iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Sharing on iWork.com

On the very day that Apple released iWork ’09, the company announced the birth of a bouncing baby website to mark iWork’s latest generation: iWork.com is an online hub designed to help share your iWork documents with coworkers, friends, family, or anyone you care to invite. As this book went to press, iWork.com was still taking its first steps, available only as a free “beta” preview, complete with the inevitable glitches that accompany a new site in its testing phase. Even at this early stage, though, iWork.com is a precocious little helper, and the service shows promise. The following overview reflects the state of iWork.com during its first weeks. The service has very likely evolved since these words were written, but the fundamental concepts almost certainly remain the same. (The free price of the iWork.com beta probably has not, however. When Apple announced iWork.com, they also announced that the service would eventually be a paid service.)

Here’s the scoop. iWork.com provides an online space to share your Pages, Keynote, and Numbers documents privately with people you select. Think of it as an alternative for the email merry-go-round with which we’re all too familiar: You email a document to a group for feedback, and they respond by emailing their comments to you, or even to the entire group, attaching their own edited document for good measure. A flurry of electronic mail ensues, and you’re stuck trying to sort out who changed what and where. iWork.com ...