Apple updates Keynote, Pages and Numbers for remote work

Work gets brilliant upgrade

Apple has introduced updates to its free iWork suite (Keynote, Pages and Numbers) and I think they look really relevant to remote workers, with useful tools for remote collaboration and more. Keynote adds new tools for collaborative presenting; Pages makes it easier to work with documents on iPhone; and Numbers brings pivot tables to iPhone, iPad, and Mac, the company pointed out.

What Apple said

“Whether they are in the office, at school, or working remotely, users around the world love Keynote, Pages, and Numbers for their powerful features, ease of use, and seamless experience across iPhone, iPad, and Mac,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Today, we’re adding even more power and capability to these apps with new productivity and collaboration features that enable anyone to create more personal and compelling presentations, make working with documents on iPhone a breeze, and bring full-featured pivot tables to mobile for the first time.”

Key highlights

There are some key highlights to the improvements in this release:

• In Keynote, new tools make presentations more engaging because you can add a live camera view of the presenter directly in slides. They also become more collaborative with multi-presenter control.
• Pages makes it easier to edit documents on the go by automatically displaying text and images in a single-column flow optimized for iPhone.
• Numbers introduces pivot tables that bring powerful data analytics capabilities to iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Let’s look in a little more detail.

Keynote improvements

Keynote feels like the highlight here. I particularly like the new option that lets you use the front-facing camera on iPhone, iPad, and Mac to add live video directly to their presentations. It means that you can appear alongside the content in your slide, which enables you to easily stress points in lectures, how to videos and when making a presentation via a video conferencing app. Live video objects can be  resized or styled with masks, frames, drop shadows, and reflections for a more elegant look.

[Also read: How to use Apple’s clever Visual Look Up system in iOS 15]

It gets better – and I think this could be great – as Mac users can connect multiple external cameras and can even show the screen of a connected iPhone or iPad right on a slide for live, interactive demos. You can imagine this feature being used by the iOS software development team before it got to us.

A new multi-presenter option means multiple people can control a shared slideshow from their Apple kit, even when working remotely. Once a user is done with their slides, they can return control to the host or let another co-presenter take over to seamlessly continue the group presentation.

Pages gets better

Apple has put a lot of thought into Pages for iPhones. The company also claims, “People read Pages documents on iPhone more than any other device.”

It has made it better than before. Screen View automatically displays text, images, and other elements in a single-column, continuous flow optimized for the iPhone screen. Text is enlarged to improve readability, photos and drawings are sized to fit the display, and tables can be scrolled horizontally. Screen View is available for all word processing documents and doesn’t require any additional setup. You can still access all the edit tools and can switch off Screen View whenever you wish so you can adjust the page view.

Numbers adds it up

Numbers gains pivot tables. These let you quickly summarize, group, and rearrange data to identify and analyze patterns and trends. Apple has designed this feature to be quick and easy to use, manage and understand. Users can visualize their pivot tables with insightful charts, share pivot data with others while keeping the source data private, and even import or export pivot tables to and from Microsoft Excel.

Numbers is also the first app to bring full-featured pivot tables to mobile, with the same set of features across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, giving users access to this powerful data analytics tool wherever they work.

A new Radar chart type makes it easy to visually compare multiple variables with similarities shown as overlapping areas, allowing differences and outliers to really stand out. Filters let users find duplicate entries and unique values in their data, and also show or hide rows that match a specific value.

Translation is now built in

Another great platform feature has also been picked up on. Keynote, Pages, and Numbers all support the translation Apple has built-in across its systems. Users can select text and quickly see a translation, hear it read aloud, and instantly replace the selection with the translated text.

The updated Keynote, Pages, and Numbers are available to download today.

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