any work. Pages and Keynote are stripped versions of their counterparts on the Mac. At best, they deserve an average rating. In addition to the shortcomings mentioned in previous comments above, you cannot create headers or rooters for pages after page one! In this current version of Page for the iPad, you MUST create a header or footer on the first page for it to appear on subsequent pages. This is not good if you have a ttle page. This is a very basic feature of any word processor.
Also, there are several basic fonts missing from Pages. As noted above, any Pages documents imported from the Mac loses some formatting. I lost headers and footers importing into Pages. I also found that colums with that words underlined had the underlining show up between columns. I ran into this before when importing AppleWorks and Word documents into Pages on the Mac. While I like iWorks for the iPad, it is not ready to any serious work when you are using your iPad. I must add that I have yet use Numbers on the iPad. While I am avid user of Keynote on the Mac I have not Keynote on the iPad but several serious users of Keynote have reported that Keynote does a very poor job of importing and exporting Keynote files.
cubamark
April 10, 2010 at 8:16am
While you see printing as the Achille's Heel of the iPad, for those of us in education (supposedly one of the largest potential markets for this device), there are a couple of other things that are barriers to (early) adoption: in Keynote, significant changes (apart from the omission of Presenter Notes) are made to the document (such as the ungrouping of objects, disastrous on slides with complex builds) and in Pages, the iPad file format strips out things like multiple-section-headers and - unbelievably - footnotes!We are also not entirely sure what will happen with synched documents: If you synch a Keynote or Pages document to the iPad, modify it, and then synch it back to the Mac, will this modified version (with the aforementioned limitations) replace the versions on the Mac (which may originally have had footnotes, group builds, multiple-section-headers, who knows what else). How does one distinguish between originals and iPad-modified-versions?Apple's knowledge base document http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4066 indicates "During the import process, Keynote creates a copy of the imported document and retains the original." But provides no other information regarding the synching process' effect on the original and iPad-copy.
Loup407
April 10, 2010 at 8:20am
I have to take exception with your review. After switching my family and my business from PCs to Macs a few years ago; I've become an Apple loyalist ( to a fault, some might say). I saw the iPad as an opportunity to lighten the load while traveling as well as enhance small group presentations, of which we do many. We not only use iWork exclusively; but expose many businesses to iWork tools. Sadly the iPad version doesn't work well with many of the attributes of it's own "bigger" version. Embedded video is a staple of many business presentations and is a hallmark of our deliverables. We hire professional documentary filmmakers and editors in order to have high production values. When you move your deck onto your iPad; the video is stripped out. I have yet to discern how to get the video clips back in. Fonts and other style points are so limited, that any of our highly designed decks become unrecognizeable. Really, Apple? If this was an HP slate running windows, I'd almost expect this....but Apple? It's a huge disappointment.
Printing isn't that big of a deal, our business doesn't print much. Another major flaw is when you pull a Pages doc onto the iPad, much formatting as well as headers and footers get stripped out. And this is being positioned as a business tool? My plans to equip each employee with an iPad are permanently on hold; as the effort required to get any work done with this makes it not worth the effort. A final disappointment was the means used to bring an iWork file onto the iPad; it's tough to find and is clunky. My iPad is a great device for reading email in the airport or my kitchen. For work? Not so much. If you plan to buy iWork for your fifth grader to complete their homework; it would be great, other than the lack of printing. If you plan on using it for presentations or creating professional documents, I would wait until Apple either brings the functionality up to par, or waiting until a third-party does so. Until then, iWork is more like iWork Lite.
