Roughly five years ago, Apple released iWork '09. But at the time, a different Apple lived in a different world: (non-Web) iPhone apps had been introduced only six months earlier and all Macs except the woefully underpowered first-gen MacBook Air still had optical drives. Small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, and pro applications were real pro applications.
In the intermediate years, Apple updated the three iWork applications—Keynote, Pages, and Numbers—to support features such as the new document model (i.e., autosaving) in Lion and the HiDPI mode, which powers the retinavaganza that has pervaded the MacBook Pro line. Slimmed down versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers even came to iOS. But these were all smaller wrinkles. Long-standing issues and the most requested missing features haven't been addressed since the introduction of iWork '09.
Finally, Apple has released the update we've all been waiting for: iWork '13, Keynote 6.0, Pages 5.0, and Numbers 3.0. Apparently the band has split up. The iWork name is gone from Apple's website except for some small print at the bottom of a few pages and long-defunct pages promoting previous versions. It's not a total surprise, as the three apps have also been for sale individually ever since they came to the Mac and iOS app stores.
Creators of Mac, iPad, and iPhone productivity software. Proud to bring you OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, and OmniPlan. Select the PC or Mac tabs above to help you with the rest of the install process. If the Microsoft account or work or school account isn't working, see I forgot the username or password for the account I use with Office.
In a post-April 2011 world, a new release of Apple productivity software can only be met with trepidation by current users. So, predictably, many initial reactions were negative as the list of missing features kept growing.
Of course, there are systems that blur the line once you get into custom builds, but presumably if you’re at that point, you already know your preference for productivity. PC vs Mac: Power. It’s essentially impossible to say whether Mac or PC offers more power for productivity, because both come in so many variations. Productivity Software Suite for Mac 3 Voucher Important Note: Please carefully review the Terms and Conditions of each offer for restrictions and limitations. Please note that some offers are negative option plans, meaning that your credit card will be automatically billed if you do not cancel your trial or subscription within a certain. This guide takes you through the big three productivity suite options: Microsoft Office, Apple iWork, and Google Docs. I also highlight two free offerings, Apache's OpenOffice and LibreOffice.
It's obvious that Apple has been aggressively moving forward with simplifying their software in order to reach new users. This means longtime users of the older, complex versions may see features they like or depend on disappear. Unsurprisingly, we tend to hear from those users. But we don't hear from all the people who couldn't figure out the old versions and are happy something now addresses their needs. Let's take a closer look at the productivity suite formerly known as iWork and see just how much Apple got right and wrong.
And naturally, during the writing of this review, Apple took a nearly unprecedented step: the company revealed a list of missing features that will be brought back in the next six months. Just before publication, the first batch of (small) changes appeared.
Buying and installation
Perhaps the most prominent feature of the new iWork happens before opening any single program: for many people, these newest updates won't involve any transactions. These versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers are free with new Mac or iOS hardware. For existing iWork users, there's a free upgrade through the App Store—even for those of us who bought iWork '09 the old-fashioned way or just installed the trial version. And who knows what this says about Apple's confidence in the new release, but the iWork'09 apps are kept when installing the new versions.
The new iWork applications do not come pre-installed on new Macs, however. But if you open the App Store, you'll be greeted with a message informing you that the apps are available to download for free. Sign in with an account and the applications are then tied to that account. This means that you can subsequently install them on your older Macs, too.
If you never bought or tried iWork before and aren't buying new hardware, the three apps are available in the Mac App Store for $20 each. The mobile versions are in the iOS app store for $10 a piece, and they are 'designed for both iPhone and iPad.'
The applications require OS X 10.9 and iOS 7.0, respectively. If you're on an older OS, you'll have the opportunity to download the latest version compatible with your OS. While the latest versions of iWork '09 for the Mac are 32-bit executables, the new applications are pure 64-bit executables. On the Mac, the three applications take up a combined 1.4GB of disk space. On iOS, it's a hair less at 1.3GB.
(Missing) Pages for the Mac
Let's start with Pages on the Mac, which is being used to write this very review. Right up front, the new 'inspector' was a bit of a shock to the system. The old iWork had a pretty nifty way to format text, images, and the like: a (relatively) small inspector window that floats above your document. You could even have multiple inspectors. But in iWork '13, the inspector no longer floats. It's firmly attached to the right-hand side of your document window. With the default zoom level (125 percent), the inspector takes up more than a quarter of the Pages window.
After adjusting for a bit, the new inspector feels like an improvement for most users: layout options are nice and big, and they are always found in the same place. If you want the inspector out of the way, you can click on the blue brush in the toolbar to make it go away. (The old keyboard shortcut also still works.) When you bring back the inspector, the window expands to make room for it if possible.
If this change doesn't sound right for you, you might plan on foregoing the new inspector and sticking with the format bar for all your formatting needs. That would be a good plan, except the format bar is now gone. You can still use the menus, however.
