Macworld Aftermath: A Closer Look At iLife, iWorkMacworld Aftermath: A Closer Look At iLife, iWork

While I disagree with how Apple went about announcing the end of its direct participation in Macworld Conference & Expo, I can't really be that harsh on it for doing so. Apple has been pulling out of shows at a fairly steady pace over the years, so decamping the Macworld Conference & Expo was more of a when than an if.

An Apple Macworld keynote is an interesting thing because in the end, it's a PR presentation. Things are announced, and the presentation is designed to get you in the mood to buy those things. Over the years, the Mac community has made the keynote into a lot more, but viewed dispassionately, it's about two hours of PR.

Phil Schiller gave this year's keynote (hence "Philnote"), and while he's not as good as Steve Jobs, he did a good job. And while he wasn't announcing anything earth-shattering, the content was not bad at all. (To be somewhat blunt, Steve Jobs has given less than a handful of earth-shattering keynotes. The rest have been fairly average, but the Mac Community has turned all of them into the pronouncements of a deity. So this keynote really wasn't any kind of nadir.)

Schiller skipped the usual financial slides (with the state of the stock market and economy, this was no surprise), and even though he was visibly nervous at the start, (who wouldn't have been?), he eventually found his groove, and showed off the three new products.

iLife '09

The first product was the latest version of Apple's "lifestyle" suite, iLife, now iLife '09. The suite contains 5+ applications: iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD, with iTunes being the "+", since it's occasionally part of iLife, but exists on its own outside of that suite. iLife '09 is bundled with every new iMac, although owners of older machines will need to pay for an upgrade.

iPhoto '09

The major changes in iPhoto wrap around two words: Faces and Places. Faces is Apple-ese for the new facial recognition code in iPhoto that allows you to pick a face in a picture, tag it with a name, have iPhoto find that person in every picture in your library and tag them in those pictures.

That's a pretty cool feature, especially for people like me, who initially tried tagging things all nice and detailed, and then gave up because it was annoying and tedious. Being able to find all the pictures I have of my son, or my wife, in one step is more than a little handy. Apple also tied Faces into iPhoto's "Smart Albums," so I can create a Smart Album that's tied to all the pictures of my wife, and any time I add pictures to my library that have her in the picture, they'll just show up in that Smart Album. You can also create Smart Albums with groups of people, so you could, say, create a Smart Album for your family, your kids, friends, or what have you.

In addition, Faces is tied into Facebook. So once Faces has tagged people in pictures, if you want to upload that to Facebook, you can add their Facebook ID to the picture, and when you upload the picture, it will automatically tag them in Facebook, too. The Facebook tagging is two-way, so if someone else tags other people in a picture, you can synchronize that with iPhoto, and have those tags added to your library.

Places is the name for the implementation of geotagging support in iPhoto. If your camera supports geotagging, iPhoto will automatically use that GPS info, along with Google Maps to create maps of where your photos were taken. If you don't have a GPS-enabled camera, you can manually enter this information, and iPhoto will still make use of it in the same way. Just as Faces works with Facebook, Places works with Flickr so that when you upload photos out of iPhoto that have geotagging information, they integrate into Flickr photo maps. In addition to Flickr, iPhoto's books can use the geotagging info to add maps into the hardbound albums that you can create in iPhoto.

iMovie '09

While Steve Jobs may have thought iMovie '08 was an amazing new version of Apple's consumer-class video editing product (and for many customers, it was a good product), for those used to iMovie '06's feature set, it was ... disappointing.

IMovie '09 aims to fix many of these complaints by adding/returning more advanced features, so that "consumer" isn't a synonym for "dumbed-down." The one that appeals to me the most, at least personally, is the advanced drag and drop, which allows you to move video and/or audio clips around the same way you would text in a word processor. Select, drag, and drop, or "video editing for people who don't care about the tape paradigm." This also allows you to drop just the audio from a clip, or create things like cutaways, picture-in-picture, and other effects via drag-and-drop.

