The updated softwares – iLife’09 and iWork’09 – are definitely worth looking into. Again, these are not revolutionary changes to the two application suits, but a maturing of softwares that targets the general consumers, but sprinkled with professional features that are made easy to use. Yes, even your grandma can definitely do those edits with these new tools.

You can see the new features here at their respective pages – iLife’09 and iWork’09. But here are some of the more interesting new features.

Pages

With iWork’08, Pages had gain tools and features that can match Microsoft Word. The updated Pages in iWork’09, hopes to improve your workflow and productivity when you are writing your documents. The new Dynamic Outliner tool makes it easier to organize and structure your thoughts while the Full-screen mode helps you to focus without distractions from your other applications.

There is also a focus to integrate the various applications within the iWork suit. In Pages, you can now do mail merge with spreadsheets done within Numbers. Previously you can only do so with the Address Book. This will be popular with the business world as many uses the spreadsheet to consolidate business associates and contacts for mail distribution.

Other improvements includes the integration with MathType and Endnote for creating sophisticated mathematical equations and adding citations respectively.

Numbers

Numbers was introduced with iWork’08 and it had marginal success over the incumbent Microsoft Excel. Much of the complains were the small sets of functions that were available in Numbers. With iWorks’09, Apple has expanded the function list to include up to 250+ functions. There is also a new Formula List view that gives an overview of all functions used within a spreadsheet.

Numbers also includes a new feature that can create table categories based on datas in existing tables. There are also some new charting tools to give you attractive looking charts for presentation.

Also as part of the tighter integration among the iWork application, any charts from Numbers that are pasted into Pages documents or Keynote presentation are automatically linked to the Numbers spreadsheet. Any changes in Numbers will be reflected in Pages or Keynote when you update the chart.

Keynote

Keynote has become my main tool for creating attractive looking and interactive presentations, especially when Powerpoint feels much bloated and slow when compared to Keynote. What makes Keynote stand out is also the interesting transitions that you can apply to individual objects or slides. With iWork’09, Apple has added a few more bells and whistles to the list – Magic Move, Text and Object based transitions and more 3D charts and chart animation.

But what I like best in the new Keynote, is the availability of the Keynote Remote – using your iPhone or iPod Touch to remotely control your presentation via WiFi. You can view your presentation note on your iPhone screen, or also view the upcoming slides. To control your slide, you just need to swipe your finger across the screen on your iPhone.

iWork.com

Lastly, Apple also introduced iWork.com, a web-based service that allows you to share your iWork documents, presentations and spreadsheets to anyone with a browser. This works across most modern browsers and operating systems and also can be viewed in iPhone/iPod Touch.

iWork.com at the moment, is an open beta which anyone can subscribe to via iWork’09. With it, comes 1GB of space and each document will be up there for 120 days. Apple said that it will become a fee-based service when it is officially released but not much detail on how it will be charged. Hopefully, this will be provided to MobileMe users as a new service.

iWork.com allows you to upload your Pages document, Keynote presentation and Numbers spreadsheet online for you to share with others to view and to comment. You can’t let others edit the document, unlike Google Docs. But others whom you have invited to view that document, can leave comments and notes on the document.

Your uploaded file is presented as you created it, with the same layout, fonts, graphics and the user-interface is just like an iWork application, minus the editing tools.

When you upload, you are also given the options to prepare the files in various formats – iWork’09 or iWork’08, Microsoft Office and PDF - which your viewers can easily download in the format of their choice.

Though the functions of iWork.com is quite fundamental – upload for viewing and sharing – the potential of Apple to develop this as an online collaboration and editing tool is there, though Apple might not do so to protect the iWork suit.

With its cross-OS and browser interface, iWork.com can become a useful productivity tool for business users who are looking for instant feedbacks on their documents.

As the display of the document online is exactly as what you have done offline, iWork.com can also be portable presentation tool that you can have without having to lug your laptop around. Just grab any work station and you can have your documents ready for show and tell.

To buy or not to buy?

Like iLife’09, the iWork’09 suit costs S$138 for a single license and S$168 for a 5 license family pack. In the US, you can pre-install iWork’09 onto any new Macs purchased by paying additional S$72 but that unfortunately is not available in the Singapore Store.

So are the new features worth the money? If you are an iWork’08 user, the updated features might not be sufficient to pay for a completely new pack as there are no upgrade path for existing users. But if are still a Microsoft Office user, I’d strongly recommend that you have a look at iWork’09. Try iWork’09 free at this page and see for yourself.

The updated softwares – iLife’09 and iWork’09 – are definitely worth looking into. Again, these are not revolutionary changes to the two application suits, but a maturing of softwares that targets the general consumers, but sprinkled with professional features that are made easy to use. Yes, even your grandma can definitely do those edits with these new tools.

