
Apple takes on Google and Microsoft with iWorks real-time collaboration - rl3
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/07/apple-takes-on-google-microsoft-with-iworks-real-time-collaboration/
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joezydeco
My kid's elementary school has recently shelved the iPads in favor of
Chromebooks.

Usable keyboard, multiple logins, gDocs collaboration, low replacement cost,
etc etc etc.

The fact that the iWorks collaboration was highlighted in an education talk
tells me a lot.

~~~
criddell
My kid's were issued Lenovo Thinkpads and the machines are total garbage. I
don't understand why they didn't go for Chromebooks.

~~~
pearjuice
You rather have a sub 300$ device than a premium above 1000$ product? I know
the Thinkpad brand is being abused with Ideapads and their similarity but to
say Chromebooks are better is a lie.

~~~
criddell
The Thinkpad's are $400 devices (11e is the model), and they are indeed junk.
The battery lasts around 3-4 hours which means kids have to find an outlet to
work. The charging circuit makes an intermittent high pitched whine that many
kids are complaining about (I can't hear it). When my daughter's is plugged
in, the time until charged is always "UNKNOWN". Apparently, that's a common
problem.

There have been issues with the touchpad as well, although my daughter's has
been fine.

So, yes I wish they used Chromebooks. We could at least just buy a new one,
log in, and have everything there ready to go.

~~~
jcrawfordor
The 11e is quite simply not a ThinkPad.

One of the biggest problems with Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's laptop division
is their constant dilution of the ThinkPad name. Initially, in the first few
years after the acquisition, Lenovo introduced a line of budget devices under
the 'E' series and these were _not_ marked with the ThinkPad identity because
they were of significantly poorer construction and did not come with the same
warranty and service options. In the years since, though, they've started
slapping the ThinkPad name on these and a number of new low-cost product
lines.

In practice, it's only really a ThinkPad if them model number starts with a T,
W, or X. Unfortunately Lenovo itself is working hard to eliminate this
distinction, positioning ThinkPad as another Dell or HP instead of as a high-
end enterprise and luxury product line.

~~~
criddell
The 11e is indeed a ThinkPad. You might not think it's deserving of the name,
but that's where ThinkPad is these days.

I've had a bunch of ThinkPads over the years and two are still in use.

I have a T520 that I now use basically as a terminal. It's a very creaky,
heavy, machine that never gave me more than about 3 hours of battery, and the
keyboard was terrible. But it sits there and keeps working (I use an external
keyboard, monitor, and mouse).

I also have a ThinkPad Yoga 12.5. I really like the keyboard, but again the
battery life isn't weak (4 hours). I occasionally think about getting
something a little bigger, but the small size is pretty nice for traveling.

~~~
pawadu
I don't think Lenovo has ever had a laptop with good battery life, outside RT
Yoga 11 (12 hours?) and Yoga 2 Pro (9 hours).

You buy thinkpad for the great keyboard the red-dot-whatsitsname-thingy. And
the fact that it can stop bullets. But not for the battery life.

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gumby
I don't really understand the point of iWork. I did back when Apple was
worried that MS would not maintain Office on the Mac, and when Office didn't
run on iOS. But since those cases aren't true, it's a lot of engineering
expenditure for a feature that will not cause someone to buy a Mac, iPhone or
iPad. Even now they are still toys even less capable than the clumsy google
docs apps.

Any ideas as to why this is worth Apple's time?

(This isn't an anti-Apple rant: I am a heavy user of their hardware).

~~~
comex
In addition to the other points that have been raised - Office is expensive!
True, Apple's hardware also tends to be pretty expensive, but when you can buy
a new iPad for $400 (or MacBook for $900) that'll last several years, an extra
$50-$100 per year for Office 365 is a significant addition. Even on more
expensive hardware, that's likely the most expensive _software_ purchase most
users will ever make... which means that rational or no, some users will shy
away from it... and they'd be stuck without an office suite. In comparison,
iWork used to cost ($80 back in the days of iWork '09, later $5-10 per app for
the rewrites) but has been free for a while now.

Google Docs is free, but as a browser-based interface it's slow and nowhere
near the kind of native experience Apple likes to promote; it requires an
internet connection on anything but Chrome; it will never be a poster child
for the latest macOS features like trackpad-pinch-to-zoom or Versions or the
share sheet or whatever. That's on the desktop; on iOS, Google has a set of
native apps but they're quite feature-limited.

Also, both Word and Google Docs are owned by companies that directly compete
with Apple, and the apps promote the respective company's ecosystem (e.g. for
storage, they push you to OneDrive and Google Drive respectively rather than
iCloud). For better or worse, Apple wants to control the whole experience and
make it all seamless. Not to mention that Apple probably wants to avoid
situations where in the future it could be held hostage to some extent by the
owner of a 'must-have' app for its platform.

There are less popular alternatives, but they all have their own problems.

Personally, I neither need to open people's Word documents nor have
particularly strenuous requirements for a word processor or spreadsheet (or
presentation software, but I'm pretty sure Keynote has some fairly decent
pluses compared to PowerPoint anyway). So I am quite satisfied by iWork.

