When Apple introduced the original iPad in 2010, the company also unveiled its iWork and iLife suite of apps for the tablet. The apps were later made available for the iPhone. Apple initially offered the apps has a paid download and then made them free for every new iOS user.

As Apple’s iOS platform gained more and more popularity, it was turning out to be a lost opportunity for Microsoft to not offer its apps on the second most popular mobile platform. It’s clear that Microsoft initially must have struggled and hoped that Widows Mobile gains the same momentum as iOS or Android however, it hasn’t worked out like that as yet.

Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, the company launched Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint for iOS. The apps when launched required Office 365 subscription to edit and save files but remained free to view Office files. The company later removed the restriction of Office 365 subscription and made editing files a standard feature.

With the latest update to the suite of apps you can now save files to Apple’s iCloud Drive. Microsoft has added support for open, edit, and save work to iCloud in the “Places” section of each iOS app. iCloud Drive upload and save feature has been added in addition to existing cloud services such as DropBox and Microsoft OneDrive.

You can download the apps for free from the App Store: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Apple recently released updates for its suite of iWork applications, for both Mac and iOS. The company updated iWork to version 9.3 for compatibility with the iOS 1.7 updates. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote which were updated to version 1.7 added new features such as adding reflections to shapes and the ability to lock and unlock objects. Other features of Pages includes:

• Use Change Tracking to track changes to body text in a document
• Accept and reject individual changes as you review a document
• Import Pages and Microsoft Word documents with change tracking and continue to track changes to body text
• Preserve tracked changes in documents exported in Microsoft Word or Pages format
• Preserve calculations in tables when importing from and exporting to Pages for Mac
• Add reflections to shapes
• Lock and unlock objects

Apple also updated Numbers to version 1.7 to reflect some of the iOS changes on the Mac.

Numbers 1.7:

In this release Numbers for iOS is updated for improved compatibility with Microsoft Excel and Numbers for Mac.

• Hide and unhide rows and columns
• Import and export Numbers for Mac spreadsheets with filters, and turn filters on and off
• Preserve rich text in tables when importing and exporting
• Add reflections to shapes
• Lock and unlock objects

Keynote also received several new features, such as importing and exporting all Microsoft PowerPoint and Keynote for Mac slide sizes. Other features include:

• Import and export all Microsoft PowerPoint and Keynote for Mac slide sizes
• Import and export presentation themes, complete with master slides and preset styles
• Play back all Keynote action builds including Move, Rotate, Scale, and Opacity
• Add new slide transitions including Shimmer and Sparkle
• Preserve calculations in tables when importing from and exporting to Keynote for Mac
• Add reflections to shapes
• New print layouts include options to print with presenter notes, with builds, and without backgrounds
• Lock and unlock objects

The Mac version of the iWork applications can be downloaded via the Mac App Store, however, users that bought the boxed version of iWork can update via Software Update.

{Via MacRumors}

FileXChange Review: A great way to move files between your iPad and your computer, whatever flavor they might be.

Setting up FileXChange is super simple and the instructions are clear. You open the app on your iPad, and then open a browser on your computer, type in a numeric URL, and that’s it. You can now effortlessly move files to and from your iPad. You can even use your files right within the app without opening other apps, including documents and multimedia files.

FileXChange works with a variety of common file types including: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and most image, audio, and video formats. It also works between the iPad and Mac, Windows, Linux, and other iOS devices.

It doesn’t sync your files, but it could be used as a pass through to move files from one computer to another, say from a work and a home machine. The app could also be used as another possible location for backing up critical files. And it would be helpful getting files moved between one operating system to another. You can even share files with other people, as access to an account is not required.

This is a super simple, super powerful way to move and access files between your iPad and other devices.

Pros:

• Simple
• Let’s you access the files within the app
• Cross-platform

Cons:

• Have to be on the same local wifi network
• Syncing not included