Four years ago, we wrote that Pages 'still has no idea whether it wants to be a word processor or a layout program when it grows up.' The verdict is now in, and word processor it is. All the page layout templates are gone. If you open a document created with one of these in the new Pages, you may lose some formatting. In particular, the old Pages made it possible to link text boxes so that text overflows from one to the next. The new Pages can't do that, so it's much less flexible when it comes to positioning text on a page. Or at least, if you want to be flexible, you have to manually keep track of how much text can go in each text box.
The next feature to meet the exit door is mail merge. Links are now much less functional, too. It's still possible to link to a webpage or e-mail, but the options for linking to another Pages document or to a bookmark within the same document are gone. (We used to do that with the old Pages to create clickable references to other parts of the document after exporting to PDF. In order to see whether this still worked, we searched for the text for these links in an old document. Sadly, the links hadn't reverted back to regular text, so that also no longer works.)
The table of contents in the PDF output also used to be clickable—that is no longer the case. On the plus side, there is no longer an option to update the table of contents because it now live-updates. So it's possible to have extra tables of content for just a section or until the next table of contents.
Pages still can't number chapters and headings properly, and it doesn't seem like anything has changed here between Pages '09 and Pages '13. The program actually has no less than 15 numbering styles, but just a number (not followed by a period or any other nonsense) is not one of them. The numbering isn't part of styles, either; you have to set up numbering for each chapter or heading individually. The previous version of Pages would show proper chapter numbers if you created them in Word and imported the Word document, but the current version of Pages doesn't.
In our iWork '09 review, we mentioned the word counter in the status bar at the bottom of a document. That status bar is gone, but the word counter can now float above the document. Sometimes it actually gets in the way, as it's possible for the cursor to be completely hidden under the little word counter floating window. There are plenty of other locations where this could be moved to avoid issues, and Pages will accordingly be receiving 'improved word counts' in the next six months.
On a personal note, for some reason Pages applied British spelling when spell checking my text. Maybe because I bought the new computer I'm using in the Dutch online Apple Store? In the previous version, you could fix such an issue by setting the language of a document to US English, but there no longer seems to be an option to do that. I worked around that by highlighting the entire document and then choosing 'Show Spelling and Grammar' from the Spelling and Grammar submenu under the Edit menu. By changing 'automatic by language' to US English, I was able to make the red lines under the word 'customize' disappear.. until I closed and reopened the document. The way to permanently work around Pages' inability to set a language for documents is to go in to the System Preferences, Keyboard, and Text and then select 'Set Up' under the Spelling drop-down menu. You then get to choose which languages will be used for spell checking in 'automatic by language' mode, and if a language has multiple variants, you can enable/disable each and drag them in your order of preference. Still, I dread the day I'll be writing a document with a lot of code in it, because Pages has no way to turn off spell checking for selected blocks of text.
Productivity Suite 11
Overall, the new Pages looks pretty good at first glance. But once you start to look for problems, you find them everywhere. For instance, when using decimal tabs to align a column of numbers, you'd expect 20 and 20.1 to have the zeros in the same place relative to the left margin. However, Pages 6 moves the 20 in 20.1 to the left by what looks to be half the width of the decimal point. Seeing bugs in such basic features doesn't bode well.
Reportedly, Pages and company have undergone an extensive AppleScriptectomy (we did not test that for this review). Numbers and Keynote will be receiving 'improvements to AppleScript support,' but no such thing is mentioned for Pages.
Best productivity apps guarantee best working environment! Have you ever thought how much time do you waste on typing and clicking, organizing files, and trying to find the date? It’s time to put your laptop to work with this list of 15 best productivity apps for Mac.
Best Mac Productivity Apps
Sometimes you don’t need full-screen apps with lots of features to improve your productivity. Instead, have a look at these small tools that do one-two things and make your life easier.
1. Krisp
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Krisp is an easy-to-use but powerful app that recognizes your voice and separates it from extraneous noise next to you, leaving only your clean voice. It’s one of the best productivity apps for Mac that can help you to have better conference calls. You can work from any place that’s convenient for you and don’t worry about the crying baby or airport announcement in the background. Krisp also launched on Appsumo Deals.
2. Magnet
To be productive means having an organized workplace. Magnet app does exactly that – organizes the space on your desktop. This small app allows you to drag windows to show two, three, or four apps side-by-side.
Having multiple windows side by side eliminates the neebad for app switching and enhances your multitasking. Organize your workspace and seamlessly copy the text from one window and paste it into the second one. You can also customize the shortcuts for the app for maximum efficiency.
Price: $1.19
3. Itsycal
Have you ever wondered why your Mac doesn’t show full date on menubar? We have. While we don’t know the exact reason why Mac doesn’t support this function natively, we’ve found a good solution with this nice productivity app.
Itsycal adds a small calendar on your menubar. With it you can always have a brief glance at the whole month, week, your day and even appointments. It integrates with your macOS calendar and reminders, and you can modify the appearance if you wish too.
Price: Free
4. Flux
Sometimes you have to work during night or in place with bad lighting. For these situations use Flux – productivity app for Mac that changes the brightness and color temperature of your display. It matches them with the time of the day, so you call work better and feel less tired.
