iWork for iPad

With Apple's iWork for iPad suite of office applications, you can do real work on your iPad. The tablet-based version of Apple's suite offers doesn't quite match the features and functions compared to the high-powered OS X version of iWork 09 ($79.00 direct), but the gap is closing. Version 1.5 brings iCloud backup, deeper Word compatibility, AirPlay Video Mirroring, Merge Cells, new slideshow builds and transitions and more to Apple's slate. This remedies some of the issues we had with the suite when it was first released. Each iWork app separately for $9.99?there's no option to buy all three as a suite.

When you start creating and using documents?and especially presentations?in the iPad's no-fuss file system, you'll wonder why you ever put up with the complexity and awkwardness that you take for granted on your desktop or laptop PC. Unlike every other widely-used operating system on the planet, the iPad doesn't make you save and search for files?for example, you simply open a word-processing document from a gallery of documents stored by the Pages word processor. You don't need to save files, because the app saves them for you?continuously. Quickoffice Pro HD ($19.99, 3.5 stars) and Smart Office ($9.99, 2.5 stars) would do well to duplicate this functionality. You never quit an app, because the operating system simply switches to another app when you choose the other app from the menu. When you return to an iWork app, the document you were working on before is still on screen, exactly as you left it. Meanwhile, the iPad's multitouch interface is refreshingly enjoyable to work with as you tap, pinch, and swipe documents

This doesn't mean that the iPad is the best of all possible work environments. When you start typing on the iPad's on-screen keyboard, which is too wide for easy use of your thumbs and a bit too narrow for quick touch-typing, you'll get nostalgic for every full-size keyboard you've ever used. If you're serious about using the iPad for work, pick up the Apple iPad Keyboard Dock ($69.00 direct).

Pages for iPad 1.5 (4 stars)
The iPad version of the Pages word processor works best if you're creating simple documents like letters or term papers. I created new documents by tapping the plus-sign icon at the foot of the screen, and selecting either a blank template or one of the 16 provided templates. The provided templates are too elaborate to be useful for any document that you'll want to create in the real-world, unless you want to present yourself as someone who does only what Apple tells you to do, but you might still want to experiment with one or two of the templates. In any case, however, I found it simple to clear out a lot of the graphic geegaws and replace the supplied photos with some of my own. I was able to easily create simple, elegant documents that didn't look like products of a cookie-cutter.

All the usual formatting options are easily available via a toolbar icon. Using an inspector-style multitabbed interface, I found it simple to specify a preselected font style and choose from left, right, centered, and full-justified paragraph alignment. I could arrange text in one to four columns, and set line spacing. And I could choose among basic bullet and number formats for lists. Buried at the foot of the text styles menu was an option that let me specify point size, color, and font for selected text, though there's no way to modify a document's style sheet without exporting it to the OS X version, changing the style sheet, and reimporting it to the iPad.

When your iPad is in portrait mode, the Pages window has a title bar and collapsible toolbar at the top. When you rotate the iPad into landscape mode, all this extra equipment disappears, and your document?and, if you're typing, the onscreen keyboard?appears on an otherwise blank screen. The collapsible toolbar is textured to look a wooden ruler with sliders for the margins and first-line indent settings. A wrench icon on the toolbar leads to options to turn spell-checking on and off and to open a menu that specifies margins, headers, and page numbering. This menu is designed to look like a hand-drawn blueprint; it lacked advanced options that you expect in a full-scale word-processor (for example, I couldn't find a way to number pages but omit a number from the first page). Still, the ability to add headers and footers is a very welcomed new feature.

If you want to get any serious work done in Pages, buy the Apple iPad Keyboard Dock and use a real keyboard instead of the onscreen one. You'll need a real keyboard if you want to navigate through a document in the traditional way, using the arrow keys. Without the real keyboard, the only way to move the typing cursor to the middle of a word?for example, so you can delete one letter?is to tap to put the insertion point between two words, or at the end of a word, and then drag the insertion point slowly through a magnifying-glass icon until you reach the location you want. It's awkward and kludgy and made me think I'd give almost anything for a set of arrow keys on the onscreen keyboard. Even with a real keyboard, I found I had to use the toolbar to insert a page break?a feature hidden unintuitively under a tab icon, where I only found it because someone else told me it was there.

A picture icon on the toolbar of all the iWork apps lets you create tables, charts and shapes, and also includes a tab labeled "Media," which displays thumbnail images from your photo library. You don't have all the high-tech options in OS X's iWork for formatting graphics, but you can use the multitouch interface to simply resize, rotate, and crop anything on the page.

Tapped hyperlinks automatically open within Safari when viewing a document in fullscreen mode. Somewhat unintuitively, I could use a hyperlink in non-fullscreen mode by pressing and holding the link until a pop-up menu gave me the option to open or copy the link. iWork now counts characters, paragraphs, and page counts; once you activate word count in settings, tapping the displayed word count opens a window that shows the number of characters, paragraphs, and pages.

Note: Pages running on the iPhone 4S lets users create and edit documents with their voices using Siri.?Next: Numbers for iPad 1.5, Keynote for iPad 1.5

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/4BdXXV03nBw/0,2817,2362477,00.asp

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