iWork for iCloud Public Beta for Apple Users

By: Zain Nabi  |   August 25th, 2013   |   Apple, News

Apple has quietly launched iWork for iCloud public beta to everyone who has iCloud log-on credentials. Apple in June at its worldwide developer’s conference announced that they were lunching the suite – the web-based version of Pages, Numbers and Keynotes, which make up the iWork collectively.

 

Developers who are already registered with Apple software can immediately receive the access to the beta. Since then, Apple has started to send emailed invitations slowly to test beta to some of the members of the public.

 

iWork for iCloud preview was not available to all as Apple did not comment on the development, but Computerworld by using a number of different non-developer iCloud accounts can access the apps that did not receive any invitations from Apple before.

 

Currently beta supports three main browsers: Apple’s own Safari, Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Apple will soon expand its list to Mozilla’s Firefox and Opera Software’s Opera. According to most analysts iWork for iCloud will work only for iPhone, iPad and Mac owners, just like iCloud itself, as this is the most effective way to attract customers to buy the hardware. Another reason the company has cited for this is the tough competition between Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office Web Apps, which is also free.

 

On the flip side, some analysts have suggested that Apple needs to give away iWork for iCloud on iOS and OS X. On iOS these apps will be sold for $99.9 while OS X will be sold for $19.99. Apple is now planning to upgrade OS X’s iWork. If this news is correct, iOS and OS X users will soon start using the iWork for iCloud. The new model of iWork for iCloud is similar to that of Microsoft’s, which offers selected Office apps to the customers of iPhone and Android with a subscription of active Office 365.

 

According to Apple, the beta will be launching “this fall” – the final date and price of the software is still not confirmed by the company.   Anyone having iCloud account or owns an iOS device or OS X-powered Mac can easily access the Web-based versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote by entering their logging name and password into icloud.com.