Apple takes on Google and Microsoft with iWorks real-time collaboration

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/07/apple-takes-on-google-microsoft-with-iworks-real-time-collaboration/

by rl3 • 10 years ago

104 92 10 years ago

techcrunch.com

sidcool2• 10 years ago

More like catches up. No small achievement, but it was about time.

avdempsey• 10 years ago

Is realtime collaboration offered in any competing desktop apps? On the Mac at least there is none in Office.

stuffedBelly• 10 years ago

MS's OneNote has real-time collab capability.

dragonwriter• 10 years ago

Is realtime collaboration offered in any competing desktop apps?

Office 2016 does have realtime collaboration in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, in both the desktop and online apps.

IMcD23• 10 years ago

Office 2016 has real-time collaboration on the Mac, and has for quite some time.

Source: I work on Office for Mac at Microsoft.

BFatts2• 10 years ago

It's honestly a game of innovate or catch up. It's not like Apple is unique in this...

sidcool2• 10 years ago

Exactly! And yet they make that face like this is the first time anyone has thought about it. I know it's for the marketing and RDF, but still. Collaborative editing was solved by Google Wave.

baldfat2• 10 years ago

How is this the first female presenter at an Apple Event?

"On stage, Susan Prescott — Apple’s vice president of product management and the first female presenter at Apple’s event"

jhugg• 10 years ago

The first today, not ever?

kylec• 10 years ago

She's been onstage before

helloworld2• 10 years ago

Maybe because 16 of the 19 top Apple executives are white men. (Women lead retail, HR, and public policy.)

http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/

Aren't there sufficiently talented women -- and also people of Hispanic and Asian ancestry -- who could serve as leaders and role models at Apple?

DasIch2• 10 years ago

Well, what do you propose? Firing the executives and replacing them with women just to boost diversity?

venomsnake• 10 years ago

The lack of discrimination lawsuits towards apple means that they are probably fair in their promotions. And with the cash apple is having - there would be at least a couple of big settlements if there was discrimination at play.

rarepostinlurkr• 10 years ago

No, it's because it's not even decent journalism. Apple had multiple presenters at WWDC Keynote that happened to also be female.

They also had some of the same set on stage the prior year.

20yrs_no_equity3• 10 years ago

It's not. There was a black woman at WWDC who gave a great presentation just a few months ago. Apple has had female presenters at a large number of their events, as far back as the 2001 time frame.

Don't believe the BS Spin TechCrunch writes-- they are about as credible as the weekly world news.

joezydeco4• 10 years ago

My kid's elementary school has recently shelved the iPads in favor of Chromebooks.

Usable keyboard, multiple logins, gDocs collaboration, low replacement cost, etc etc etc.

The fact that the iWorks collaboration was highlighted in an education talk tells me a lot.

robterrell• 10 years ago

My kids' middle school just moved to iPads from Chromebooks, which I thought was weird. (The elementary school had some iPads, so my kids felt like they were moving up to adult-ish laptops when they moved to middle school.)

The iPads had iWorks pre-installed, so I imagine they'll be using this feature.

cududa• 10 years ago

iPads for education support multiuser login

joezydeco4• 10 years ago

As of iOS 9.3 (March 2016).

Too little too late. Our switch to chromebooks took place last year and the planning probably started a year or so before that.

I also don't see where iOS' "Shared iPad" feature lets you log in to any iPad anywhere like a Google Apps account would.

cheriot• 10 years ago

It's an old trope isn't it? How many families bought their first PC and subscribed to AOL so kids could look things up for their homework? But homework never required that. It's a great excuse to give parents that want to buy anyway.

pawadu7• 10 years ago

I am buying my kids a 3D headset and a 3D printer, they will need it for their education.

criddell6• 10 years ago

My kid's were issued Lenovo Thinkpads and the machines are total garbage. I don't understand why they didn't go for Chromebooks.

soperj• 10 years ago

What thinkpads are garbage?

echelon• 10 years ago

That seems off to me. Thinkpads are normally quite amazing machines. What model(s) were assigned?

pearjuice• 10 years ago

You rather have a sub 300$ device than a premium above 1000$ product? I know the Thinkpad brand is being abused with Ideapads and their similarity but to say Chromebooks are better is a lie.

karma_vaccum123• 10 years ago

Those Chromebooks in many cases get coupled with Google's classroom software. One doesn't imply the other, but lots of schools seem to be jumping on the integrated platform.

joezydeco4• 10 years ago

Yeah we have some heavy integration going on. Our district even has a full-time dedicated gApps administrator now.

tedmiston6• 10 years ago

Eh, having Chromebooks really does imply using Google Classroom.

If for no other reason, that Google Apps is the default office suite on Chromebooks, Google Apps for Education is free, and Google Classroom is included with that. Most schools don't have much in the way of a technology budget, so they win by default.

tedmiston6• 10 years ago

I know for a kindergarten classroom specifically, the amount of useful and quality software available on an iPad far exceeds what's available on a Chromebook (ie, as a web app).

