iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 Have Arrived
While the new iMac is grabbing the headlines, Apple’s newest versions of iLife and iWork are likely of more interest to law students.
iLife ‘08
Those of you lucky enough to be obtaining a new Mac will get iLife 08 with the machine. Regular folks pay $79 for a single-user license, while law students pay $71. This seems to be a substantial overhaul for the iLife apps. As a heavy iPhoto user, I am particularly excited about the new Organize by Events feature. The app also includes more image editing capabilities, better searching, and more printing, book, and calendar options. iMovie has been redesigned, also around an event-based file browsing structure. It also supports more video formats, and more export options for those who want to send their videos to YouTube directly, or to their own .Mac web pages.
GarageBand and iDVD appear to have received less noticeable updates, with the new iDVD in particular focused on increased speed. If you’d rather not learn HTML, but still want a nice looking website, iWeb might fit your needs. The addition of web widgets (snippets of code for integrating live content from other websites) and easy Google Maps integration look like smart moves. This version of iWeb looks at first blush to be a rather substantial update.
iWork ‘08
“Cinema-quality presentations for everyone” is the tag line for the new version of Keynote, but it might as well apply to iWork ‘08 as a whole. The three iWork apps share an emphasis on making content look good. Yes, that’s right. Three. The new entrant, Numbers, appears to be a spreadsheet for those of us who need to use spreadsheets from time to time, but are not quant jocks who like to turn everything into a pivot table. Frankly, if Numbers performs as advertised, I’ll grab a copy of iWork ‘08 pronto. Excel’s WYSISOWYG (What You See Is Sort Of What You Get) printing has always bothered me, and I find most of Excel’s functions unnecessary.
The new version of Keynote includes more gee-whiz visual splash and sizzle. For some time I’ve railed against what Edward Tufte calls The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint, and I still feel that slideware is grossly overused in most educational and legal contexts. But having used Keynote and PowerPoint, I will say that when you must use slideware, Keynote is the way to go.
Pages gets a boost with change tracking, improved page layout tools, and some other additions. But it seems Apple has made a pointed effort to provide better Word import capabilities:
Whether they’re Microsoft Office Word 2007 (Office Open XML) or earlier Word files, Pages will open them. Pages imports not only the text, but also the styles, tables, inline and floating objects, charts, footnotes, endnotes, bookmarks, hyperlinks, lists, sections, change tracking, and other elements of your original Word document.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that iLife is no longer just a replacement for ClarisWorks/AppleWorks. Look at the student pricing. The Student and Teacher version of Microsoft Office 2004 costs $124.95. That includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage. iLife ‘08 costs $71 and includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Arguably, the combination of Mail, iCal, and Address Book, all of which are included with every Mac, is as good or better than Entourage.
So a student who buys iWork ‘08 for $71 saves $53.95. Does the price difference match the performance difference? That we don’t know yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Keynote ‘08 soundly defeated PowerPoint 2004. Pages is still not going to be as full-featured as Word 2004. Then again, Word has always been a particularly bloated piece of software. I don’t use 90% of its capabilities. If Pages does less, but picks the right fat to leave out, it could become a serious contender for many users. Numbers is an unknown, but this is the first version of a new app. It won’t take on Excel any time soon. Accountants will not be joyfully ditching Excel for Numbers. But for non-accountants who need to crunch numbers occasionally, it could hit the sweet spot.
I’m excited at the potential for iLife ‘08. We’ll see how well it works in actual use, but the timing couldn’t be better. Microsoft has just announced that it is delaying the next version of Office for Mac until January. In the mean time, it’s already ‘08 for Apple.
Jordan wrote,
While both look impressive, I have to say the prices disappointed me. The last version of iLife was only $39 with a student discount. Same for iWork. While I probably won’t upgrade anything from office ‘04 that I am currently working with, the school computer store offers Office for only $60. I mean, when it comes down to it, an $8 discount is probably the last move before removing the discount for good.
Link | August 8th, 2007 at 5:10 am
AJ wrote,
Nice write-up.
For those interested in trying the program before plunking down cash, you can download a free 30-day trial at http://www.apple.com/iwork/trial/
Link | August 8th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Daniel Trout wrote,
Did anyone else see the new keyboard they announced? I am curious how hard it’s going to be to type on it. I’ll find out soon about the new iLife and iWork as I ordered both.
Link | August 8th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Erik Schmidt wrote,
I doubt that Apple is going to kill the student discount for iWork and iTunes, but I do see your point about pricing. It’s a tough call. Are three apps bundled together worth $71? It likely depends on how frequently you use them, I suppose.
Thanks, AJ, for the tip about the trial download.
I’m looking forward to checking out the new keyboard. Maybe I need to stop by the Apple Store at Valley Fair for a look-see.
Link | August 8th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Erik Schmidt wrote,
I stopped by the Apple Store at Valley Fair and checked out the new iMac and the new slim keyboard. It was a bit difficult to tell just how well the keyboard worked, because I had to stoop a bit to approximate a normal working posture.
The keys have less concavity than even my PowerBook’s keyboard, and far less than a traditional desktop keyboard. I’m not sure whether this will make a difference or not. My guess is that if the keys are a mite slipperier than normal keys, this could make typing a bit more difficult for touch typists.
That said, it looks like a well-designed keyboard. The pitch felt comfortable to me, and the slim profile makes other keyboards look like antiques. The touch of the keys feels good too. It seems that less pressure is required than with most keyboards, but it doesn’t feel like a hair-trigger either. The last thing you’d want is to be constantly mistyping because the keys were too sensitive.
I wish Apple made a wireless trackball, but most people haven’t warmed to the trackball concept, so I won’t hold my breath on that one.
The new iMac is a beauty.
Link | August 8th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Patrick wrote,
I’ve ordered iLife and iWork and I’m absolutely amazed at how much Apple improved some apps like iPhoto, iMovie and Pages.
As stated above it depends on how often you use those apps, but if you use them a lot it’s definitely worth the money.
Greetings
Link | August 15th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Sarah wrote,
I downloaded the free trial of iWork, and I liked numbers so far. I don’t know if I’ll be ditching office 2004, though. My personal concern is whether Devonthink Pro will recognize iwork files without having to save them as word files first. If so, that’d be great, and would influence a future purchase. Last thing: the new keyboard is great! It’s much better than a macbook pro keyboard as far as key pressure goes. I was pleasantly surprised.
Link | August 22nd, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Erik Schmidt wrote,
Sarah,
Thanks for the note. I just got done doing some analytics work, some of which was done in Excel. I just ordered iWork (without even trying the demo version, which wasn’t the smartest approach). It will be interesting to see how the same tasks I normally do in Excel will be handled by Numbers.
Your mention of compatibility raises an excellent point. When I review iWork I’ll try to delve into importing and exporting in some detail.
Link | August 22nd, 2007 at 3:53 pm