Price: Free
5. SelfControl
If you can’t resist the urge to check your Facebook, Twitter or any other website you stick for hours – this tool is for you. SelfControl app helps us to save us from meaningless waste of time of these websites.
Simply add the websites which distract you from your work, set the timer and turn it on. The app will block the mentioned sites for the specified time.
The best part is that even if you reboot your Mac, you can’t turn off the application until the timer’s up. So if your “selfcontrol” is not enough, use this small tool to be more productive with your time.
Price: Free
Best Mac Productivity Apps – Useful Tools
1. OmniFocus 3
This productivity app is all about managing your tasks. OmniFocus has a clean interface and every feature you need to get stuff done. And its sleek design is simply a perfect match for your Mac.
Add all your projects, to-do lists into OmniFocus and track all details like dates, notes, files attachments. Also you can easily synchronize between your iPhone or iPad. Free up your mind from storing all your tasks and enemies of every good conference call.
2. Bear
One of mac productivity apps in this list is called Bear. It’s a beautiful and flexible note-taking app. It has all functions that you’ve wished the pre-installed Notes on Mac would had.
With Bear it’s super easy to jot down your notes on the go. Write prose and outlines, create to-do lists and reminders for yourself, and many more. The best part is that many functions of Bear are free and you can enjoy all the perks without spending much.
Price: Free ($1.49 monthly)
3. CleanMyMac X
CleanMyMac is a lifesaver for your Mac. It combines many optimization tools in single app. Monitor the performance, remove malware and clean up your macOS.
This is a must-have app for any Mac user if you want your device to be healthy. And you want it, right?
Price: One year subscription costs $49.95
4. Alfred
Alfred brings productivity to your fingerprints! This app for macOS boosts your efficiency by helping you search your computer and web with great speed.
You can use Alfred for multiple things. Teamspeak 3 voice changer mac. It allows you to open things, search for things, define and time them, easily calculate things and expand tests, contact people and manage clipboard and so much more. Definitely give Alfred a try and experience its possibilities.
Price: Free
5. 1Password
Have you ever forgotten your password? Now you really forget your passwords as 1Password will remember all of them for you. Using 1Password is super simple: just save your passwords and login to websites with a single click.
Besides, if you often have a hard time thinking of new and unique passwords – worry no more. 1Passwords has your back and it will create a strong password instead of you and sync between your devices.
Price: $2.99 monthly
Best Mac productivity apps – Utilities
1. Bartender 3
![Mac Mac](https://static.macupdate.com/screenshots/87167/m/daylite-productivity-suite-screenshot.png?v=1568230670)
Have you ever wanted to organize the apps on menu bar? Now you can!
With Bartender 2 you can easily rearrange apps on your menu bar, hide them and even move to separate Bartender Bar. Give it a try and find out multiple variations of your menu bar.
Price: $15
2. AppCleaner
This small productivity app allows you to safely uninstall unwanted apps from your computer. As you know any time you install an application dozens of files are distributed throughout your System. Besides taking up much space, they leave traces which are hard to find with custom tools.
That’s why you need AppCleaner to clean up the mess and delete all traces of unwanted apps from your device.
Price: Free
3. Things
You definitely have a lot of things, right? Add one more “thing” to your list – Things app. This is a small and easy-to-use task manager which makes you truly productive.
If you’re tired of all big apps with dozens of features (most of which you don’t need), then Things is your choice. Give it a try!
Price: $49.99
4. MalwareBytes
Don’t believe people who say that you don’t need a anti-malware program on your Mac. While, there might not be a need for heavy-weight and cumbersome applications, Malware Bytes is all you need.
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware scans your computer, finds and removes code that lowers system performance or destroys your system. If your Mac is running slow and annoying adware and pop-ups keep coming, definitely install this app and revive your Mac.
Price: Free
5. Gemini 2
Sometimes you can’t find the exact file you need, but often times it turns out you have multiples of the same file. Finding and removing every duplicate file seems like a redundant task. That’s what Gemini is for!
Best Free Productivity Suite
Forget about the problem of duplicate files with Gemini. It spots duplicates and similar files, sees how they’re different and deletes the ones you don’t need. Gemini is smart and it learns all the time to improve the process. Sounds amazing, right? Get yourself mac productivity apps like Gemini and free up tons of space on your Mac.
Price: Free
Mac Productivity Apps Bonus: Email Analytics
This app is one of those mac productivity apps that will help you keep in track of and visualize your team’s email activity. It is private and secure and will let you to monitor and measure the email productivity of your team and other employees.
Email Analytics provides an opportunity to segment the teams which you need to monitor, and compare their analytics data to rule out the top performing members. You can see the analytics in real-time and the reports are updated frequently to ensure you get the most precise results.
This is great for boosting your and your team’s productivity in the long run, so give it a try on your Mac. There’s a 14 day trial after which you will have to pay $15 per mailbox a month.
By now you should already have your Mac ready to took off and allow you to be your most productive self. Let us know in the comments which Mac app is your favorite!