
Everybody's iWorking for the weekend.
Phil Schiller introduced iWork '09 in his Macworld Expo keynote. The productivity software upgrades Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, adding new animation and template features. Keynote is also compatible with a slick, new iPhone and iPod touch app that works as a remote.
Underneath the update, the applications offer tighter integration with each other, and Numbers '09 adds more powerful formulas to its roster. iWork '09 is shipping today for $79 or $99 as a family license.
Keynote '09
The iPhone app extra, available for $.99, shows your current slide and speaking notes as you give a presentation. Depending on the phone orientation, you can also see the next slide and otherwise preview upcoming information. New slide animations and themes also require minimal input, animating your objects automatically.
Pages '09
Several minor enhancements alter the way you view and use Pages. A full-screen mode helps those that are easily distracted block everything else out, showing only the current document without style palettes. An outline tool helps organization, and new templates give a boost to DIY designers. Other updates include enhanced math notation and endnote abilities.
Numbers '09
Apple's spreadsheet program adds more ways to categorize already-created tables. You can reorganize by column at any time, shifting a column's data to the left, and filling in a subset of information automatically. Schiller demonstrated this by reorganizing a spreadsheet of baseball players that had been listed by person into hierarchy by position, grouping eligible players inside. Charts are also better integrated with the other iWork applications, automatically reflecting your changes in those applications.
Disappointed
Submitted by nace33 on Tue, 2009-01-06 17:48
After playing with the iWork 09 Trial I am pretty disappointed that a lot of the 2008 bugs still remain. Namely: (1) No Auto-save; (2) No ability to print an envelope with the letter you just wrote; and (3) putting more than a page worth of text in a cell causes all the text over the page length to not print (something excel and word tables handle with ease). Come on Apple, this is simple bug testing and fixing. My feedback must not be getting through. The only thing I have found that makes me want to upgrade is the iPhone app that requires Keynote '09 and I just don't think that is worth it for me.