Apple has reworked their iWork suite of productivity programs for the iPad. Let's see what Pages for iPad can do.
I'm sitting in court waiting to be called and I'm writing this blog post with the iPad on my lap. There is no doubt that the keyboard will take some getting used to but it is nearly full size and I am starting to get the hang of it. And there is also no question. that getting the iPad out to get a few words down is much easier than pulling out a laptop; something I would never actually do in court.
Right away, the iPad pickups up convenience points.
Of course, with iBooks, Apple's answer to the Amazon's Kindle, there will be no shortage of reading material on lengthier waits. By way of preview, many classics are free in the iBooks store, e.g. War and Peace and Shakespeare's collected works are among the free titles.
The App works in both portrait and landscape mode and in the latter position the keyboard is very manageable. And with the protective case tucked under iPad tilts at just the right angle for tying. In Portrait position the tools for editing and inserting graphics and shapes are available.
The application launches into a template gallery that offers some nice looking pre-formatted documents. You can either start a new document or duplicate a document. That means to me that you can import a letterhead and then duplicate it for use as a template.
I browsed through the iWork help center and it appears that file sharing is permitted with a computer via the Pages app in iTunes. I haven't tried it yet but when I do I'll let you know how it works.
Once you complete a Pages document, you can export it or email it in Pages, PDF, or Word format.
So it looks like the iPad is a way to get letters done on the fly.
Let's get into the features of Pages for iPad.
It has a spell checker that like the iPhone offers a suggestion that will be inserted by touching the space bar. The spell checker also underlines misspelled words and offers a range of suggestions upon touching the misspelling. Pages for iPad also auto completes and capitalizes words after a period. It also has the shortcut familiar to iPhone users that inserts a period after tapping the spacebar twice.
You can also:
- Place tables, charts, and pictures in the document
- Designate Styles, e.g. title, heading 1, heading 2, etc.
- Bold, Underline, and Italic
- Create Bulleted and Numbered Lists
- Adjust Document Margins
- Insert Headers and Footers
- Change Line Spacing
- Change the font, font size, and color.
I think Pages expands the reach of the iPad beyond just a very cool way to read books, watch video, use the Internet and otherwise do many things a laptop is good for.
For quick notes and lists the Notes App is great and looks just like a legal pad in a leather portfolio; more on that latter.
Check out the Screen Shots of Pages for iPad