Apple Updates iWork for iPad

Apple released updates to its iWork for iPad productivity apps earlier today. The new version added several significant features which improved the suite’s usability and in one instance, added compatibility with other office suites.

In version 1.2, Keynote finally has the ability to export presentations to the more common PowerPoint format. Pages have had the ability to export to the more common .doc format since the initial release but it’s taken Keynote and Numbers a while to be able to export to the file formats of their respective Microsoft Office counterparts. In adding these abilities, Apple also improved the importing speed of external files.

There are numerous changes and improvements to each app but the majority are commonly shared abilities such as grouping and ungrouping objects, opening text based or comma separated files from Mail and other apps, improved handling of hyperlinks, better text and font  handling, importing footnotes, headers, tables of contents in Pages, new effects and transitions in Keynote, and much much more.

One of the most significant new abilities however is the new option to import files from different sources. iWork 1.2 now supports transferring files to and from iDisk as well as WebDAV servers. Word count is also present in the new Pages update.

Looks like Apple is well on its way in making iWork a more compelling productivity collection.