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Apple Releases iWork '09 Update 3, Squashes Many Bugs

Cory Bohon — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:35:48 -0500

Today Apple released a massive update for iWork '09 called "iWork '09 Update 3." The update addresses a number of issues with Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and the iWork.com beta site. According to Apple the "Update addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, updates the help, and fixes a number of other minor issues in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers."

The main issues addressed include:

- Reducing file size of images that have Instant Alpha applied

- Managing file size when inserting some movies

- Working with dates and durations in the Chart Data Editor in Keynote and Pages

- Exporting to CSV from Numbers when using table categories

- Improvements to comment notification and security in iWork.com Beta are also included

Apple is recommending that all iWork users download and install the whopping ~60MB update. You can see the full list of updated features on the Apple Support website, and you can download the update by opening Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update) or by downloading the installer package from the Apple Support Downloads Website.

Podcast #105: Snow Leopard Tips and the Apple iPod Event

Mac|Life Staff — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:27:48 -0500

We talk about the highs and lows of installing Snow Leopard on our machines. Apple announces its annual iPod event, and we debate the chance of a tablet and/or Steve Jobs sighting at the iPod event.

Got a question, but you're afraid to leave a voice message because of Witness Relocation Dept. rules? Drop us a question via Twitter twitter.com/maclife.

This week's Battlestar Applactica picks:

SkyGazer - $2.99

TextExpander - $1.99

Chipotle Ordering - Free

Don't forget, the Mac|Life staff would love to hear your thoughts, comments and ideas for the new podcast. Just leave a message on the Mac|Live question/comment line: (877) 404-1337, extension 622. Please limit the length of your messages to 1 minute max. We'll review these calls each week and feature our favorites, along with responses, on that week's podcast.

To subscribe to the Mac|Live podcast series through an RSS feed, click here; if you want to subscribe through the iTunes Store, click here.

Apple iPod Event Announced - 9/9/09

Roberto Baldwin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:41:56 -0500

Apple sent out invitations to their annual iPod event.

The event is set for 9/9/09 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theatre in San Francisco.

The event kicks off at 10am Pacific time and will be live-blogged by the Mac|Life staff.

Let's all start speculating wildly until then.

Podcast #103: Apple Event Rumors and the iPhone Takes on Flickr

Mac|Life Staff — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:25:52 -0500

Word on the street is that Apple plans to have its annual iPod event on September 9. How will this event coincide with the staff's plans to play The Beatles Rock Band? Only time, and bad impressions of John and Paul will tell.

The iPhone shoots up the camera chart on Flickr and we answer all your burning questions with soothing answers that should be applied twice daily.

Got a question, but you're afraid to leave a voice message because of Witness Relocation Dept. rules? Drop us a question via Twitter twitter.com/maclife.

This week's Battlestar Applactica picks:

Kayak - Free

iFitness - $1.99

Discovery Channel - Free

To subscribe to the Mac|Live podcast series through an RSS feed, click here; if you want to subscribe through the iTunes Store, click here.

WWDC Keynote Date Set - MC Phil Will Be on the Mic

Roberto Baldwin — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:38:49 -0500

Apple announced today that this years WWDC keynote will be on monday June 8 and will begin at 10am PDT. It's no surprise that this year's keynote will be headed by senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller.

You may remember Phil from such keynotes as, Macworld Expo 2009 keynote, and the iPhone 3.0 Software event.

Phil and the Apple executive team will drop the knowledge on OS X Snow Leopard and iPhone software 3.0. Apple plans on giving developers a final Developer Preview of Snow Leopard during the conference.

Apple is also expected to announce a new iPhone during the WWDC keynote. Let's hope Phil and company bring the rad.

Keynote Live Blog - Introducing, the Philnote

Roberto Baldwin — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:48:00 -0600

That's all folks!!! We'll be updating from the show floor all week.

10:37am Phil thanks the Apple staff and all those that helped. Thanks Phil You Rock!

Tony Bennett rules!

10:33 "Good morning! Thank you!" --Tony Bennett

"I'm going home to my city by the Bay. I left my heart.... in San Francisco..." YES!!!!!

Tony left his heart in San Francisco.

