Comments on: iWork.com, understanding Apple’s online office extension

By: MacMyDay

MacMyDay — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:46:29 +0000

iWork.com is a great start. But even at it’s simplest, which I’m in agreement that it doesn’t need to be a full bloated online app, it is flawed.

When comments are added to the online document, iWork, in my experience, doesn’t auto-notify the “contributors” nor “commenters”. This requires the user to manually notify the other commenters with additional comments. Even worse, there’s nothing in the online app that allows a simple “Notify Of Your Comments”, so to speak, option. So you’re relegated to manually opening your email or the original iWork document to send a new update.

Unless, I’m missing something.

Plus, I found myself going through my history and not sure how it happened, but I launched a URL and started adding comments. Though this time my comments were attributed to one of the other collaborators who I sent the document for review. That means that with that URL a commenter can comment under someone else’s name. There needs to be some level or security or simply verification that the commenter is indeed authorized and so that comments can be attributed correctly.

By: Saurav

Saurav — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:14:33 +0000

It provides so less functionality compared to what Office Live Workspace has been providing for years. iWork online is a paid service which will only “Display” the documents. On the other hand Google Docs & Office Live Workspace are free & they “Show as well Edit” the documents. Now that is true collaboration which Apple needs to provide.

If all I want it to show some friends a Presentation Slide & get the comments, then I can upload a document to my Office Live Workspace & share the document or the workspace. It even supports versions

By: Andy Bewernick

Andy Bewernick — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:21:30 +0000

@disapointed Apple has the talent to do it, in fact SproutCore is quite amazing. They just need to quit being so stubborn and pull from what other companies have found to be successful. They aren’t taking a risk with iWork.com.

By: Brent

Brent — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:27:37 +0000

I’ve tried, so many times, to move to Google Docs online, but just can’t. The app has everything required for a word processor, yet it can’t do everything.

Collaboration is also a big mess. How can you work on a document if everyone is editing it! We could never get any work done that way. Besides, every writeup has a particular tone to it, which speaks a lot about its author. If you mix it up, the whole things falls apart. iWork.com’s comments-only is the best feature they could have enabled. That way everyone can see and say what they want, but the document itself remains intact. I also like that you can download it in three different versions. Makes it so much simpler.

iWork.com is gonna rock, and I’m definitely going to be a subscriber. I just hope it get better integration with Mail, MobileMe, and the iPhone.

By: disapointed

disapointed — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:23:56 +0000

The reason it works perfectly is because it does so little. If Apple wants anyone to talk about iWork.com they need to add in a lot more features. Live editing has been proved by Google to be a very possible thing, with multiple authors collaborating. Apple just doesn’t have the talent to create web apps so they’ve done this half assed simple baby app and expecting people to pay for it. Well I’m not.

By: Leah Brencott

Leah Brencott — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:58:41 +0000

Interesting view of an underpowered web app. I guess it’s our fault building sand castles in the sky. I wonder how much Apple will price this at though and how well they integrate it with MobileMe.