Editorial

Posted on 13 Jan 2009 at 17:29

 

Gallery

This year's keynote may not have seen the launch of any headline-grabbing gadgets, but there's still plenty to get excited about.

Okay, so there was no new iMac and the Mac mini was passed over again, but I for one was happy with Phil Schiller's keynote.

The 17in MacBook Pro was sorely needing the update it got, as I've mentioned in this column before, and killing DRM across the board finally puts iTunes on a level footing with its competitors, even if it did herald the arrival of variable pricing.

But the big news for me is iWork 09. Up to version 08, AppleWorks' spiritual successor matured from a single presentation application, later joined by a confused layout/writing tool and an unconventional spreadsheet, into one of the best suites the Mac has to offer.

Finally, with EndNote compatibility, and a mail merge in iWork 09, it's starting to look like proper competition for Microsoft Office, the over-endowed alternative from a competitor primarily focused on Windows PCs. The only thing that's holding it back is Apple's stubborn pride.

And who can blame it? iWork is a showcase product that should have Windows users switching to the Mac in their droves, but until the default file formats switch to RTF (or Doc) and Excel, it's unlikely to find many business users giving it anything other than a cursory glance.

As our data becomes ever-more portable, the applications we use to create and edit it becomes ever-less important, and a program like Pages that doesn't create portable, universally-readable data by default will be considered less important than ever. I know you can export your documents, but that's missing the point; I want to click save and be done.

Switching to iWork - as I have for my personal correspondence and spreadsheets - locks you into Apple, and you'd better hope it doesn't stop shipping compatible updates to the suite. If it does, you'll be in the same boat as all those DiskDoubler users who can't access their archives under Mac OS X.

We'll bring you our full review of iWork (and iLife et al) in the next issue, and I'm hoping that by then Apple will have slipped out some more good news. A new iMac, maybe? Who knows. Maybe only Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller and Tony Bennett. He provided the traditional closing serenade to Schiller's keynote, and kicked off his set with The Best Is Yet To Come.

Does he know something we don't?

Author: Nik Rawlinson