iLife '05, Keynote 2, Asteroid, and Other New Applications? [Updated]

[zelmo]

what does IMO mean?

In My Opinion. Sometimes a modest individual might even throw down an "IMHO."

 

[LethalWolfe]

I would be very surprised if iMovie got HDV support (HD is completely out fo the question, and 16:9 doesn't not mean HD). The format has been around for nearly 2 years and done squat. JVC's camera priced itself out of the consumer market and didn't deliver near enough quality for the pro market. Sony's offerings seem to be very cool and might be the ones to actually get the format off the ground, but it's to early to tell how well they will perform, and it will be years before HDV gets into the $1000 and sub-$1000 range (assuming the format doesn't die). The long of the short of it is, anyone who has the funds to buy an HDV camera but decides to edit on iMovie needs to have their head examined.


Lethal

 

[Punkwaffle]

Finance App

I remember reading not too long ago that Apple might be doing a new personal finance management app.
I for one would love this! If they could incorporate an envelope system (like Budget) it would be sweet- like SUGAR!!!

 

[molcas&e'sdad]

I remember reading not too long ago that Apple might be doing a new personal finance management app.
I for one would love this! If they could incorporate an envelope system (like Budget) it would be sweet- like SUGAR!!!

What a great idea Punkwaffle. I, for one, would welcome such an application given my hatred for quicken ...

 

[virus1]

AppleWorks is dead. Don't you understand that Apple has a deal with MS to abandon AppleWorks for continued development of MS Office for the Mac?

What apple (and you) is not seeing is that if they put some work into it, they could take down MSO. Then MS would stop trying, giving apple the full advantage. But i still don't see apple doing it, so i think that it is gone. Just like hypercard. Anyone remember hypercard? it didn't even carry over to os x.

the market for an all in one office app is not dead. my sister uses appleworks for everything.

 

[Earendil]

What apple (and you) is not seeing is that if they put some work into it, they could take down MSO. Then MS would stop trying, giving apple the full advantage. But i still don't see apple doing it, so i think that it is gone. Just like hypercard. Anyone remember hypercard? it didn't even carry over to os x.

the market for an all in one office app is not dead. my sister uses appleworks for everything.

Quite dedicated Mac Users don't want to use Microsoft office apps, and think they suck on some levels, what people aren't seeing is that they are a way to convince people to switch. I'm in the middle of getting my Boss to get an Apple Powerbook. She is the owner of a small business that doesn't have IT, She is her own IT, and isn't great at it. When I tell her that "Yes, all the Microsoft Apps are on Apple computers, here, look" and show her something that is familiar to her, it makes her more willing to switch.

Telling switchers that "yes, there is something better than Word" is going convince people about as fast as "Yes, there is something better than XP".

And on that note, if Apple made a Mac program to compete, wouldn't they also have to make a Windows version? How would you open files from your home Mac on your work PC?

Tyler

 

[moiety5]

And on that note, if Apple made a Mac program to compete, wouldn't they also have to make a Windows version? How would you open files from your home Mac on your work PC?

Tyler

AppleWorks is already made for Windows. But has been met with little success. With translators out there like MacLink etc. . . a Windows version wouldn't be necessary but would make another TERRIFIC trojan horse for Apple to seed to Windows users. If they made it free and open source and had terrific Office translation. . . well, it might just be enough to take down the Redmond Goliath.

But does anyone know anything about iLife '05 and Tiger only features?? (i.e. Core Image/Core Video dependent iPhoto/iMovie)

 

[mox358]

It seems like it this is going to be one of the best Macworld's I can remember. I know Steve can't possibly announce ALL of these rumored things, but its quite a pool to draw from. Am I the only one who thinks the headless iMac would be *great* for the platform in general, but don't really care about it? Its not a system I would consider buying, therefore I'm WAY more interested in the iLife update, and the unknown apps (hopefully Document and Spreadsheet *crosses fingers). I love the idea of the headless iMac, and I think its the right time for apple to implement such a plan. But if you're already a Mac owner (and lets face it, this iMac isn't being targeted at anyone on this board, we crave more power )the other apple announcements seem so much more interesting. Just throwing in my 2 cents.

 

[killmoms]

I wouldn't be surprised if they unveiled some sort of Photoshop killer. I don't think Apple is too concerned with stepping on Adobe's toes any more, seeing as Adobe kind of shafted them a few years ago and the relationship has maybe soured since. Adobe had the market kind of cornered with Premier, then Apple stomped it out with FCP. Same goes for AfterEffects. Not that AE is dead (yet) but Motion certainly crushes it from many angles.
The logical next step is image editing, which I think Apple is totally capable of doing well. This Core Image stuff seems powerful and this would be the obvious way to use it. The only thing I don't see Apple doing is any sort of a vector drawing or page layout app. Not that Quark or InDesign or Illustrator are that great, they could all use some modernizing but I just don't see Apple going there for some reason. Probably because that stuff is kind of boring in comparison and Apple is all about dazzle.

