Any New Software at MWSF

[baldprof]

There's been lots of discusssion on these forums and others about new hardware, probably because of us all expecting the first Mactels. But what about the software side of things?

I can't recall having seen much on that. Won't there have to be something to help entice possible switchers?

 

[steven_lufc]

What's the likelehood of a Leopard preview, or will that be more likely in June?

 

[Lt Major Burns]

iLife '06. Updated iPhoto, iMovie HD, Garageband 3, iDVD and there's also rumours of a dedicated video library tool, in the vain of iTunes and iPhoto [which already have some video capabilities], but dedicated to video. just rumours though. they usually use the January MWSF to launch these iLife updates.

And also possibly iWork '06, which would presumably include Pages 2, Keynote 3, and maybe a speadsheet program, and a painting tool, basically bringing iWork up to the standard of the old claris/appleworks suite, which is very dated now, to replace it altogether.

 

[fryke]

New versions of iLife and iWork. A FrontRow update to 2.0 has been rumoured. Leopard preview: Nopee, that's reserved for WWDC in June (as you mentioned).

If an intel Mac is released, then we'll also hear a lot about universal binaries and, of course, Mac OS X 10.4.4 for intel Macs.

 

[serpicolugnut]

Don't forget Final Cut Express. It has been updated at MWSF in Jan for the last two years.

 

[powermac]

My wish list is really just for a new Apple office suite. I really want them to either totally rework Appleworks, or announce something new. Pages, in my view is more of a page layout, consumer level app than a word processor. In short, I want Apple to offer a nice, OSX style word processor, whether they call Appleworks or whatever.
I struggle with word processors, and can't seem to find one I really like. I use word mostly for my job, and it is a great word processor. Using it day in and day out is too much. I tried Mellel, and Mariner Write as well. Boy, I miss the days with Appleworks. The most recent version is still on my Mac, but for my report writing, it simply is too outdated.

 

[fryke]

I guess you have to accept that iWork _will_ replace AppleWorks. Clearly, AW has not seen a feature update in half a decade, and iWork is out to take its place. Pages will now, that it's been put through users' testing, get much-needed feature- and usability-updates, Keynote will probably get another theme or two (yes, that's sarcasm...) and we'll probably see an addition to the iWork suite. My guess is database, although the spreadsheet application would probably be needed by more people. (But database can be _themed_ more nicely, so that spreadsheets will just be the final missing puzzle piece next year, when iWork 07 finally becomes a real office suite?)

I have a love & hate relationship with wordprocessors myself. I wrote many of my early short stories in Microsoft Word 5.1a on my PowerBook 150 back then and switched to ClarisWorks when Microsoft went crazy with Word 6 (the worst version of Word for the Mac *ever*, it was a straight port from the Windows version, ultra-slow and much too bulky). Ever since, I've seen wordprocessors add features and trying to be "helpful", a heretic flaw in my opinion, so when I first had Rhapsody in my hands, I switched to TextEdit in order to write my stories. As a statement, really. Now, I often use TextEdit to start writing and then switch to Pages, because I like how it feels to write there. If you turn off hyphenation (which does very strange things if your system is in German), it works just fine.