MacDirectory Magazine

Winter-Spring 2010 (#44)

MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.

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110 MacDirectory REVIEW MAC BOX SET WORDS BY TREY YANCY The year 2009 marks the 10 th anniversary of the introduction of iMovie, the iconoclastic application that turned millions of average people into video editors and that turned the heads of such film icons as Francis Ford Coppola. Beginning life as a free download, it would be joined by iDVD and iPhoto, and eventually Garage Band and iWeb, to form iLife, the best free bundle of software available on any platform. While iLife may get all the glory, its sister product, the productivity bundle iWork, is an excellent suite in its own right. Offering a combination of Pages, an intuitive and fun page layout program, Numbers, an excellent spreadsheet application, and Keynote, a best of class (and also downright fun) presentation program, iWork 09 also has a lot to offer and at a very reasonable price of $79. Upgrading to a new Mac is not always an option, so iLife '09 is also available for the bargain price of $79. While both iLife '09 and iWork '09 are available separately Apple has combined the two and tossed in a copy of Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) in a $169 bundle entitled Mac Box Set. Available only for Intel-based Macs, the box set provides eight excellent applications and a copy of OS X all for a couple of dollars less than the suggested retail price of a copy of Microsoft Excel 2007. Not bad at all. Due to space limitations, we cannot cover everything in detail in one review, so for further reference to Snow Leopard, please refer to MacDirectory 's Final Cut Studio review in the Fall/Winter 2009 issue or visit . For more detailed information about the features of the iLife and iWork components, pay a visit to Apple's Web site at and click on the link on the lower left for Apple Software. This said, here are a few highlights: Keynote My favorite iApp by far is Apple's PowerPoint killer, Keynote. It is easy, intuitive, and if you have the time and imagination, its animation tools can produce results that are impressive enough that you can easily integrate the results into your latest high-profile Final Cut or Premiere project, complete with an alpha channel (transparent background). The only serious limitation in this regard is that video exports cannot include a presentation that itself includes video. While the presentation can be output in various formats (including iPod video, YouTube and QuickTime with manual advance) it cannot, for obvious reasons, be output as an Excel file without tossing out the advanced animation and cinematic effects. While Apple has a bad habit of burning bridges, fans of previous versions can access most "obsolete" effects such as droplet via the preferences panel. By the way, Keynote 08 is incompatible with Snow Leopard, so this is a great time to upgrade. One last note for iPhone users, the Keynote Remote app is a definite must-have item.

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