Apple shows off iWork '09 and iWork.com

By Nate Lanxon on 06 January 2009, 6:00pm

If a whole new iLife '09 wasn't enough, maybe online document sharing will seal the deal. Apple today announced iWork.com -- a central location to share documents created in iWork on the Mac -- alongside a brand-new version of iWork itself.

The desktop iWork '09 suite contains new versions of Keynote, Pages and Numbers (Apple's answer to Microsoft's PowerPoint, Word and Excel). In them Apple has introduced a host of new features, from fresh 3D effects in presentations to true full-screen document editing in Pages. Plus you can now remotely control presentations with an Apple-produced iPhone app, available from the App Store in iTunes.

During a demonstration at MacWorld, Apple showed off the online counterpart of iWork -- iWork.com, which entered public beta today -- by uploading a document to the service. After inviting a colleague or friend to view the document online, the page can be commented on by multiple people right within the Web browser, or downloaded to be edited.

What you can't do is edit documents online, as seen in Google Docs. Perhaps this is something we can expect in the future, but for today collaborators will need to snag copies of your precious Pages documents from iWork.com, and tweak them on their own Macs.

iWork.com enters public beta today, while iWork simultaneously goes on sale for £69.