Pages 5.6, Numbers 3.6, and Keynote 6.6 for Mac
Apple has updated its trio of iWork apps for the Mac — Pages 5.6, Numbers 3.6, and Keynote 6.6 — with some hefty improvements. Collectively, the three productivity apps now support Split View in OS X 10.11 El Capitan, provide haptic feedback when you force-click an image using a Force Touch trackpad, add support for opening iWork ’08 and ’06 documents, enable you to preview documents on iOS and Android browsers, improve access to recently used fonts in the Fonts menu, add the capability to create table, chart, and shape styles from an image, and provide enhanced support for OpenType font
features such as small caps, contextual fractions, alternative glyphs, and more.
The three apps gain several VoiceOver enhancements, including the capability to add and review comments, plus edit chart data and chart elements. Pages also enables you to track changes using VoiceOver, while Keynote adds support for reading presenter notes during slideshows. The triumvirate also improve support for exporting to their Microsoft Office brethren (and Pages gets improved EPUB export); improve compatibility for charts, text overflows, and non-rectangular masks imported from Microsoft Office; and receive additional AppleScript options for PDF export.
Additionally, the iOS and iCloud versions of the productivity apps have been updated with many of the same features noted above (though 3D Touch replaces Force Touch for the iOS versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote). The updates for both OS X and iOS are free.
Speaking of iCloud, Michael Cohen (author of Take Control of Pages) was excited to find that Pages for iCloud now lets you view tracked changes in a document that has change tracking turned on. However, he was let down after realizing that it is truly view only. In fact, if a document has any tracked changes from Pages for Mac or iOS, Pages for iCloud won’t allow you to edit the document at all. ($19.99 new for Pages, 224 MB; $19.99 new for Numbers, 166 MB; $19.99 new for Keynote, 456 MB; all three require 10.10.4+)
Have they brought back text flow in Pages?
If you mean linked text boxes, no, that Pages feature has yet to be re-implemented.
And, yes, I'm disappointed, too.
compatible with iOS 8?
Yes, all three iOS apps are compatible with iOS 8.4 and later.
Thanks so much!
Can the iOS version of Numbers read, edit, and write .XLS files (note that is the older Excel extension)?
Pages is still crippled: no facing pages, can't print comments, no text-box linking, no non-contiguous selection of text, no mail merge, no inter-document hyperlinks, no bookmarks, find/replace crippled, footnotes kludgy (clicking the superscript takes you to the note, but clicking the footnote number doesn't take you back to the text--why not?) stupid implementation of word count--it hovers OVER the text,--and on and on. Avoid this misbegotten mess.
How can the richest company in the world (?) produce so little? It's infuriating. "Recently-used fonts in a menu..." They have balls to list that as an accomplishment. "Able to open old Pages documents" is not a feature. It's an embarrassment that should have been patched immediately.
Apple has no follow-through (bug-fix dedication) after the fanfare of a new software product wears off, e.g. iWeb. The old version of Pages was pretty cool. I can almost forgive a few back-steps when they try a big re-write, but years later and this is the update they provide? They can't even match their own 2008 feature set! Pathetic. MS Word is looking dependable, and I'm feeling it's a liability to use any Apple software for long-term needs. I'm going to convert my old Pages docs (which I must periodically edit) to Word now, while I still can.
(And who would trust them to support an "Apple car?" Once past warranty, good luck. My loyalty is now as disposable as Apple's products.)
@rk: my wife who is blind and uses VoiceOver with Pages can get back from footnotes just fine, but I can't manage it with the mouse! Endnotes, on the other hand, are still pretty well inaccessible with VoiceOver (despite the release note claiming improvements).
We both echo all your other comments… come on Apple! Get your finger out!
Can anyone tell me if they have moved the "print only selected slides" option. It seems to be have been removed in the latest version.
I'm not seeing it. Perhaps their thinking is that you'd set some slides to be skipped and thus not printed?