Apple Brings iWork to iPhones, But Problems Remain

Orchard apple tree Tues introduced a new version of its iWork suite of office applications, for the first time devising the productivity tools available on its Phone and iPod Touch devices as well A on the iPad.

Making the applications available atomic number 3 universal iOS apps means they'll comprise available to business users WHO rely on their iPhone, only have not yet moved into the tablet ma, or have not done so with the iPad. But do the iWork apps on the iPhone have what it takes for business?

I'd love to tell you some grand tale about how I sat drink down and wrote this blog base on my iPhone with the new Pages application. But that would be a lie. Disdain using an iPhone since short later on they arrived connected the grocery store in 2007, and despite Apple's marketing reassurances that with a little practice, using its on-screen keyboard is faster and more dead on target than even a physical keyboard, the iPhone is simply non a device meant to type protracted-var. documents.

And the keyboard, when deployed, covers up a well portion of the other half of the big trouble of victimization the productiveness suite on the iPhone–the diminutive blind. Patc using spot applications on the iPad with the keyboard taking up preciously real estate tooshie be frustrating, on the iPhone, IT's throw-the-unredeemed-thing-out-the-windowpane preventive.

Apple Brings iWork to iPhones, But Problems Remain

Pricing-wise, iWork comes in at the many overpriced remnant of the smartphone apps rooms, with each of its three applications coming in at $9.99. Aside agency of comparison, Quickoffice Pro costs sole $9.99 for the ability to handle word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents. Tack happening another $14.99 for the iPad-enabled version. Competition Documents to Go offers support for all three types of documents happening both the iPad and the iPhone at a $16.99 price point. But for many iPad owners, acquiring the iWork rooms up and running doesn't mean any additional price. Because the applications–repeated contenders on Apple's Top Prepaid Apps and Superlative Grossing Apps lists–are now comprehensive binaries, those who bought iWork for their iPads are free to use the applications on their iPhones, too. It's a nice little bit of value-add for the some lin iPad users who made Keynote, Numbers pool, and Pages among their foremost iPad app downloads.

Just about of the old gripes about iWork on the iPad even so apply in the iPhone version–most notably the fact that Apple still requires documents be converted to a copyrighted mobile data format earlier they can be opened on the iOS interlingual rendition of the suite. This requires documents exist imported and exported to and from the mobile device–which you can do through iTunes, or directly along the device for documents stored on MobileMe's iDisk cloud-based storage or some server that supports WebDAV. While this cognitive process is easy enough once you know how to coif it, information technology requires multiple, sometimes counterintuitive steps, and seems generally self-contradictory with both the Apple "it only whole caboodle" mantra, and the general concept of accessing documents in the cloud over.

There's not a lot of screen real estate left in Pages with the virtual keyboard deployed.

Nearly of these problems are non unequalled to iWork. They're crosswise the board problems in the way iOS handles documents. But many fractional-party applications, including Documents To Go and QuickOffice, bring i finding and inaugural your documents on cloud up-based services Package.net SugarSync and Dropbox much easier, while also supporting iDisk access. Hopefully Apple will improve iWork for iOS Hera as it rounds out its cloud strategy in the weeks to come.

But when it comes to feature-set and ease-of-use, the iWork apps are the optimum applications with which to edit business documents along the iPhone.

If that sounds the like I'm expression "Information technology's the best of a bad dole out," IT's because information technology is.

Same most of its smartphone-supported office software competitors, the iWork applications happening the iPhone are probably outdo in use to view Beaver State display documents. If you have a indorse iDevice you bum plane use the Keynote Remote application to manage a presentation being footrace from the prototypical device.

Use information technology in a pinch to update a presentation with the latest numbers or specifications, or to add an point or two to a list when you're on the go and get into't have access to your tab. But don't architectural plan on IT–or any other smartphone-based office suite–to do whatever kind of heavy lifting for your business.

Robert Dutt is a veteran Information technology journalist and blogger. He covers the North American nation IT technology solvent provider scene at ChannelBuzz.atomic number 20. You can also bump him on Twitter.