Kits like Osmo are a great example of this.

https://www.playosmo.com/en/

joezydeco4• 10 years ago

Understood, but the topic here is iWork-vs-gDocs and the collaborative applications (word processing, presentations, spreadsheets) in an education setting.

iPads are great for certain purposes like the Osmo. They're a relative failure when it comes to typing up a book report or creating a group slide presentation.

pgodzin• 10 years ago

Even with all Android apps being available on Chromebook now?

jpkeisala• 10 years ago

My kids (10 and 7 years) have iPads in their school. They were bought for educational purposes but they are full of games. While I like the idea kids should learn to code. I really don't see any need for children that are not fluent on reading and writing to have any computers in the school.

beambot• 10 years ago

Why not educational games...?

pawadu7• 10 years ago

While I like the idea kids should learn to code.

If they had forced us to "learn to code" in kindergarten I would probably be a truck driver now.

This idea that every kid must learn to code is stupid and harmful.

pmontra• 10 years ago

Does it work on the web even for the people that don't own anything Apple, maybe only an iTunes account? Because if it's not interoperable with non Apple devices and OSes it's going to stay small. Think of Google Docs working only on Android and Chromebooks.

shadowfiend• 10 years ago

According to the keynote, yes. I imagine we'll know more once it's released, the date for which hasn't actually been communicated.

galad87• 10 years ago

iWork on the web already had real-time collaboration, the Mac and iOS version didn't.

oedenfield• 10 years ago

Even then are there compelling features (I didn't see the keynote) that make the web-based service superior to others?

drivingmenuts2• 10 years ago

This should have been introduced to the iWorks suite a long time ago. They've lost whatever lead they had by ignoring iWorks for the past decade or more.

BFatts2• 10 years ago

Of course. And if they come out with another new feature I'm sure you'll point out how it should have been in version 1. But getting v1.0 out the door is tough - trying to add every feature will just delay it indefinitely.

drivingmenuts2• 10 years ago

Version 1 came out a decade ago. They've had 10 years to get to version 2. Collaborative editing is so old hat by now it's not even a thing anymore.

ktRolster2• 10 years ago

It should be emphasized that they've ignored iWorks for a long time.....it's hard to trust that it won't regress again after the renewed emphasis.

If they had spent the last decade making iWorks a replacement for Office (making it handle Excel, for example), they would be in a really good place right now. Instead, it's hard to take them seriously.

lallysingh• 10 years ago

Of course they will. iWorks isn't in their primary wheelhouse, so it'll have an on-again off-again lifecycle.

20yrs_no_equity3• 10 years ago

You're being silly. They have spent the past decade making iWorks better, and in fact, the whole app was revamped from the ground up about 2 years ago, to bring perfect compatibility across platforms from mac to ios.

It's a far better application than anything Microsoft or Google is giving. Google's only run in the browser, and poorly compared to Apple's browser choice, and Microsofts is expensive, buggy and while it has immense numbers of features it has terrible UI.

gumby2• 10 years ago

I don't really understand the point of iWork. I did back when Apple was worried that MS would not maintain Office on the Mac, and when Office didn't run on iOS. But since those cases aren't true, it's a lot of engineering expenditure for a feature that will not cause someone to buy a Mac, iPhone or iPad. Even now they are still toys even less capable than the clumsy google docs apps.

Any ideas as to why this is worth Apple's time?

(This isn't an anti-Apple rant: I am a heavy user of their hardware).

splatcollision• 10 years ago

Numbers, for example, is surprisingly capable & way nicer to use than Excel or Google Docs for a home user.

gumby2• 10 years ago

I tried to go iWork only for a while and numbers barely made it for me. It had too small a level of functionality and in exchange was more complicated than it needed to be to get a small amount out. I found Soulver (a re-imagining of the calculator interface) was both simpler and more powerful for straightforward calculations -- by the time it tops out, Numbers has probably topped out.

But the home point is a good one: Numbers was great for making up a weekly chores sheet for the kid, easily decorated with fun photos and such. Still: does that justify Apple's investment?

landr0id• 10 years ago

I tried to use Numbers for some biology work when I was in school and found it frustratingly difficult to use. I'd type something in to a cell, it'd autocomplete, I'd cancel the autocompletion, but it still did not give me full control over the cell. There were other things that were frustrating and just flat out didn't make sense, like the way it would fill data automatically.

pattisapu• 10 years ago

Native feel, reliability, and responsiveness make the iWork apps pleasant to use, if you don't need the full feature set of what MS Office apps offer (e.g., making a "Table of Authorities" in a legal brief). Sometimes one can make better looking documents too.

josho• 10 years ago

Platform lock in.

