Apple Updates Productivity Suite with iWork ‘09
Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is not at the show, said in a statement that the company "continues to demonstrate that innovation is possible in office productivity software," and making presentations, documents and spreadsheets "doesn't need to be complicated."
iWork.com Beta
As part of the iWork '09 release, Apple introduced a public beta of iWork.com for sharing documents online. The site is free during the beta phase and allows other users to write comments on posted documents and download the documents in either iWork, Microsoft Office, or PDF formats.
Each of the tools in iWork have new features. The presentation tool, Keynote, can automatically animate the position, scale, rotation and opacity of any image, graphic or text on consecutive slides. Apple calls it Magic Move. There are also a variety of other effects that work between slides, including text transitions and the ability to animate an object that goes off one slide and onto another.
Apple is also extending features to its other product lines so that the Keynote Remote application, sold separately, now allows a user to look at slides or presenter notes, or to control the presentation, from an iPhone or iPod touch.
Changes in the Pages application include the ability to see menus, format bar, and page navigator only when needed. Support for MathType 6 makes it easier to deal with equations, and support for EndNote X2 enables additions and editing of bibliographic references. There are also 40 new templates for posters, stationery and other uses.
'A Big Thing'
Numbers '09 improves formula writing with more than 250 built-in functions, and there are more chart options, such as mixed...