[NewsPoster]

Several recent Apple job listings may hint that the company is on the verge of updating both the OS X and iOS editions of iWork, reports say. Some of the listings date back as far as March; one of them, though, was posted on May 11, and specifically calls for an iWork QA tester, which could mean Apple is in the last phases of development. Another opening, dating back to May 7, asks for a "HiDP Image Specialist," tasked with bringing iWork visual designs to Retina displays.

While Apple has kept the iOS iWork suite current, the original OS X apps have been left mostly untouched since 2009. They are, therefore, not built around Retina Macs, or even other recent technologies and platforms, like iCloud. The company has generally de-emphasized Mac software since the introduction of the iPhone and iPad; it could however be planning to reinvigorate iWork as soon as next month's WWDC in San Francisco.

[medelegant]

I was looking to download a copy of KeyNote to an older MacBook Pro and saw that the latest version available on the App Store was v5.3. Among the features of this new version was support for iOS 7.0

[Inkling]

Updating iWork is long-overdue. I just hope the new apps are up-to-date enough to support a powerful ePub export, including pop-up notes. PDFs simply don't work on tiny iPhone screens.

And speaking of ePub, why isn't there a WebKit for ePub? Creating ebooks is a pain because everyone's ePub app is not quite the same and not quite standard. That's an area where Apple could do a lot of good and, as the leading vendor of mobile devices, benefit itself from the end to all this confusion.

[Jeronimo2000]

@Inkling: I suppose you know that Pages already creates ePubs, albeit on a rather basic level (no fance stuff like InDesign). If you want fancy though, you can use the (really amazing and free) iBooks Author for Mac. Ok, iBooks Author doesn't do .epub, at least not exactly... Apple uses their own format for iBooks (surprise surprise), which builds on the ePub format.

Otherwise, I couldn't agree more with your post. 4 and a half years without a major update is just ridiculous. There's so much iWork and especially Keynote could gain in terms of features, it is pathetic they've left it alone for so long.

@medelegant: sorry, but you misread. Keynote for Mac version 5.3 adds support for Keynote for iOS 1.7... in which the "1.7" stands for the version number the iPhone/iPad variant of Keynote is currently at.

@macnn: I don't know what version of iWork you are talking about, but the one I am using here has been very well "built around Retina Macs" since July 2012, ie. it displays beautifully on a Retina MacBook Pro. And it does use iCloud, in fact iCloud is the first option you get when trying to save files. Not that it's a GOOD implementation - I hate the way Apple incorporated iCloud in some apps but not others, and you have no access to your iCloud files from within the Finder. But don't get me started.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by medelegant 

I was looking to download a copy of KeyNote to an older MacBook Pro and saw that the latest version available on the App Store was v5.3. Among the features of this new version was support for iOS 7.0

Very strange, because when I look in the Mac App Store, the latest version is version 4.3, and among the new features was support for the iOS edition of Pages, version 1.7.