Apple today introduced iWork ’09, the latest version of Apple’s popular office productivity suite, which adds powerful new features without sacrificing Apple’s legendary ease of use. Keynote ’09 introduces advanced object transitions, which automatically animate objects with a choice of effects and Magic Move, an innovative way to create sophisticated animations just by applying a simple transition. Pages ’09 features a new Full Screen view that helps you focus on your writing and an outline mode to organize your thoughts. Numbers ’09 introduces a quick way to group and summarize data and a dramatically simplified way to create complex formulas. Apple also announced iWork.com public beta, a new service Apple is developing to share iWork ’09 documents online.
“Millions of Mac users have fallen in love with iWork,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “With iWork ’09, Apple continues to demonstrate that innovation is possible in office productivity software, and that creating impressive presentations, documents and spreadsheets doesn’t need to be complicated.”
Keynote ’09 introduces Magic Move, which allows you to apply a simple transition to automatically animate the position, scale, rotation and opacity of any image, graphic or text that is repeated on consecutive slides. New text transitions morph text from one slide to the next. New advanced object transitions animate objects off one slide while simultaneously animating objects onto the next slide with a choice of effects. 3D charts now include cylinder shapes, beveled-edge pie charts, new textures and four new 3D build effects. The Keynote Remote application, sold separately in the App Store, lets you view slides and presenter notes and control your presentation with your iPhone or iPod touch.
Pages ’09 Full Screen view lets you focus on your document without any distractions and reveals the menus, format bar and page navigator only when needed. Outline mode includes templates that help to quickly build the framework for your document and allow you to collapse, expand and rearrange elements, even inline graphics, with ease. MathType 6 support lets engineers, mathematicians and students easily add sophisticated equations to their documents and EndNote X2 integration lets users add and edit comprehensive bibliographic references. Pages ’09 also includes 40 new Apple-designed templates, including newsletters, posters, certificates and coordinated stationery.
Numbers ’09 provides a great way to quickly categorize data by column, which you can then collapse, expand and summarize to easily make sense of large sets of data. Numbers ’09 makes formula writing dramatically easier with an enhanced function browser which includes built-in help for over 250 functions, and visual placeholders with tool tips that explain each variable in a formula. Use the new Formula List to view all formulas in your entire spreadsheet and jump directly to any formula cell with a single click. Expanded chart options include mixed chart types, two-axis charts, and the ability to apply trend lines and error bars. Numbers charts pasted into Pages or Keynote are linked, and can be updated with a single click.
Apple also introduced iWork.com public beta, a new service Apple is developing to share iWork ’09 documents online. Using your Apple ID, just click the iWork.com icon in the Keynote, Pages or Numbers toolbar to upload your document and invite others to view it online. Viewers can provide comments and notes, and download a copy of your document in iWork, Microsoft Office or PDF formats. A consolidated online list of all your shared documents indicates when your viewers have posted comments.
iWork ’09 is now available through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of US$79. iWork ’09 is available for $49 with the purchase of any Mac through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.
iWork ’09 requires Mac OS X version 10.4.11 or Mac OS X version 10.5.6 or later, a Macintosh computer with an Intel processor, PowerPC G5, or 500 MHz or faster PowerPC G4, 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended), 32MB of video RAM, QuickTime 7.5.5 or later, a DVD drive for installation and 1.2GB of available disk space. iWork.com Public Beta is not included with the purchase of iWork ’09. Account setup and activation are required. Fees may apply. Internet access and iWork ’09 are required.
More info: iWork ’09
iWork 08 is good enough for me, nothing compelling here.
I did order iLife09 and can’t wait.
I just watched the iWork video on Apple’s website and Steve Jobs looks really healthy to me. He even looks like he may have had a little work done on his face.
Wow, great! You still can’t add a sound fx to an event like transition, there still is no support for layers (anyone who ever worked with stacked images will know what i mean), there still is no way to zoom like in a normal graphic app, there still is no way to define shortcuts, there still is no support for scripts or plugs, there still is no way to globally change a font (example: change all Meta to Officina in slides 12 – 31) and there still is no standalone player for Windows. Great work Apple!
Here’s hoping that Pages and Numbers are also a little (or a lot) more compatible with their Microsoft counterparts. Usually they work pretty well, but I do get the occasional incompatibility with more complex files. It’d be nice if there was 100% compatibility.
One thing i’ve notice is that you could now save your doc in word format without going to export.
Outlines, equations and EndNote X2 support in Pages.
Mixed chart types, two-axis charts, trend lines and error bars in Numbers. Possibly some important new functions. (Have to scan the full list to check that one.)
Linked Numbers charts in Pages and Keynote.
Coming soon, online document commenting.
This is a very important update that addresses many complaints and makes iWork a viable alternative to <spit>Microsoft Office</spit> for many more people than before.
Jonas: You will never see a standalone player for windows until windows has the same core libraries as the mac operating system.
Scripts and plugins are probably the same. Which ones are you so desperate for that you will commit suicide tomorrow because they aren’t there?
What about Mini?
How many times will I feel ripped-off by Apple after the Christmas season.
Apple intros the new iLife and my BRAND NEW MACBOOK doesn’t have it.
I am sick of buying software that I ALREADY HAVE with a few improvements FOR FULL PRICE. Why can’t I upgrade my software and not have to pay full price.
No more purchases of Apple products for Christmas… from now on it’ll be after Christmas.
And Apple needs to smarten up on the upgrade issue.
Jd,
This was Apple’s last MacWorld. You’re resolution might be a tad late. I suspect Apple will in future be announcing more things before Christmas than after.
I guess we’ll know this time next year.
‘Your’ not ‘you’re’.
Any chance of a edit or preview feature, MDN?
Passerby
I certainly hope you are right. But I am still Pi$$ed.
Also, I am not happy with the lack of a backlit keyboard on my Macbook. Considering it was $1600, it should have been included
for God’s sake, a SPLIT SCREEN feature in Numbers or I won’t touch it.
That means you can have columns on one side, and scrolling in a separate window. I can’t believe we had to wait for v.2.0 for this feature.
This one thing, kept me using Excel.
Has anyone downloaded this and tried it? Can you export your data in old iWork ’08 format? In other words, if I don’t end up buying it, did I just ruin all my data files that I opened and then saved?
The main reason I wanted ‘Split Screen’ is to lock the titles on long documents. Somewhere I read that this in included in Numbers ’09.
I feel you pain. There are maybe three new features in iWork ’09 that I want, but there is no way Apple is getting the full price of the product for me to upgrade from ’08.
C’mon Apple, wake up and give your existing iWork / iLife customers a means of upgrading!