Following a short beta testing period, Apple's iCloud.com website has been updated to make its iWork suite of apps accessible to all users, even those without an Apple device.
As of today, anyone can sign up for an Apple ID to access Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for free. The software suite lets users create and edit text documents, presentations, and spreadsheets from their browsers. Signing up for a free Apple ID account entitles users to 1GB of complimentary iCloud storage to be used with the apps for storing documents.
Previously, access to Apple's iWork suite of apps was limited to users who owned an iOS device or a Mac, but with Apple's new web-only iCloud access, the company can draw new users to its platform and compete with more universal software offerings like Microsoft's Office Suite.
iCloud.com's web-only apps can be accessed from recent versions of Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. Free accounts are limited to 1GB of storage and users will need an iOS device or Mac to acquire more storage or access iCloud's full set of features.
Thursday October 31, 2024 9:42 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well.
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We're officially in the month of Black Friday, which will take place on Friday, November 29 in 2024. As always, this will be the best time of the year to shop for great deals, including popular Apple products like AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment,...
Thursday October 31, 2024 7:06 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
The first Geekbench 6 benchmark results for the M4 Pro chip surfaced today. Impressively, the results that are available so far show that the highest-end M4 Pro chip is faster than the highest-end M2 Ultra chip in terms of peak multi-core CPU performance.
Here is a comparison of the results:
Mac mini with M4 Pro (14-core CPU): 22,094 multi-core score (average of 11 results)
Mac Studio...
Friday November 1, 2024 4:04 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
The iPhone SE 4 that's set to come out early next year is expected to debut Apple's first in-house 5G modem, according to Jeff Pu, an analyst who covers companies within Apple's supply chain.
In a research note this week with Hong Kong-based investment firm Haitong International Securities, Pu said Apple is expected to roll out its custom-made 5G modem starting with the next-generation...
Monday November 4, 2024 10:54 am PST by Juli Clover
With the second beta of iOS 18.2 that's available for developers today, Apple has further fleshed out the ChatGPT integration that's available with Siri. In the Settings app, there's now a section that shows the ChatGPT daily limit, and offers an option to upgrade to the paid ChatGPT Plus plan.
The beta includes an Advanced Capabilities section with a "Daily Limit" reading that shows up as...
Friday November 1, 2024 8:04 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple's new M4 Pro and M4 Max chips are impressively fast in terms of CPU performance, topping the M2 Ultra, but what about graphics performance?
The first Geekbench 6 results for GPU performance are now available for the M4 Pro and M4 Max, and the Metal scores reveal some impressive year-over-year gains. Based on the Metal scores that are available so far, the M4 Pro and M4 Max are up to...
Friday November 1, 2024 9:40 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
After a busy October in which Apple announced new Macs and Apple Intelligence launched, the calendar has now turned to November. Below, we outline what to expect from Apple this month as the slower-but-still-busy holiday season approaches.
After seeding the first betas of iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 with additional Apple Intelligence features last month, Apple will likely...
I think I speak for most users when I say I would prefer to see active advancements in the development of Apple software - especially in areas that are actually important to users. Who out there asked for web versions of iWork? Nice, I guess… but there are a zillion things I'd prefer to see first. Too much of Apple's software is missing core features, there are a few bugs and most things go for long dry periods with no improvements.
Software is Apple's weakest area, especially professional software —which seems unacceptable for a technology company worth over $700 billion…
Hire more developers and designers: a few more dedicated JDI, enhancement and bug hunting teams would do Apple software wonders.
I think I speak for most users when I say I would prefer to see active advancements in the development of Apple software, rather than reductions of features, bugs, or long dry periods with no improvements. Software is Apple's weakest area, especially professional software —*which seems unacceptable for a technology company worth over $700 billion.
Hire more developer and bug hunting teams.
Count me as one who was disappointed with the last update (downgrade) to Keynote. I'm all for making Apple software available to everyone to bring more people into the fold but I wish there was an offline Pro version of Keynote for us in the professional presentation business. Keynote lost too many good features dumbing it down for the masses iCloud, although I don't know why we had to give up animations and transitions on master slides to put it on iCloud.
If only I could have the design capabilities of Keynote and the operating ease of ProPresenter, I would be in hog heaven!
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You speak of 1GB as if it were 1MB. It would take a lot of "office" documents to fill up 1GB. Apple wants to encourage users to "upgrade" to an Apple device in order to get more out of the suite. Easy decision for many consumers and businesses.
Not if you include embedded video on your slides...
... Software is Apple's weakest area, especially professional software —which seems unacceptable for a technology company worth over $700 billion…
Hire more developers and designers: a few more dedicated JDI, enhancement and bug hunting teams would do Apple software wonders.
It's important to pay attention to what _is_ actually happening. Apple has progressively been opening up public betas of its various offerings. This will improve the bug hunting process without hiring additional developers. The development tools are constantly being updated and improved upon, and this directly benefits Apple's own developers, not just third-parties. More cooks in the kitchen (ie. paid employees) isn't always the solution. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Apple is becoming too big for their own good, a problem that we know all too well can have a negative effect on companies. It's up to Tim and Co. to manage this properly and not become another Microsoft.
A year and a half ago, Pages was updated to version 5.0 and it dropped ONE much-needed feature for our team. I've made several attempts to voice this concern to Apple through various channels, but it's all fallen on deaf ears. That is a very frustrating experience. Some might say "just use the older version of Pages", but they fail to realize that it won't even launch on Yosemite! I did manage to find a hacked version online that would launch, however, but solving this problem took weeks of effort. Totally unnecessary. If Apple were only more responsive to customer feedback, and had a more responsive development workflow for its software, this "black eye" could've been avoided. That's my take.
This is a no-brainer for Apple, which is great. However, the 1GB of free storage seems stingy. Realizing this will only work with iCloud apps, how far will 1GB go for most standard users?