Ray: "I've left several umbrellas there."

10:30 "I think it's fitting that we end our last Macworld keynote with an artist that has some really amazing music and is recognized as a true legend."

"It's my honor to introduce to you Mr. Tony Bennett."

rad!

Old dudes are awesome. Especially when they're Tony Bennett.

Tony sounds great.

10:28 "Now the iTunes Music Store [on the iPhone] is no longer the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, it's just the iTunes Music Store because it works on Wi-Fi and 3G cellular networks." same price, selection, and quality.

iPhone music store will work over WiFI OR 3G

Music store over 3G starts today

10:27 "Today we're offering 8 million songs. By the end of this quarter, all 10 million songs will be DRM free."

All 10 million songs will be DRM-free by the end of the quarter. Bye, Amazon MP3. It was fun.

10:26am Three pricing tiers. .69, .99 and $1.29. Kind of like Taco Bell.

"I can tell you already, more songs are going to be offered at 69 cents than at $1.29."

10:25 iTunes has more than 10 million songs...

"[The iTunes Store] has now sold over 6 billions songs. It's amazing."

"iTunes became the No. 1 music channel in the United States."

10:24 "We have one last thing in this Macworld keynote, and it's some things we're doing with iTunes."

notice how he didn't say One More Thing,,,

10:22 "We want to give you an environmental report card, because we spend so much time caring about this."

"So that's the new 17-inch MacBook Pro. We're so proud of it."

New ad. Similar to the recent MacBook ads.

10:21 Three more hours of battery life over previous MacBook Pro.

PVC and BFR free.

"The batteries are PVC and BFR free, and if you ever need to exchange it, we have a take-back program."

2799, same price as before. 4GB RAM, dual graphics. 320 GB hard drive.

10:16 "When you design for a removable battery, there's a lot of wasted space."

8 hours on a single charge, can be recharged 1,000 times.

Non-removable battery is 40 percent larger

Cool footage of battery-making machines.

Adaptive charging reduces wear and tear on battery as it recharges.

A chip within the battery talks to cells, and the system adjusts the current to maximize the battery life.

Since the battery can be recharged 1000 times, fewer batteries end up in the landfill

10:15am "The most innovative and greatest new feature: the battery."

New MB Pro offers longest-life batter ever.

Video of engineers explaining new battery technology.

"Our engineers were charged with creating the longest-lasting battery life ever. But to do it, and keep the notebook just as thin and just as light...they had to advance battery technology."

10:10am New 17-inch MacBook Pro

"For the last eight months running, if you look at a list of all the notebooks sold in the United States, the MacBook is number one every single month."

"It's thin, 0.98 inches thin. The world's thinnest 17-inch notebook. It's simply stunning."

LED backlit display 1920x1200.

60% greater color gamut than previous notebooks.

Available in matte or glossy. Yay

"Some of our highest-end customers would rather not have a glossy panel on the front, so we've created for the first time, a matte display on the 17-inch display." (It looks different, with a metal bezel instead of the black one.)

Features the glass trackpad. Programmable for left and right clicks. Gesture support.

Up to 8 GB of RAM.

10:07 "There can be multiple people looking at the document, and they can leave notes to each other about the whole document."

"Again, it's a beta. It launches today. You can get to it from iWork '09, which is shipping today."

iWork.com beta launches today. Get to it via the new iLife

10:04 AM Demo of iWork.com

"In my spare time I'm a rocket scientist."

Toolbar button shares documents in just a few clicks.

Web-based viewer for shared documents. Looks like Pages, works in any browser.

"It looks like Pages, but I'm really at iWork.com"

Download copies of documents (even MS Word versions) from web interface.

10:03am iWork.com is a new service to share documents.

"iWork.com: This is a really cool idea. It's a new service for you to share your iWork documents with other people."

view documets online, add notes, download a copy in multiple formats.

10:01am "You can keep [charts in Numbers and documents in Pages] linked, so every time you change the chart in Numbers it's automatically updated in Pages."

iWork is $49 when purchased with a new Mac. Starts shipping today.

$169 Mac Box Set features Leopard, iWork and iLife - Ships end of January

9:58am Numbers. This year Apple focused on adding features customers asked for.

