WEEKLY SPECIALS | 01/06/09 – 01/13/09

Some big changes were announced to the iWork suite of productivity applications today. 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.

“Read more about iWork here.”:http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/
“Check out our coverage of Macworld 2009 on our blog.”:http://blog.smalldog.com

iWeb also received minor updates for Macworld. In iWeb, it’s now easier to upload websites and website changes to MobileMe or to your own server via FTP with a single click. Like iWeb ’08, iWeb ’09 uploads only your changes when you publish, so you’ll enjoy quick site updates.

iWeb will now notify your Facebook friends when you update your site. Simply link any iWeb site to your Facebook account. Following an update, iWeb adds the changes to your profile, alerting your friends and providing them with a handy link. It’s now also easier to add web widgets to your site that update automatically.

iDVD didn’t appear to get any new features beyond performance and stability improvements. iMovie once again supports DVD chapter makers and titles for use with iDVD ’09, which is very welcome news.

“Learn more and pre-order iLife ’09 here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/72885

iPhoto has gotten many updates in the iLife ’09 edition. iPhoto is arguably the most-used application in the iLife suite, behind iTunes.

For starters, there are now three ways to sort your photos:

* Events
* Faces
* Places

Events was a new way to view and sort photos with the last iLife release, but both Faces and Places are new.

Faces relies on face recognition, and assists in tagging photos. Amazingly, it will find a face and ask in other photos if it is the same person… I guess we’ll see! There’s also integration with Facebook and Flickr.

Places works with Google Maps to zoom in on a location. It uses latitude and longitude, and will automatically add a location to your photos. This is great because you’ll be able to ‘geotag’ your entire set of photos. Phil uses the example of “Yosemite” in that if you have just taken a vacation there, it will geotag all of your photos from the trip!

I’m really excited to check iPhoto ’09 out, especially the tagging and face recognition features. As Don mused, “will it be able to recognize dog’s faces, too?” We’ll be checking out iLife ’09 in detail soon and will give you our feedback in upcoming issues of Tech Tails!

“Learn more and pre-order iLife 09 here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/72885

Millions of cheers were heard ’round the world when Phil Schiller announced some of the changes coming to the iTunes Store in April. The main one: all DRM-free music, meaning that songs can be played and burned without restriction. The four major record companies (Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI) are all now on board with the change, which was crucial to feature songs without the “DRM”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management encoding.

Beginning today, over 8 million songs in the iTunes Store feature:

* No DRM restrictions
* Higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually unchanged from the original
* Same price for song downloads onto iPhone 3G over their 3G network

The remaining 2 million songs in the 10 million+ iTunes library will be available without the DRM restrictions by the end of March. According to Apple, they will offer a “simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their entire library of previously purchased songs to the higher quality DRM-free iTunes Plus format” for 30 cents per song or 30 percent of the album price. Sounds intriguing, but it could get expensive… I say choose your favorites wisely!

In April, songs will be available at three price points: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. This will be dictated by what the music labels charge Apple for the above licensing.

“Read Apple’s entire press release here.”:http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/06itunes.html

In “6GB of RAM in your MacBook?” published last week, my description of eligible computers included 2.33GHz MacBook Pros. Unfortunately, these models have a capacity of three gigabytes, not six. If there is any question whether your machine can handle the upgrade, give us a call at 800-511-MACS and we’d be happy to confirm for you. Sorry for the confusion!

Featured updates:

* Easily create sophisticated animations with *Magic Move.*
* Add dramatic object and text transitions using *new visual effects.*
* Visualize your data with *new styles and animations* for 3D charts.
* Dramatically *reduce file size* without compromising quality.
* Create dynamic flowcharts and diagrams using *connection lines.*
* Choose from *eight new Apple-designed themes* (44 total).
* *Open, save, and email Microsoft PowerPoint files* from within Keynote.