Apple has made their iWork beta available on the iCloud. It simply means that anyone with an Apple Id can login to iCloud and use the beta services. There’s no need of running Mac hardware. Apple’s new strategy will clearly cause a headache for Microsoft, a company which has been dominant in the market for softwares. Competition in the market among the giants are heating up.
Microsoft recently came up with a new outlook app for iOS 8. Till now, it has got mixed reviews. In my opinion, it’slower than Google’s Gmail. Some analysts have also claimed that it’s slower than the default mail app which are there on most phones. Microsoft also launched the Office suite for Android users. It’s free to use. This might be Apple’s answer to Microsoft’s recent steps.
I don’t own a Mac, however I do have an iPhone. So far, the iWork beta looks really good. You get 3 main different categories – Pages, Numbers and Keynotes. All of them are currently in beta mode.
Pages
The Pages probably has 70-80 kinds of templates which includes reports, letters, resumes, envelopes, business cards, flyers and posters, newsletters etc.
Each of them will have a specific template. You just need to get into them and modify the content and it’s good to go. It’s actually very easy.
Here’s how a business resume looks like.
You will have many templates available like these. You can select one and get right on it.
Numbers
The Numbers are very impressive. Here too, you will get a lot of templates which includes education and finance related templates. You can create graphical reports, present a detailed analysis, create calendar schedules and plan travels, do an break-even analysis etc.
Here’s a demo of how you can create a simple yet elegant invoice and send it to your clients.
Keynote
Keynotes are similar to Microsoft’s Powerpoint Presentations. You have templates available for almost everything. You can simply choose one template that you like and start building your presentation.
With the Apple’s iWork now available to Windows users, it would be interesting to see what would be Microsoft’s next strategy.