"And the third product in iWork '09: Numbers."

"This year we focused on all those features customers told us they really wanted added [to Numbers.]"

Categorize by Column feature dynamically rearranges tables.

Easier formula creation

New Chart options.

multiple axis charts, trend lines...

[Guy sitting behind us takes a phone call WTF!!!]

Linked charts can update information in Pages documents.

9:55 Pages demo

Full screen view (Finally!) Blocks out background stuff.

Dynamic Outlines.

Control indent levels, font sizes, easy reorganization.

Mail Merge can connect to tables in Numbers, Support for MathType and EndNote.

Pages 09 features 40 new templates for posters, newsletters, fliers, certificates...

9:54 "Keynote Remote will be sold in the App Store for 99 cents. As you can see, we've already given it a five-star review."

9:53 Chart animations and textures.

New Keynote themes

New keynote remote... it's an iPhone app!

Uses wifi. (no Bluetooth?)

9:49am New version of iWork, iWork 09

"We have a completely new version of iWork as well."

"Keynote '09. It's what I'm doing this presentation on, so you know it's rock solid."

Magic Move creates automatic slide transitions.

Object transitions. Cool animated transitions.

"Simple, powerful object transitions you can combine with other techniques to make powerful presentations."

Text transitions.

Wow... Bush transitioned into Obama

everyone laughs

9:48am "There's new versions of iWeb and iDVD as well."

New versions of iWeb and iDVD. $79 upgrades. 99 Family pack, Ships late January.

9:46am Demo from John Fogerty. He sort of remembers creating Proud Mary.

"I've always thought D was just a bright, uplifting sound. A beautiful sound." --John Fogerty, in the "Proud Mary" Artist Lesson. Neat!

9:46am "There's a built-in store in GarageBand where you download those bundled lessons, and you purchase the Artist Lessons. They're $4.99."

9:45 "Incredible artists. We're going to add more and more along the way. It's so amazing.

9:45 Artisit lessons "Hold your applause, because this is freakin' cool." [About Artist Lessons]

Artist Lessons feature John Fogerty, that Colbie chick from Myspace, Sting, Norah Jones, Ryan from One Reupblic teaches you to play Apologize. Woooooo!

9:43am Demo of guitar lessons.

Shows chord fingerings alongside video demo.

9 basic guitar lessons, 9 basic piano lessons

9:41am New GarageBand.

"I'd like to show you just one more [iLife app]: I'd like to show you GarageBand."

Learn To Play teaches you to play guitar or keyboards.

"The team has been challenged to create a piece of software that can help you learn to play an instrument. It's called Learn to Play."

Features instructional videos.

BTW, MacLife's new album will drop in 09. Thanks Apple!

9:41 Phil's back

Phil: "Isn't that incredible?" (Who else says that?)

9:40 [demos finished film] "So you can see how professional that looks."

9:38am Map animations. Search locations as you type. Automatically creates animated maps.

New transition, new animated titles, 5 new themes.

Demo thesmes. Featuring adorable meerkats.

9:38 "This clip is slowed down, stabilized, and has the Aged Film effect. No rendering, all done in real time."

9:35am Video stabilization demo. Impressive! Chasing a gazelle from a Jeep. Yeah, we chase Gazelle at the Mac|Life compound all the time. this is perfect for us.

"All I had to do was drop it in and the video stabilization takes place."

Speed adjustments happen instantly.

9:35 [Precision editor demo] "Now we've extended the audio from the first clip into the second clip. As you can see, this is a pretty complex edit. In a pro tool, this would have taken a lot of steps. But we do it in an easy, visual way."

9:31am Randy, apple engineer demos the new iMovie.

Context sensitive menus for drag& drop editing.

Idyllic videos of cute kids and grandpas fishing.

Easy voiceover edits.

New Action pop-up allows you to view footage bedore & after a specific edit.

9:30 "iMovie will take your video and automatically stabilize it so that footage that wasn't usable before" looks smooth and even.

9:28 New version of iMovie. Last year, Apple completely re-wrote iMovie.

