It’s been labelled as truly feeling like a native app experience, which would be my primary criticism when using Google Drive (and Google Presentation in particular); Apple have recently launched their new iWork suite of cloud based office apps and from the initial plaudits, it sounds great.
Much of the initial chatter on the social forums has been about iWork potentially going for free, in a much similar vein to Google Docs which I have to say, from my opinion, is the great thing about the Google range of cloud based tools.
If the cloud could have been a phenomenon earlier than it was and online office based software like Google Docs been introduced sooner (than 2012), it would have saved me a lot of time messing around with memory sticks and losing files on my computer, whilst at college. It goes without saying that I firmly believe, that sharing documents and working together on office applications, through the cloud, is what it was made for.
Which is why it is surprising that iWorks main flaw, from an initial consumer perspective, seems to be the lack of ability to collaborate in apps. Only one person can access a document at any one time.
But the apps themselves shine with a quality which has not been seen before in cloud based programs. So yet again in that race to be the best and attempt to outshine the competition, we are more than likely to see a big stir in the other two of the ‘big three’ technology companies (yes, I mean Google and Microsoft).
It will be interesting to see if Apple decide to charge for this latest iWorks release but in the meantime, you can try it for free (with an Apple ID) here.