Also new is the Video Stabilization feature, which allows iMovie to remove shaking and jitters from video clips, a common problem when using modern, ultralight cams. Other new features include a new Precision Editor, which magnifies the area you're working on, so you can see it more easily. (Like the Dock's magnification option in theory, if not implementation.)

Of course, iMovie '09 has new themes so you can create even prettier movies with less work using another option that was a crowd-pleaser, at least for my generation, Animated Travel Maps. Animated Travel Maps allow you to add maps to your clips, and then set up the "travel by moving red line" effect that anyone in the right age group recognizes as a staple of the Indiana Jones movies. In fact, had you been sitting near my row during the keynote, you'd have heard quite a few of us humming the opening notes to the Raiders Of The Lost Ark theme song while that feature was demonstrated.

GarageBand '09

GarageBand '09 adds the next logical feature: lessons. The big new feature for Apple's home recording studio application are "how to play guitar" and "how to play piano" lessons. Taking this concept one step further, Apple not only includes "generic music teacher guy" lessons, but Artist Lessons. So, want to learn how to play "Roxanne"? Sting shows you how, along with background on the song itself. Other artists include Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones, John Fogerty, and others.

Something of more interest to me, although not talked about during the keynote, are the new amp and stompbox modeling features, which allow guitar players to more faithfully model classic amps and different effects pedals. While not as PR-friendly as Norah Jones, any improvement in GarageBand's somewhat tedious guitar options is more than welcome. (Admittedly, guitars are a lot more work than keyboards for applications like GarageBand, but still, the old interface was more of a pain than it should have been.)

iWork '09

Along with the lifestyle applications, Apple's productivity suite, iWork '09 picked up some new tricks, including a new "flat" file format. Well, from early accounts, it's not a single monolithic file, but rather a zipped package, a la Microsoft's OpenXML files for Office 2007/2008. I've not had a chance to test.

Keynote '09

The big features in Keynote, unsurprisingly, are mostly based around animations and transitions. Then again, there's usually not much you can upgrade in a presentation program. The biggest animation upgrade is Magic Move, which allows you to select two slides with a common object (the demo showed cards), and Magic Move will automatically create an animation for the transition between those two slides.

In addition to Magic Move, which is slide-based, Keynote '09 allows for better text- and object-level transitions, which makes it easier to use animations within a slide for things like anagram text change effects, etc. Keynote's chart tool picks up new animations too, so you not only get new textures for your charts, but zoomy cool animations for building them. (I didn't get a chance to play with them, so I don't know how fine-grained the control over them is, but if Apple did it right, you could do some neat stuff with charts here.)

The last new Keynote feature isn't really part of Keynote, but rather a new iPhone application, Keynote Remote. Keynote Remote allows you to use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a remote for presentations. While I can't see myself using it much (the lack of physical buttons and the way you "slide" isn't a good fit for how I present), the fact that it works over Wi-Fi is pretty cool for reason both legitimate and mischievous.

Pages '09

Most of the improvements in Pages are what you'd expect: Full-screen view, an outliner, mail merge with Numbers, a new Template Chooser, etc. There are two that stand out to me, even though they seem minor. The first is the ability to send a Pages file as an e-mail attachment from within the program. You can send as Pages, Word, or PDF. I realize this seems like a picayune thing to notice, but it's something that people do a lot, and streamlining this process is a benefit. (It was important enough to me that I wrote a series of AppleScripts to do the same thing for Pages & Keynote '08.) This option exists across iWork '09, a welcome feature for quite a few people, even if they don't realize it.

The only downside is that you can only use Mail for this, so if you use some other client, you either have to do it manually, or write your own script to replicate this functionality. Yes, I know that Word only lets you use Entourage on the Mac, however, that's what I call "7-year-old logic." Just because Billy does something dumb every morning doesn't mean Stevie gets to do something dumb, too.

The second standout improvement is the new integration with Mathtype and Endnote. While not a major feature for the home user, for people in Higher Ed, the Sciences, and Legal arenas (or anyone needing to regularly create documents with formal citations or well-formatted equations), this makes Pages '09 a viable tool. I used to work at a science research company, and even a small paper would have a ton of equations, and even more footnotes, endnotes, and bibliography entries. Being able to set these up as you write, within Pages isn't a minor thing.

