iWork '13: Dumbed down or smart move?
From bloggers to everyday users, almost everybody seems to have reacted to the release of the latest version of iWork with overwhelming negativity, and a general feeling that Apple is “dumbing down” its apps to appeal to a broader audience.
Judging from the amount of feedback that the new apps have received, the changes seem to affect just about everybody in some way; it’s probably fair to say, however, that power users will suffer the most from the disappearance of many of iWork’s more advanced features—a situation that, of late, seems to repeat itself every time Apple comes out with a significant update to one of its apps.
Strange days
Most analysts seem to ascribe the changes that have befallen iWork to Apple wanting to bring feature parity to the various versions of its office suite. Because the suite has same capabilities across OS X, iOS, and the Web, users of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote can now share their files and collaborate in real time without fear that changes made on one device will be discarded on another due to a software incompatibility.
Undoubtedly, there is some truth to this, but I don’t think that it tells the whole story. Just about any piece of software Cupertino has released in the last few years, from operating systems to prosumer apps, has been driven by a deep-seated desire to simplify the way we do things. Office suites like Microsoft Office and (in a lesser way) iWork have always struck me as odd pieces of technology: overly complicated if all you want to do is write a letter, and woefully inadequate if you need to perform very complicated tasks. This makes them perfect targets for Apple engineers and designers looking to shake things up.
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