iWork '09: New Features

Some big changes were announced to the iWork suite of productivity applications at Macworld on Tuesday. Like iWork ’08, iWork ’09 includes Pages, Keynote and Numbers. Integration and sharing have been vastly improved across the suite, and it still offers excellent Microsoft Office compatibility.

The addition of iWork.com is huge. Much like Google Docs, you will be able to collaborate on projects by accessing your files online. Apple has not launched this yet in its full form, but it is available as a public beta once you have purchased iWork ’09.

In the following articles, you’ll find an overview of the highlighted new features. The Single User edition is available for $79.99 and Family Pack is available for $99.99. Note that iWork ’09 includes all three applications which are not available for purchase separately.

iWork ’09 will ship in the next week or so; reserve your copy below:

Single User Edition:
Smalldog.com/product/72887

Family Pack:
Smalldog.com/product/72888

Read our full coverage of Macworld 2009 on our blog.

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    On Monday, Google finally released a public beta of Picasa for the Mac. Picasa is a free desktop app for importing, editing, organizing and sharing digital images–particularly digital photos.

    Picasa for Macs is a free download from “Picasa.google.com/mac/”:http://picasa.google.com/mac/. You need an Intel Mac running OS 10.4 or later.

    Picasa has been a popular photo app on the Windows side for years. It shares some features with iPhoto, and adds some unique killer features. These include the ability to sync your Picasa desktop and Picasa Web Albums edits, screen captures, create and edit movies within Picasa, add text/watermarks to photos, manage folders on your computer, a collage creation, screensaver creation, and Facial-recognition technology. Privacy and sharing settings can be adjusted for individual photos, collections or for your entire library.

    Preliminary tests show Picasa to be as fast or faster than iPhoto and easy and elegant to use. We’ll test further and review Picasa in detail in the future.

    Google also offers Picasa Web Albums, which is an excellent web service for sharing and organizing photos. This has been Mac-compatible for years. There is an iPhoto plugin if you want to use Picasa Web Albums without necessarily using the desktop version of Picasa. “Click here to download this.”:http://picasa.google.com/mac_tools.html

    Also, the new version of iPhoto ’09 looks amazing. News about Picasa for Mac has been swept under the rug with the announcement of iPhoto ’09.

    Picasa Web Albums integrates tightly with Google’s Blogger service, along with many other blog platforms and web services. Picasa Web Albums is very easy to use, uploading is a breeze, and photos are nicely displayed online. Picasa Web Albums offers up to 1GB (“enough space for 4,000 wallpaper-size photos”) of photo hosting for free.

    Flickr is still more popular and has deeper social network components then Picasa Web Albums. Again, we’ll do a detailed comparison in the near future.

  • iWork '09: Pages

    Pages received a bunch of updates this time around, most notably:

    * *40 new Apple-designed templates* (for over 180 total).
    * A new *full-screen view* option so that you can focus only on your writing!
    * *Dynamic outlines* allow you to organize your ideas as they come.
    * *Mail merge with Numbers* makes adding addresses, names and more really simple.
    * MathType 6 and EndNote X2 (both sold separately) integration allows you to insert equations or bibliographies (respectively).

    As always, you can open, save, and email Microsoft Word files from within Pages.

  • Grace gave me an advance 60th birthday present just before I left for Macworld. She is taking me to Tanzania to see hippos in the wild. After watching the keynote with the new version of iMovie, we have decided to bring along a digicam, too!

    Our friend Chet Newbold from Olympus is going to loan me one of their ultra zoom cameras, too, so I hope to bring back some great photos and video from this trip. I am so excited about fulfilling this dream and spending my 60th birthday in Africa!

    I think we are going to see a lot of new products coming out of Apple this year. When they are ready on schedule, I am much more optimistic than most about 2009. I think that Apple is well-suited to innovate its way through this economic downturn.

    Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team
    _Don, Kali & Ed_

  • iLife '09 Up-To-Date Program

    iLife ’09 looks like an awesome upgrade. Too bad it won’t be released until the need of the month. Fortunately, Apple has an iLife ’09 up-to-date program. If you’ve purchased a qualifying computer on or after January 6, 2009 that does not include iLife ’09, you can upgrade to iLife ’09 for US $9.95 plus tax.

    *Apple will administer this program, including collecting the $9.95 and shipping the iLife ’09 DVD.*

    More information about this is forthcoming. Please check “our blog”:http://blog.smalldog.com on or after Monday, January 12 for additional details!

  • iLife '09 New Features and Mac Box Set

    Get the most out of the photos, movies, and music on your Mac with the latest versions of iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD! It has lots of new features, which we’ll highlight below. *Note that iLife ’09 includes all five applications which are not available for purchase separately.*

    On a related note, the Mac Box Set was announced as well: this is one package that includes Mac OS X Leopard, iLife ’09 and iWork ’09 for $169.99 (You’ll save over $100; Leopard alone is $129.99!) Also available in Family Pack: $229.99

    This will ship late this month; reserve your copy below!

    Single User Edition:
    http://www.smalldog.com/product/72889

    Family Pack:
    http://www.smalldog.com/product/72890