"We decided to rewrite a completely new version of iMovie [last year]. And not every feature was there for every customer. ... Well, this year in this version of iMovie '09 we've added so much depth and so much power, we think it's going to be something every customer is blown away by and really loves."

Advanced Drag & Drop, featuring context-sensitive menus.

Indiana Jones-style animated travel maps.

Automatic video stabilization

9:27 "I hope you're as excited about this as I am. And that's just the first of all the new products in iLife '09. If that's not exciting enough, we've got a brand-new version of iMovie as well." [Extremely weak smattering of applause]

9:25am Places demo..

Click pins on a map to view all the photos taken in that location.

"It's really that easy to add location to all my events." [It is, too, it took him about 4 seconds.]

Geotagging maps are really cool.

Column view lists all the places you've taken pictures. Similar to Browse feature in iTunes.

9:25am "Imagine this is a family here and you want to keep track of all of them at once. I can drag across here and it creates a smart album with all those people in it.Drag-and-drop Smart Albums with groups of people."

9:23am "With a little bit of help, iPhoto can do a better job of finding people who are absolutely Ali." [The girl in his demo pictures.]

9:20am Live demo of iPhoto 09. Lots of perfect pictures. Face recognition working almost instantly (on perfectly shot and framed images).

9:20am "You can print not only on the sleeve [of the books], but on the hardcover as well. These are gorgeous new books."Updated book themes, including maps that incorporate geotag data.

9:18am "Did you notice how the face are right in the center of the photos? They weren't taken that way." The Faces feature centers faces in your slideshow.

Shattered theme. Audience oohs and aahhhs.

Sync slideshows to you iPhone or iPod touch.

9:17am Slideshow Themes. Demo has Snoopy music!

9:16am "Facebook allows other people to name people in your photos. One of your friends in Facebook can assign that person a name, and it gets synced right back down to your iPhoto." [Applause]

Flickr support includes geotagging info.

9:15am Support for Facebook and Flickr, "We have support for some online services; if you use Facebook or Flickr, that's built right in."

9:13am "It's really easy for you to add a location to your entire database of photos if you want them placed on the map for you."

Maps come from Google Maps.

"If you've ever used Google's Map service, you know how to use this map."

9:12am: iPhoto reverse-encodes your camera's geotag to place photos on a map. Can add locations to photos that don't have geotag information.

9:11 AM "Wouldn't it be great if iPhoto could organize your photos around where they were taken?"

Places: iPhoto can organize your photos around the places where the photos were taken. Works by GPS geotagging.

9:11 "There's no perfect face recognition in anyone's software, but this is the best technology we have found."

9:10am New button allows you to name people in photos. Face recognition will find the same person across multiple photos. Learning face recognition system.

9:09am "Wouldn't it be great if iPhoto let you organize your photos around your favorite people? Well, that's what's in iPhoto 09. We've added a new feature called Faces."

"Faces uses a technoloy called Face Detection. When you go into an event, I click on a picture, there's a new button at the bottom that says 'Name this person.' Because iPhoto wants you to tell it who these people are."

Organize your photos around specific people. Uses face detection technology

9:08am "As much as some people up north think they have something pretty good, there is NOTHING as good as iLife on any other personal computer."

What's new: New version of iPhoto. New feature called Faces.

9:07 "We have the best product line we've ever had for the Mac." Here here.9:07 "We have the best product line we've ever had for the Mac." Here here. First new thing: iLife '09!

1. An entirely new version of iLife, ilife 09.

9:07 AM Three new things today.

9:06AM All about the Mac toda. 9.7 Million Macs last year. Growing twice as fast as the rest of the industry.

9:05 "I look at this big, gorgeous glowing Apple ... and I can't think of any other company that could have their logo up there." 3.4 million customers per week visit Apple stores around the world. 100 Macworlds each week.

9:04 AM Pictures of Beiging, Munich & Sydney stores

9:03 "I can't tell you how much I appreciate you all showing up." [Laughter]

9:04am: Phil takes the stage. Phil is NOT wearing a black turtleneck

9:03 Lights down, here we go!

9:00am: Voice from the ceiling reminds us not to be jerks and turn our cell phones off. How long until a cell phone goes off? I'm guessing 20 min.

