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Apple updates iWork, purchases weather app Dark Sky

Apple added trackpad and mouse support for the iWork suite on iPad on Wednesday and rolled out a raft of other enhancements for the productivity-driven apps across all devices.

Just as employees around the world get used to working from home, Apple has updated Pages, Numbers and Keynote with new features that improve collaboration, offline editing and syncing information.

The highlight for iPad owners running iPadOS 13.4 will be the ability to use a trackpad or mouse across the iWork suite, which will allow for finer controls and improve usability considerably.

Trackpad support for the device rolled out in early March and is compatible with the recently released Magic Trackpad 2 and Magic Mouse 2, in addition to any third-party accessories.

Collaboration has been enhanced across all three apps with the addition of an iCloud Driver for simple and fast sharing for group projects.

Numbers and Keynotes also get offline editing for the first time, so users will be able to edit and work on shared documents and upload amendments when they next access a Wi-Fi connection.

There is a wide range of other features that have been included in the latest update, which is available now on the App Store and is around 500Mb to 600Mb in size.

Apple also announced that it had purchased the popular weather forecasting app Dark Sky on Wednesday.

The app allows users to access “hyper-local” predictions for the weather on a minute-by-minute basis.

Prior to the acquisition, Dark Sky was available on iOS, Android, Wear OS and on the web, but Apple will now shut down those versions from early July.

Dark Sky creator Adam Grossman believes that the partnership is a net positive as it will allow the app to connect with “far more people”.

The app is available for $3.99/£3.99 on the App Store.

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About the author

Chris

I've been a passionate evangelist for Apple and the Macintosh throughout my working life, my first love was a Quadra 605 working with a small creative agency in the south of Norfolk UK in the mid 1990's, I later progressed to other roles in other Macintosh dominated industries, first as a Senior graphic designer at a small printing company and then a production manager at Guardian Media Group. As the publishing and printing sector wained I moved into Internet Marketing and in 2006 co-founded blurtit.com which grew to become one the top 200 visited sites in the US (according to Quantcast), at its peak receiving over 15 million visits per month. For the last ten years I have worked as an Affiliate and Consultant to many different business and start ups, my key skill set being online marketing, on page monetisation, landing page optimisation and traffic generation, if you would like to hire me or discuss your current project please reach out to me here.

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