Apple Posts iWork Web Developer Job Opening In Prep For iOS 5 And iCloud
It seems that the launch of iOS 5 and iCloud is soon approaching indeed as Apple has posted a job listing looking for a new engineer in the area of iWork specifically. This person would "build the front and/or back end of scalable web applications,"noting that this will more than likely be an expansion to Apple's already existing iWork.com as well as future iCloud business expansions, all this as the applications continue to be improved for the native Mac OS X Lion as well as mobile versions.
This job posting furthermore asks for someone who has strong programming skills as well as "commitment to delivering [a] great user experience." This candidate, says the Apple job posting, "will be part of the core engineering team responsible for the design and development of the software system." While existing MobileMe apps translate desktop apps into web-based equivalents at the moment, these being anything from Mail to Address Book, this does not necessarily mean there will be web-based versions of document editing software similar to Google Docs or the lovely Microsoft Office 365.
At the moment, iWork.com has been restricted to making Pages, Keynote, and Numbers created documents available for alternate user viewing and collaborative comment. What Apple appears to be doing here is keeping apps on the desktop and in the mobile world (on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad,) rather than bringing them entirely up to the web. In this way and because of this, iWork's Pages, Numbers, and Keynote have been inside the top 10 grossing apps in the market since their inception.
Furthermore, iCloud seems to continue to be the center of attention here, providing iWork apps on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone with the ability to save to the cloud and open in other locations in the future. The abilities of iCloud don't stop there, allowing also large documents to be shared to others without restricting one's work to gigantic email attachments – all of this done in similar web sharing ways to the already active iWork.com.
The site iWork.com has not had a new version since the launch of the apps in iWork 2009 save for a minor update recently to add support for full-screen, Versions, auto save, and Resume as present in Mac OS X Lion. The job listing here points toward a rather lovely iCloud future for the apps. BONUS: a developer 1.5 version of iWork apps has been revealed in the soon to be released iOS 5 – updates galore!
[via Apple Insider]