You can see the new features here at their respective pages – iLife’09 and iWork’09. But here are some of the more interesting new features.

Putting Faces and Places in iPhoto

The most exciting improvements to iPhoto, though might on first look mere cosmetic, is the introduction of Faces and Places. Those two, add to that with Events, gives you a much more intuitive way of organizing, viewing and sharing of your photos, as briefly touched on in this post at 37signals.

Apple realized that people don’t just want to find photos. Go back to iPhoto’s domain: it’s that situation where you have a bunch of photos and you want to look at them and share them. When you’re in that situation, you don’t just want to see random photos. You want to see and share photos of certain things. Like photos of your wedding, photos of your trip to Maine, or photos of that dinner in Paris. These are Events.

With Faces, iPhoto lets you easily sieve through tons of photos and group them of a particular person on an easily accessible page. Need to find all the photos of your wife or your Mom, just tag a few of the photos and let iPhoto identify the photos taken of them easily. Added with sync support to FaceBook, you can easily upload photos of your friends whom you had named in iPhoto, when synced will be converted into tags in FaceBook and your friends will be automatically notified about these new photos. My concern is how good the detection is when the person is not looking directly at the camera.

As for Places, you can track the photos taken at various places on your previous holidays, or find all the photos taken over the years at a particular spot in the country. However, as most of us won’t have a GPS-equiped camera (or iPhone, at least till last year), most of our photos need to be painstakingly geotagged for Places to be effective.

Themed slideshows and Travel Maps are beautifully done, but are mostly cosmetic than useful. How many Sliding Panels slideshow do you want to see before it becomes passe?

I’d love to use iPhoto just because of Faces and Places, but I’d think twice as I still prefer to organize my photos via the Finder than to have all my photos imported into the iPhoto Library, something which Aperture and Lightroom allows.

Pro-app features in iMovie

iMovie meanwhile, have a few new tools that you might find only in professional applications – video stabilization, precision editing of both the video and audio tracks, green-screen and picture-in-picture effects (need to activate advance functions to see them), just to name a few.

Video shooting is becoming more available now to consumers, from small handhelds like Flip Video, to traditional video cams from Canon, Sony etc to even higher-end DSLRs like Canon 5D MkII and Nikon D90, we will definitely see more home-made videos being shot. But as most of us don’t have access to steadycams, many if not most of our videos will be like watching the Blaire Witch movie. Having video stabilization built into iPhoto, a previously pro-app only feature, is a boost for all. To see it in action, see it here. However, do note that you will need to run your raw clips through iPhoto’s Analyze for Stabilization option before stabilization will be set, and it will definitely take time if your clips are long. This feature itself, is definitely worth the money paid for iLife.

The improved editing and effects tools will definitely push more consumers not just to shoot videos, but also to edit them and share them with friends and families.

GarageBand, iWeb and iDVD

GarageBand has become a popular tools not just for musicians to record and produce their music, but also for podcasters to mix their podcasts for their shows. It has also become a useful tool for ring tone creation for your iPhone. With iLife’09, GarageBand now takes on another role in your music life – as your personal music teacher.

They have included Basic Lessons, using videos and interactive features on GarageBand to teach you piano and guitar lessons. For more advance classes, you can even enlists help from famous artists like Sting, Sarah McLachlan and Norah Jones to teach you how to play their tunes. Though you will need to pay for these Artists Lessons via GarageBand’s built-in store.

IWeb wasn’t mentioned during the keynote but Apple’s collaboration with Facebook also extended to iWeb. When you link your iWeb site to your Facebook account, whenever an update is done to the site, a notification will be sent out to all your friends in Facebook. Other improvements includes updates to the widgets that you can add to your site – RSS feeds, YouTube videos and Google Maps and Adsense to name a few.

Nothing new in iDVD except probably some new themes to the mix.

To buy or not to buy?

So is it worth spending S$138 (S$168 for 5 License Family Pack) for iLife’09?

YES, if you want to make full use of the photos and videos you took. Apple has made these tools that will give your photos and videos an attractive and professional look and more importantly, in an affordable and very easy to use package.

Do check it out at the nearest Apple store and test them out.

Update: If you buy a Mac on or after January 6 that shipped without iLife’09, you can get the upgrade at a cool S$18 with Apple’s iLife Up-To-Date Program. Do read up the details on how you can get your upgrade before the end of March.

Just gonna make one – no new Mac mini, but a MacTV – putting the Mac into the AppleTV.

It will have at least 1 TB harddisk, with an option for an optical drive or a second harddisk, with mini Display Port, HDMI port, component video port and a mini DVI port. There will also be Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 support and 802.11n WIFI and BlueTooth built-in.

There will be a new Media Server software that will replace Front Row that can manage and edit media – a part iLife, part Front Row hybrid application.