Numbers '09

Like Pages, Numbers '09 improvements are in the "well DUH" category: formula improvements, table improvements, better charts, better template chooser, etc. What wasn't talked about, and isn't even on the "What's New" section for Numbers on Apple's site is the addition of an AppleScript dictionary to Numbers, so you can finally automate the silly thing. Having had a bit of time to look at the AppleScript implementation, it's a decent 1.0 setup. You can't create formulas or complex spreadsheet operations via AppleScript, but you can do a decent job of setting up spreadsheets and some basic formatting.

iWork.com

Apple's new trick with iWork is the new iWork.com online service. It's billed as a way to "Share your iWork projects online." That's true, but it's easy to misconstrue this as some kind of way to enable multiuser access to iWork documents. That's not what it's for. What it looks like is more of a shared review site. If you think about Adobe's online/shared commenting workflow for Acrobat files, you're more in line with iWork.com's functionality.

The implementation is pretty simple; iWork.com will work with any e-mail address. One issue that needs to be fixed is that updating an existing document is still a fairly manual process, and you can't upload an update. Instead, you have to upload an entirely new version. Other limitations include the fact that you can only use Mail.app for notifying people about your shared files. IWork.com is not going to be perfect for everyone, but it's not a poke in the eye, either, and I can easily see a lot of benefit to it.

17" MacBook Pro

The third keynote item was an update to the 17-inch MacBook Pro. Yes, I know, it's huge, it's unwieldy, but for those of us who use them, they rock. The new models continue to rock as well, only just a little harder. The update gets them the new unibody construction, a better screen, with a higher resolution, 1,920 by 1,200, better color gamut, the new trackpad, and an antiglare option. Maximum RAM has been doubled to 8 GB, and there's an option for a 256-GB SSD drive. (Double that again, and it gets useful even for my insane needs.)

The bigger question is what does the 17 inches give you over the 15 inches: One additional USB port, bigger screen, much higher resolution (1,920 by 1,200 vs. 1,440 by 900), optional antiglare display, more VRAM standard on the Nvidia 900M GT card (512 MB vs. 256, although you can upgrade the 15-inch to 512 with a faster CPU option), faster standard and optional CPUs (the 17-inch model is 2.66 GHz standard, optional 2.93 GHz; 15-inch is 2.4/2.53 GHz standard, optional 2.8 GHz), more supported RAM (8 GB vs. 4 GB, although you can actually get 6 GB into the 15-inch), a longer-lasting battery (8 hours max vs. 5 hours max) and a bigger optional SSD drive (256 GB vs. 128 GB).

The disadvantages vs. the 15-inch model are: 0.03 inches thicker, 1.1 lbs heavier, 1.12-inch wider, 0.69-inch deeper, no user-replaceable battery, and swapping the hard drive/RAM is a bit harder. For people who use and love the 17-inch model, those are minor issues. For the people on the fence, those could be deal breakers.

One More Thing …

Of course, it's not a Macworld Keynote without the infamous "One more thing …" announcement. In this case, it was about the iTunes music store. ITunes is getting tiered pricing, with songs now going for 69 cents, 99 cents, and $1.29. However, by the end of the first quarter of 2009, all songs on iTunes will be DRM-free. If that seems like a trade to you, you're not alone -- I think so, too, although I have no proof either way. But it seems logical, and by going DRM-free, Apple neatly handles its DRM-related problems in places like Norway. Finally, the iPhone Music Store is accessible via 3G too, not just Wi-Fi.

Conclusion

So, as keynotes go, it was a bit muted, and noticeably shorter. Schiller skipped the usual financial/sales shtick, and got right down to business. Considering some of the marathon sessions Jobs has led, the Philnote was a huge improvement. As far as content goes, it was no worse than your average Jobs keynote, most of which have been fairly mundane. Face it, not every Steve Jobs keynote was the iPhone, or an entirely new product line. Schiller did a solid job, and I have to admit, closing out the keynote with Tony Bennett? Live? No complaints from anyone there.