You are right that Apple needed iWork for iOS/Mac because they couldn't depend on Microsoft. But, now that they've got iWork it's another tentpole Apple can use to keep consumers locked into their platform.

strange_quark• 10 years ago

Except that iWork is free on the web

tvararu• 10 years ago

Numbers, Sheets and Keynote are all free apps. Office for Mac is not.

Keynote for iOS also serves as a very reliable and easy to set up presentation remote.

marcus_holmes• 10 years ago

I switched from Keynote to Google Slides purely for the collaboration. I very much doubt I'll switch back.

If I send a non-Mac-user a Keynote presentation they'll import it to PowerPoint and send me back that, which I have to import, etc.

I find it interesting that web apps are actually better than desktop apps for this stuff. Even five years ago I would have questioned that ever happening.

chillacy• 10 years ago

I find Keynote in particular to be fantastic compared to PPT, especially back when Office 2010 was Microsoft's offering, and wasn't retina-ready. Keynote handles vector graphics well and does pretty crazy animations that PPT would choke on.

ebbv• 10 years ago

I doubt they spend that much on it and it gives SMB's an additional cost savings by going with Macs; if they don't NEED office the Apple iWork software can be good enough to serve their purposes.

20yrs_no_equity3• 10 years ago

I worked on Microsoft Works back when Apple Works was kicking their butt. Eventually that got cancelled in favor of just "Office".

Apple's works apps are vastly better than microsofts. Yes, Microsofts do have 30+ years of features shellacked on like so many layers of paint, but I've never needed to do something in Works that I haven't been able to do. And the hassle of dealing with the terrible UI, and terrible experience of microsoft products effectively renders their (presumed I don't really know at this point) additional features useless.

I regularly use Pages, Numbers and Keynote. All three are great and I value my macs that much more because they are there.

Recently I tried downloading LibreOffice because I wanted A visio like drawing program. I've been looking for one of these for years and they all suck- Omnigraffle, visio, etc.

MacDraw was perfect, it's exactly what I need.

Only drawback in Works is there's no Macdraw replacement. (eg: a sorta object oriented drawing program- the drawing capabilities of keynote are very close and so that's what I use.)

Google docs apps are far less capable than the Works apps. Calling them toys seems silly. Google's apps are clumsy yes, but they don't do much at all, nothing more than Works as far as the areas I care about... and they run in the browser poorly. Even Works apps work better in the browser.

comex2• 10 years ago

In addition to the other points that have been raised - Office is expensive! True, Apple's hardware also tends to be pretty expensive, but when you can buy a new iPad for $400 (or MacBook for $900) that'll last several years, an extra $50-$100 per year for Office 365 is a significant addition. Even on more expensive hardware, that's likely the most expensive software purchase most users will ever make... which means that rational or no, some users will shy away from it... and they'd be stuck without an office suite. In comparison, iWork used to cost ($80 back in the days of iWork '09, later $5-10 per app for the rewrites) but has been free for a while now.

Google Docs is free, but as a browser-based interface it's slow and nowhere near the kind of native experience Apple likes to promote; it requires an internet connection on anything but Chrome; it will never be a poster child for the latest macOS features like trackpad-pinch-to-zoom or Versions or the share sheet or whatever. That's on the desktop; on iOS, Google has a set of native apps but they're quite feature-limited.

Also, both Word and Google Docs are owned by companies that directly compete with Apple, and the apps promote the respective company's ecosystem (e.g. for storage, they push you to OneDrive and Google Drive respectively rather than iCloud). For better or worse, Apple wants to control the whole experience and make it all seamless. Not to mention that Apple probably wants to avoid situations where in the future it could be held hostage to some extent by the owner of a 'must-have' app for its platform.

There are less popular alternatives, but they all have their own problems.

Personally, I neither need to open people's Word documents nor have particularly strenuous requirements for a word processor or spreadsheet (or presentation software, but I'm pretty sure Keynote has some fairly decent pluses compared to PowerPoint anyway). So I am quite satisfied by iWork.

Nullabillity• 10 years ago

Versions

Interesting example, considering Drive had that way before Apple did.

nagarjun• 10 years ago

Office 365 is actually a pretty good deal!

cstejerean• 10 years ago

LibreOffice on the other hand is free and can actually be a replacement for Excel. I wish Numbers would be a reasonable alternative but it's missing all of the features that actually make Excel useful.

jesseendahl• 10 years ago

It's kind of crazy to me that TechCrunch misspelled the product name in both the headline and body of the story and no one has noticed. It's iWork (singular), not iWorks: http://www.apple.com/iwork/

Edit: Looks like they fixed it.

nashashmi• 10 years ago

Microsoft's implementation of collaborative work is completely moot for the at home user.

gchokov• 10 years ago

It's about time. Office 365 collaboration just sucks!

based2• 10 years ago

alt: oss collaborative online tools: https://framalab.org/

Apple takes on Google and Microsoft with iWorks real-time collaboration

Related Stories