~~~
cstejerean
LibreOffice on the other hand is free and can actually be a replacement for
Excel. I wish Numbers would be a reasonable alternative but it's missing all
of the features that actually make Excel useful.

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pmontra
Does it work on the web even for the people that don't own anything Apple,
maybe only an iTunes account? Because if it's not interoperable with non Apple
devices and OSes it's going to stay small. Think of Google Docs working only
on Android and Chromebooks.

~~~
galad87
iWork on the web already had real-time collaboration, the Mac and iOS version
didn't.

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sidcool
More like catches up. No small achievement, but it was about time.

~~~
avdempsey
Is realtime collaboration offered in any competing desktop apps? On the Mac at
least there is none in Office.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Is realtime collaboration offered in any competing desktop apps?

Office 2016 does have realtime collaboration in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and
OneNote, in both the desktop and online apps.

~~~
tkubacki
Desktop office is not real time - it's synced and since office web sucks
compared to gDocs - gDocs win new markets.

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jesseendahl
It's kind of crazy to me that TechCrunch misspelled the product name in both
the headline and body of the story and no one has noticed. It's iWork
(singular), not iWorks:
[http://www.apple.com/iwork/](http://www.apple.com/iwork/)

Edit: Looks like they fixed it.

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drivingmenuts
This should have been introduced to the iWorks suite a long time ago. They've
lost whatever lead they had by ignoring iWorks for the past decade or more.

~~~
ktRolster
It should be emphasized that they've ignored iWorks for a long time.....it's
hard to trust that it won't regress again after the renewed emphasis.

If they had spent the last decade making iWorks a replacement for Office
(making it handle Excel, for example), they would be in a really good place
right now. Instead, it's hard to take them seriously.

~~~
20yrs_no_equity
You're being silly. They have spent the past decade making iWorks better, and
in fact, the whole app was revamped from the ground up about 2 years ago, to
bring perfect compatibility across platforms from mac to ios.

It's a far better application than anything Microsoft or Google is giving.
Google's only run in the browser, and poorly compared to Apple's browser
choice, and Microsofts is expensive, buggy and while it has immense numbers of
features it has terrible UI.

~~~
pawadu
> It's a far better application than anything Microsoft or Google is giving.
> Google's only run in the browser, and poorly compared to Apple's browser
> choice, and Microsofts is expensive, buggy and while it has immense numbers
> of features it has terrible UI.

None of the points you made are true. Granted things like UI can be very
objective, but how someone can with a straight face say Excel is uglier than
Numbers (have you seen those awful randomly colored icons?) is beyond me.

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nashashmi
Microsoft's implementation of collaborative work is completely moot for the at
home user.

------
based2
alt: oss collaborative online tools:
[https://framalab.org/](https://framalab.org/)

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gchokov
It's about time. Office 365 collaboration just sucks!

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baldfat
How is this the first female presenter at an Apple Event?

"On stage, Susan Prescott — Apple’s vice president of product management and
the first female presenter at Apple’s event"

~~~
helloworld
Maybe because 16 of the 19 top Apple executives are white men. (Women lead
retail, HR, and public policy.)

[http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/](http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/)

Aren't there sufficiently talented women -- and also people of Hispanic and
Asian ancestry -- who could serve as leaders and role models at Apple?

~~~
rarepostinlurkr
No, it's because it's not even decent journalism. Apple had multiple
presenters at WWDC Keynote that happened to also be female.

They also had some of the same set on stage the prior year.

~~~
baldfat
WWDC is not a Apple Release Presentation. So not poor journalism.

