Archive notice: This article was originally published on January 6, 2009. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Apple today introduced iWork ’09, the latest version of its popular productivity software suite, offering powerful new features without sacrificing Apple’s legendary ease of use. Alongside enhanced object transitions that automatically animate objects with a selection of effects, Keynote ’09 includes Magic Move, an innovative way to create sophisticated animations using a simple transition. Pages ’09 offers a new full-screen view that helps users focus on writing, as well as an outline mode for organizing their thoughts. Numbers ’09 provides a fast way to group and summarize data and a dramatically simplified method for creating complex formulas. Apple also introduced iWork.com Public Beta, a new service under development for sharing iWork ’09 documents online.
“Millions of Mac users have fallen in love with iWork,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With iWork ’09, Apple continues to demonstrate that innovation is possible in office productivity software and that creating impressive presentations, documents and spreadsheets does not have to be complicated.”
Keynote ’09 introduces Magic Move, a feature that uses a simple transition to automatically animate the position, size, orientation and opacity of images, graphics or text that recur on subsequent slides. The new text transitions transform text from one slide to the next. The new enhanced object transitions animate objects as they leave one slide while objects on the following slide can simultaneously be animated with a variety of effects. 3D Charts now offers cylindrical shapes, beveled pie charts, new surface textures and four new 3D design effects. With the Keynote Remote application, available separately from the App Store, users can view both slides and their own presenter notes on an iPhone or iPod touch and control the presentation itself.
The new full-screen mode in Pages ’09 makes it possible to focus on the document without distractions, displaying the menu bar, formatting palette and page navigation only when desired. Outline mode includes templates for quickly creating a basic document structure. It also makes it easy to hide, expand and rearrange elements, including inline graphics. MathType 6 support helps engineers, mathematicians and students easily insert sophisticated equations into documents, while EndNote X2 enables users to add and edit bibliographic references quickly. Pages ’09 also includes 40 new Apple-designed templates, including newsletters, posters, certificates and coordinated stationery.
Numbers ’09 offers an excellent way to categorize data quickly in columns, which can then be hidden, expanded or summarized, making large amounts of data easier to manage. Creating formulas in Numbers ’09 is also dramatically simplified by an improved function browser. It includes built-in help for more than 250 functions, as well as visual placeholders with tooltips explaining every variable in a formula. The new formula list displays all formulas across the entire spreadsheet, and a click takes users directly to each cell and its formula. Enhanced chart options include mixed chart types, dual-axis charts and the ability to add trend lines and error bars. Charts from Numbers inserted into Pages or Keynote are linked and can be updated at any time with a single click.
Apple also introduced iWork.com Public Beta, a service under development that allows iWork ’09 documents to be shared online. Using an Apple ID, users simply click the iWork.com icon directly in the toolbar of a Keynote, Pages or Numbers document to upload it and invite others to view it online. Users can comment on the document online, leave messages and download a copy in iWork, Microsoft Office or PDF format. An online summary list of all shared documents shows when someone has left a comment.
Prices & Availability
iWork ’09 is available immediately through the Apple Store (www.applestore.de), Apple Retail Stores and authorized resellers for €79 including VAT. When purchasing a new Mac through the Apple Store (www.applestore.de) or Apple Retail Stores, customers can buy iWork ’09 at the reduced price of €59 including VAT.