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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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Christopher Lee

I’m a digital marketer and affiliate consultant who started by sharing practical Mac tips. In 2006 I co-founded Blurtit.com, which grew to ~15M monthly visits and was a strong AdSense performer for its time. Since then I’ve worked as a Product Owner in finance and online gaming (including PLCs), focusing on on-page monetisation, landing-page optimisation, traffic growth, project management, and building high-performing teams. If you’d like to talk about a project, please get in touch.

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