So the much hyped Apple 2009 keynote speech at MacWorld has come and gone with maybe more media coverage than ever before. Seeing that Apple won’t be turning up to MacWorld in future coupled with Steve Jobs giving the speech a miss there was lots of expectation. All pressure was piled on Phil Schiller to keynote presenter to deliver the goods to the Mac faithful.
I thought it would be a very good idea to give a quick summary of what happened during the keynote from a software perspective and how it changes things for anyone concerned with online publishing especially for those that are bedroom publishers.
iLife ‘09
As expected Apple announced the an update to the ever popular iLife software suite including iPhoto, Garageband, iMovie and iWeb. I’ll leave out Garageband and iPhoto here as they are not really relevant. iMovie out of the four applications has had the biggest update in terms of features. The best new feature in my opinion is video stabilization which will reduce camera shake automatically when you import video directly into the iMovie application. The on stage demonstration of this was fantastic and clearly showed what a difference it can make to video. People recording their own video on smaller video recorders like I recently did with my Kodak Zi6 will see substantial results. The other new killer feature for people wanting to produce video content to publish without the luxury of a video editing suite will see an improved sequence editor that enables you to have greater control over soundtracks and frames with cutting different content together.
The easy to use home publishing tool iWeb also looks like it received a significant update with a now even slicker user interface. Website design templates have received an overhaul which makes a nice addition and there is now support for insertion of widgets. Widgets is a significant step forward for iWeb 09 meaning users can quickly insert maps, clocks, videos, RSS feeds etc into their web pages. For anyone wanting to publish a fantastic looking website on a cheap budget then they wont have to look much further than iWeb 09
- What’s new in iPhoto ‘09
- What’s new in iMovie ‘09
- What’s new in Garage Band ‘09
- What’s new in iWeb ‘09
iWork 09
The Apple office suite iWork also received an update which is linked into one of Apple’s major announcements iwork.com.Pages, Number and Keynote have all been updated with a new user interface improved graphical and analytical tools and new integration with the iwork.com service. The purpose of iwork.com is to allow you to share, save and access your work from any computer around the world and still have the ability to make changes when needed. I think the killer feature of iwork.com is the ability for users to share work with multiple users and then allow them to make comments for you to then see.
You can view information on all the applications discussed above here:
Apple have made significant updates here to software that allows you to publish content online which is always great. iWork is shipping now and iLife will be ready at the end of the month, both are much have applications if you use a Mac. The thing I love about Apple software is that they make it so easy for you to get content online, with website publishing becoming easier by the day due to the popularity of WordPress, Joomla et al its nice to see that the larger companies are also taking it seriously. Tools like video stabilization in iMovie are fantastic developments in the right direction and will allow people on limited budgets to publish professional videos quickly and easily but with a professional look and feel.
Once I get my hands on this software I’ll post a quick overview of my experiences.
