Instead, you can position multiple discrete tables wherever you choose, drag them around for optimal layout, and reference between them when constructing formulae. It uses regular Microsoft Office formulae, but it doesn’t confine you to a single table on each tab. Numbers, the most recent addition to the suite, is a novel and effective reimagining of how a spreadsheet should work. It’s a neater solution than the ribbon – newcomers should find it easier to identify the settings they need to tweak, since they won’t have to click between tabs.
If you’re used to working with nothing more complex than a blank page and a cursor, this may sound daunting, but – as with other iWork apps – it’s easy to get to grips with, since all the formatting options are corralled in a context-sensitive sidebar that shows only the options relevant to the object selected on the page.
Pages is a cross between Microsoft Publisher and Word, with the top-down writing environment encompassing a series of flexible object-based layout tools such as shapes, lines and textboxes. PowerPoint has since caught up, but Keynote remains an extremely flexible and easy-to-use application, with great features such as Instant Alpha – which lets you mask out image backgrounds without using third-party tools – and Magic Move, which animates object movements, Flash-style, as you flip from slide to slide. Initially developed as an in-house application for building Steve Jobs’ annual product presentations, the first release trounced PowerPoint, with better typography, more flexible layouts and more engaging transitions. The iWork apps were released one by one, with Keynote appearing first, in 2003.