8:56am: Almost there...

8:48am: Inside sitting down. Listening to Jack Johnson. What a surprise!

The Mac|Life staff live blogs from the Macworld Expo Philnote. Check back at 9am PT for up to the minute updates straight from the keynote floor.

The 5 Best--and 5 Worst--Macworld Expo SF Moments of All Time, Ever!

Michael Simon — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:51:45 -0600

While Steve’s decision to play hooky during his keynote presentation may have hung a black banner over the whole of this year’s San Francisco Macworld Expo,we’re still holding out hope for big things from Apple’s final Macworld Expo appearance. Sure Phil Schiller has a tough act to follow, but even if his solo gig bombs, we’ll always have the good and not-so-good of Stevenotes past:

iCEO
When Steve Jobs made his triumphant return to Apple in 1997, it was at Macworld Boston when he greeted his adoring fans, who gave their interim CEO a prolonged standing ovation. Three years later--after already taking the company in bold, new directions with the iMac and iBook--he dropped the "interim," added a lowercase "i," and proclaimed (to another extended ovation): "It’s the best job in the world." The rest of the keynote was dedicated to something called OS X, but Steve had us at, "You guys are making me feel funny."

TiBook
Few Apple products were as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as the Titanium PowerBook G4, unveiled in 2001. Unlike anything the industry had ever seen, the TiBook shaved the PowerBook G3's girth down to just 1 inch,added a 500MHz G4 processor, slot-loading optical drive, and flipped the illuminated Apple on its head. But what really set it apart from the crowd was Jonathan Ive's industrial design, with clean, painted lines, two-tone metallic flourishes, floating hinges and recessed keys,all built around a crisp, "mega-wide," ultra-bright display that redefined portable. Of course, Steve neglected to tell us the hinges would break and paint would chip, but would anyone have really cared?

Sunflower iMac
So what if Time spilled the beans a few hours early? Long overdue to replace its aging, bubble-butt ancestor, the sunflower-inspired iMac was an instant classic, even if most of the audience already knew what it looked like. A brilliant design that still turns heads today, the iMac G4 was a testament to simplicity and, as Steve so succinctly put it, “a beauty and grace that’s gonna last the next decade.” As it rose out of the floor and rotated ever so seductively, enticing the crowd like a runway model as its proud papa beamed in the distance, we all knew Apple was here to stay.

iPhone
The rare Macworld Stevenote that made little more than a passing mention of the Mac, the 2007 keynote will forever be remembered for Jobs’ tantalizing, almost whimsical lead-in to the iPhone capped off with: “Today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products ... a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough Internet communications devices. ... Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it iPhone.” We hadn’t even seen the thing yet, and already we wanted one.

Power Mac G3
After transforming the consumer desktop just eight months prior, Steve set his sights on Apple’s pro model for his 1999 Macworld SF keynote. Already a robust machine but showing signs of age, Steve retired the boxy, PC-ish tower and unveiled a stunning design that would serve Apple through to the G5 (save some graphite and a mirror or two). With a hinged side door for easy access to the motherboard, sturdy handles for portability, and sleek, industrial accents, the lengthy introduction to the blue-and-white G3 (which included His Steveness' first public Intel bake-off) proved once and for all that Apple was on a mission to make the desktop exciting again.

Burton Amp Jacket
Sandwiched in the 2003 Stevenote between Final Cut Express and Airport Extreme was the biggest “Huh?!” moment of the conference. Back when the iPod was still trying to find its footing, Apple teamed with Burton Snowboards to create the "the world’s first and only wearable electronic jacket with an integrated iPod control system." To make matters worse, the $499 covering--or a shade under a grand when bundled with a 20GB iPod--was rendered obsolete three months later, since Apple apparently forget to add iPod 3G connectivity for the jacket that Phil Schiller so recently described as "so cool."

iPod mini
The year was 2004, and the masses already had one foot on the iPod bandwagon. So, when rumors began to swirl around the release of a smaller, possibly colorful, more affordable iPod at Macworld, all eyes were on Steve, who broke out his patented "One more thing" for the occasion. And what a thing it was: small, lightweight,aluminum-wrapped, vibrant, Clicky and super-cool. What wasn’t so cool was the price (which Steve oddly unveiled before showing us what it looked like): $250 for just 4GB and no dock. The crowd was so stunned,they barely applauded. Of course, that didn’t stop 100,000 people from pre-ordering, but imagine how many $199 impulse buys Apple missed out on.

