By Richard Shim, 12 January 2005 08:40
NEWS
Apple announced its iWork '05 productivity software suite as part of a cavalcade of products putting it on a collision course with Microsoft and its Office suite.
Apple chief Steve Jobs announced iWork '05 on Tuesday at the Macworld trade show. The £49 package includes Pages, a new word processing program developed by Apple, and an updated version of Keynote, a slideshow application Apple introduced two years ago. The company also introduced the £339 Mac Mini, new flash-memory-based iPods and other releases.
The software will be available worldwide on 29 January.
The Mac maker's current AppleWorks productivity package has achieved only modest market share, mostly in educational settings, and the company's FileMaker database software has never posed a significant threat to Microsoft's similar Access.
However, Jobs said one of the major advantages of iWork will be its integration with the Mac OS X operating system. "iWork is a product we've created from the ground up to take advantage of OS X," he said during his speech.
Pages and Keynote 2 will also be integrated with Apple's updated version of iLife, iLife '05, which includes new versions of iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and the latest version of iTunes.
Pages allows consumers to create letters, newsletters, reports, brochures and resumes while also making it easy to drag and drop photos from iPhoto into documents.
Photos will also be easily inserted into Keynote 2 using iLife as will movies and music.
Richard Shim writes for CNET News.com.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Jona Appold
Just as iPhoto isn't looking to knock-out Photoshop, Pages isn't trying to knock-out Word. I'm sure many people will carry on using these new killer integrated iApps right-along with the bigger, established products. Maybe in the future that will change (like their Video-Editing, and Music Production suites), but for now I think the title of this article is a bit off. Regardless I can't wait to check it all out!
2. Don Tregartha
Imagine a WP that you don't spend hours faffing around with.
I use iphoto and Photoshop, but if I just want to dump some pics off the camera, redeye them and balance the colour - iphoto is the app. For pre press and masking etc, Photoshop.
Try just getting Word to simply knock out a proposal with a few pics in it, or a 4 column contact report - no wonder I'm losing my hair! Apple apps just work, no fuss. How about a spreadsheet Steve?
3. Stuart Vine
Agree with Jona - iWorks is more like MS Works on the PC - at the moment. Many of us don't really care who makes the software, as long as it has the functionality and interoperability we need for our jobs. At the moment, that tends to mean MS Office - in the future it may be something different.
4. anonymous
Don, You don't use word much do you. As an IT Admin i avoid word processing whenever possible (a job for PAs)