Several days ago, I wrote a scathing piece on the new, iWork update that nuked a perfectly good productivity suite, and replaced it with a steaming pile of disappointment. I wasn't alone in voicing my disgust over the situation. What Apple did was wrong and inexcusable. They have come as close as they get to an apology, and have promised the return of missing features.

Apple has called out many of the missing features that they will be returning to the suite within the next six months. I expect other features such as dictionary support to be on the fast track, though not specifically mentioned.

Apple also wanted to make it absolutely clear that the old iWork apps have not been removed from your system. You can still find them in your Applications folder. This does take a bit of the sting out of my earlier criticism, but only a little. Files created with the older system are not compatible with the new version. The reverse is also true. If you want to continue using the old system, don't open the new version, nor share with anyone using the new version.

For those who can't be bothered to click on the link below, here is the text in full:

About the new iWork for Mac: Features and compatibility

Learn about the new iWork for Mac.

The new iWork applications—Pages, Numbers, and Keynote—were released for Mac on October 22nd. These applications were rewritten from the ground up to be fully 64-bit and to support a unified file format between OS X and iOS 7 versions, as well as iWork for iCloud beta.

These apps feature an all-new design with an intelligent format panel and many new features such as easy ways to share documents, Apple-designed styles for objects, interactive charts, new templates, and new animations in Keynote.

In rewriting these applications, some features from iWork ’09 were not available for the initial release. We plan to reintroduce some of these features in the next few releases and will continue to add brand new features on an ongoing basis.

Some features in upcoming releases in the next 6 months

Pages

Customize toolbar
Vertical ruler
Improved alignment guides
Improved object placement
Import of cells with images
Improved word counts
Keyboard shortcuts for styles
Manage pages and sections from the thumbnail view

Numbers

Customize toolbar
Improvements to zoom and window placement
Multi-column and range sort
Auto-complete text in cells
Page headers and footers
Improvements to AppleScript support

Keynote

Customize toolbar
Restoring old transitions and builds
Improvements to presenter display
Improvements to AppleScript support

In the meanwhile, you can continue to use these features by accessing the previous versions of the iWork applications which remain installed on your Mac. The previous versions can be found in Applications > iWork ’09.

Reverting documents created in the new iWork for Mac applications to the previous version’s file format

New or existing documents you open in the new versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote use the new unified file format. These files can’t be opened in the previous versions of the iWork applications. To revert the document file format to the previous version, you can do one of the following:

Documents that you haven't edited can be reverted to the iWork ’09 version by selecting File > Revert To.
If you have edited the document and want to preserve the edits, you can save it as an iWork ’09 document by selecting File > Export To, then choosing Pages ’09, Numbers ’09, or Keynote ’09.

EndNote Compatibility

For information about using EndNote with Pages 5.0 and later, see About the Pages for Mac EndNote plug-in.

Additional Information

For more information about importing and exporting iWork ’09 documents, click here.

For iWork for Mac help, click here. And to provide feedback, click here.