14-inch iBook
About an hour before the flat-panel iMac G4 dropped everyone’s jaw, another release induced more than a few yawns. Answering calls for a more full-figured consumer portable, Steve took the wraps off the 14-inch iBook, which was, well, a 14-inch iBook. With the same resolution,processor and hard drive as its 12-inch little brother (but a slightly more robust battery), the bigger ’Book wasn’t quite what we were hoping for. Wisely, Apple split the difference and hit the sweet spot with the 13-inch MacBook, but we’re still scratching our heads over the 14-inch iBook.

BYODKM
We didn’t expect a G5. And we certainly didn’t think $499 would include a Mac and a Studio Display. But when rumors of a low-cost Mac grew louder in the days leading up to the 2005 Macworld San Francisco Stevenote, we figured Apple would at least supply a keyboard and mouse. A product introduction that began with Steve asking, “Why doesn’t Apple offer a stripped-down Mac that’s more affordable?” ended with many would-be switchers rummaging through their attics for a spare PS/2 to USB adapter.

Randy Newman
With all due respect, we were hoping for a little sweeter cherry on top of last year’s keynote than the one we got: a performance of “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and some shameless cross-promotion for Jobs’ other company. We were able to deal with John Mayer’s metrosexual crooning following 2007’s classic iPhone presentation, but Randy Newman after the above-our-pay-grade MacBook Air was just too much. And now that we know it was Steve's lasting Macworld image, we’d like it stricken from the record altogether.

Expo 09 Rumor Roundup: Part 1

Florence Ion — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 07:24:21 -0600

Surely you’ve marked your calendars for the annual, and now final, Macworld Expo keynote on January 6. But, what Apple keynote would be complete without its own string of bustling Internet rumors? This year, we’re hearing that Apple might upgrade some of our favorite products, including the Mac mini and the iPhone. Read on to check out what Macworld Expo 2009 could have in store for Apple fanatics.

According to sources over at Wired, we can expect the unveiling of a new Mac mini to replace the compact Apple computer that we all became so fond of. The mini hasn’t seen an upgrade since August 2007, with most Apple computers receiving hardware upgrades every six months or so.

Speculators believe that the Mac mini will come equipped with either an Intel 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo or a 2.3 GHz Core 2 Duo, with the ability to upgrade from the standard 2GB of RAM to 4GB. The higher-end mini is alleged to contain an Nvidia chipset, following in the trend of its MacBook brethren. The minis will cost $500 and $700, respectively. However, don’t count on any Blu-Ray drives—Mr. Jobs isn’t too fond of the technology.

The likelihood of an iPhone nano has also managed to penetrate the rumor mill. With the success of the iPhone, it’s no wonder such a theory exists. The idea of a bite-sized iPhone came from iDealsChina, a site that claims XSKN is manufacturing skins for the device. Though the source seems unreliable, iPhone nano rumors have been circulating for some time. There are also theories on whether or not the handheld will include the App Store or possess GPS capabilities, considering its compact size.

And finally, there’s the possibility that Snow Leopard might be shipping earlier than expected, based on whether or not the new Mac OS X upgrade will debut at Macworld. An article over at The Guardian overseas mentions Snow Leopard’s integration of both Grand Central and OpenCL, both of which will dramatically improve processing performance.

What about Apple TV? We've been wondering that ourselves. We have heard a few murmurs about a Mac mini/Apple TV hybrid. We can't find any real evidence, but it would be nice to have an Apple TV with a DVD drive and DVR capabilities.

Also, if you haven’t heard, this is the last year that Apple will exhibit at Macworld. Unfortunately, Jobs won’t be there to deliver the keynote either. Hopefully, Apple will make its last year at Macworld one of the most memorable.

Heard an exciting rumor? Drop it in the comments below.