Apple is taking its office suite to the cloud. The company is rolling out a developer preview of iWork for iCloud today, and plans to make its browser-based spreadsheet, text, and presentation apps available to all iCloud users later this year.
Basically, Apple is trying to take its existing office suite and turn it into a competitor for both Microsoft Office and Google Docs.
Apple’s been offering office apps for OS X and for iOS for years, and the company’s Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps are pretty well developed at this point. What’s kind of nifty here is that the browser-based versions work very much like the company’s desktop apps — but you can access the software using nearly any device with a supported web browser.
That includes Safari, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome, and the apps should work in Windows (and other operating systems) as well as OS X.
Like other online office suites, you can upload and edit Microsoft Office documents using iWork for iCloud.
via The Verge
I find all the web “office” products to be horrible to work with. I expect the same to be true of this.
What, no love for Firefox? Isn’t Safari and Firefox both built on webkit?
Firefox uses gecko. Safari uses webkit.
iCloud is the 2nd most insecure thing in the world, right next to anyone who works for apple. It’ll never be used in businesses or among people who need secure document storage/sharing.
Could this be the end of MS Office as the dominant player in this field? Maybe someday we will working with iWork files as the new standard.
“iwork files”.
Thankfully the cloud doesn’t necessarily needs more proprietary standards because you only need an email and browser to share files. No extra software installation needed, which is why msft office has had a monopoly for a long time.
but nowadays most don’t need msft office to share or collaborate with other people.