There will also be an update to the Remote software for the iPhone that can control the new Media Server software, but also comes with a remote Touch Pad to serve as a mouse, and a full-screen keyboard so that you don’t need to BYOKAM.

Lastly, when you press Comd+Ctrl+SpaceBar+Z, a rainbow will form just on top of the Mac TV to give it a nice glow.

That’s my last minute Macworld 2009 prediction.

FJ de Kermadec posted on the Oreilly Digital Media blog about Apple’s pullout from Macworld 2010 and more importantly, what message Apple is sending out by having Phill Schiller doing the keynote instead of Jobs.

Slowly, progressively, Apple is laying the ground for the future. Saying that Apple has no “succession plan” appears to be very much a mistake. The first step in preparing Steve’s succession is to dissociate the presence of Steve on stage with the release of new products. Only then will Apple be able to successfully articulate anything about the future because only then will the public be prepared to take any replacement, no matter how brilliant, seriously.

In a word, yes, I believe this cancellation is the first major step in planning Steve’s retirement from a PR standpoint. It does not, however, mean that Steve is retiring. It merely means the company, and probably Steve himself, are thinking about the future. Any CEO should do that, and Steve’s unusual personnality should not let us forget that he is a very serious, dedicated CEO in many ways.

Perhaps we are looking at the next stage of the Apple evolution, right from the top.

Andy Finnell’s post about pricing of iPhone apps available now in the iTunes Store brings up quite a few issues not just about pricing, but also on known shortcomings of the iTunes Store that Apple should look into.

The problem that you’re likely to have, like most developers, is setting a price that you can live on. The temptation will be to price your app too low, such that developing the application isn’t sustainable. You might have the best of intentions, but in the end you’ll cause the premature death of your business before it even gets a chance. So why might you be tempted to price your iPhone application so low?

To be honest, as consumers, we will definitely prefer to see the continuity of the current pricing situations, aka more $0.99 apps. But as pointed out in Andy’s article, we’ll end up with many apps that stayed at version 1.0 with not much improvements or with developers dropping out of the market with the unsustainable pricing situation now.

Also with regards to the iTunes Store, with only two ways to sort through the apps in their respective categories, it will be difficult for developers to help push their apps to the top of the pile unless they price it attractively (either $0.99 or FREE) or they get the boost from advertising and marketing, which most of them won’t.

So which do you prefer? Should developers price their apps based on their value or keep as it is now and risk going into oblivion?

Hope you are well. The last we saw you, you and your doggy pals were going up a private jet to some place for a lengthy holiday with your owners. Fancy that right, after swallowing a mobile phone years ago, you have pretty much stepped up, even flying on Lear jets with your owners.

Since your trip, many things have happened. For example, people now can switch their telco operators from one to another without changing their numbers with a fancy name called number portability. Although it isn’t perfect, some people have jumped camp between GREEN, RED or ORANGE.

Also, wherever you happen to fly to with your owners, I am sure you would have notice this new phone that has been making waves over the past year. You know, from the fruit company that many loves and many more hate, called the iPhone. Its a phone which is unlike any other phones you have seen and it is one that is changing the way phones are being used. But I am sure you would have heard and seen enough to know that.

RED somehow managed to get a head start over you and ORANGE to launch the phone last week. The launch was quite a blast with their shop tied with a giant pink ribbon and thousands appeared just to grab the phone, even if it took them 6 hours or more waiting. I know because I was there. However, the price plans they offered on first sight, was decent but not superbly attractive, especially the part about data.

Basically it wasn’t good enough for me to switch camp. I have been Greenie for years and I would still want to stay Green. Just being able to watch soccer matches on my mobile for free makes it all worthwhile!

Since the launch, I have friends and colleagues who have taken up the offer and gotten their iPhones. It looks good. I played with their phones and it really felt good in my hands. I even spent time helping my colleague set up their phones and install apps. It was pretty easy out of the box. How many phones can you use out of the box without a manual?

My friends know that I have wanted the iPhone since it was launched last year. I even started downloading apps from my iTunes account so that I am prepared. Prepared for what?

Sparky, I am hoping that what your owners said to the press is true, that you will bring the phone by the end of this year. It’s almost September and only three months till Christmas.

Christmas, you know, the time when people gives presents to each other? I am sure you get doggy biscuits or some new leash to wear on your neck for Christmas. I will be over the moon if I can get the iPhone before Christmas.

I am sure your owners will begin talks with the people from the fruit company and considering that the phone will definitely be the best seller for some time, your owners will definitely want a piece of this pie before they start jumping to the RED camp.

I know they have been busy, like launching Demand TV, putting up trials for the Mobile TV or maybe it was the recently concluded Olympics…but can you just give them a little nudge and make them do that a wee bit faster?

Furthermore, it will also give you another excuse to be on TV and the papers. Fancy eating an Apple soon Sparky?