Hah, you only wish Motion could kill AE. In addition to having no 3D compositing abilities, Motion is pretty much a beta for sale on store shelves. The interface is far too complicated for the program, and really needs a complete redesign. It's unstable as all get out. In addition, the ability to access key-framing is cumbersome and while Behaviors are nice, they lack the control AE provides. For certain tasks, Motion is great, but it's nowhere near an After Effects killer.

Nor should it be, because regardless of what your opinion is, Apple NEEDS Adobe, and in fact Adobe needs Apple too. Did you know that over a quarter of Adobe's software sales are on the Mac platform? Not 2% like the market share, but 25%. Adobe's products are the most pirated software on the Windows platform—that problem is far smaller on the Mac side of the fence. Not to mention that Apple has been touting the superior performance of Photoshop on their boxes for years, accurate in all situations or not.

It's far more likely that Adobe will use Core Image in their next major version of Photoshop on the Mac. Why not? It'll be like dual-processor optimizations—not everyone has dualies, but those that do will appreciate the boost. People will still buy it for both platforms, Apple will get to brag that Photoshop is now WAY faster on the Mac than ANY PC. It might convince some PC-based design houses to switch. Either way it's more copies sold for Adobe, and it's code they didn't have to write themselves, just an API that they can implement.

 

[BWhaler]

It seems like it this is going to be one of the best Macworld's I can remember. I know Steve can't possibly announce ALL of these rumored things, but its quite a pool to draw from. Am I the only one who thinks the headless iMac would be *great* for the platform in general, but don't really care about it? Its not a system I would consider buying, therefore I'm WAY more interested in the iLife update, and the unknown apps (hopefully Document and Spreadsheet *crosses fingers). I love the idea of the headless iMac, and I think its the right time for apple to implement such a plan. But if you're already a Mac owner (and lets face it, this iMac isn't being targeted at anyone on this board, we crave more power )the other apple announcements seem so much more interesting. Just throwing in my 2 cents.

I agree 100% with you.

I highly doubt I will ever buy one of these Macs, but I am really glad Apple is offering them. Apple needs to stop the marketshare slide and needs a true, low risk, entry Mac.

Plus, the Apple brand impression in the average consumer's mind has moved enough from being about a niche odd computer company to a cool consumer product company. In addition, the pain level with Windows is getting very high for PC users.

The time is right for a 500 dollar machine. More people will be willing to take the jump because of the iPod experience and Microsoft's lack of quality.

 

[JFreak]

Quite dedicated Mac Users don't want to use Microsoft office apps, and think they suck on some levels

i have to disagree. microsoft excel for example is a great piece of software, and if i'm not mistaken it's a mac-first app. it is very true that microsoft's operating system is a piece of junk, but they do have one good app for sale, and that's excel. even if apple did a competitive product, i'd most probably continue using microsoft's. and i'm very dedicated mac user

 

[aswitcher]

16:9 will make me very happy.

So will improvements to exporting just a segment of a video from iMovie with ease and for iDVD to support drag and drop chapter and page shifts for DVD menu designing.

 

[JFreak]

improvements to exporting just a segment of a video from iMovie with ease

currently you can export single/selected clips, isn't that easy enough?

 

[HasanDaddy]

I just don't think that Crossbow and Slingshot are MS killers

After all, Apple patched up its relationship with Microsoft, and M$ reciprocated by bringing out Office 2004, which is clearly, a pretty great office suite

however ---- I would not be surprised at all if Apple is going after Adobe

Knocking out PhotoShop would a real task ---- but as others have mentioned, Apple wouldn't be souping up Tiger with so many graphics, if it wasn't

in addition ---- one way to get Windoze users back onto Apple would be to release programs that are ONLY available on Apple (FCP, Motion, etc)

Who knows..... an Apple Photoshop could be worth switching, for many

 

[SiliconAddict]

More reasons why Windows sucks.......................forever Mac!

Every OS sucks.....................................................................forever pad of paper!

 

[SiliconAddict]

I don't know. IMO I think Apple should just drop the whole appleworks line. Again IMO I think MS Office is good and everyone wants their office suite to be MS-related. Apple will be hard pressed to bring people away from Office, no matter how good the new appleworks might be.

From the business world side of things I agree with you but for the average consumer who simply wants a word processor MS Word is WAY overkill. Apple needs to tread softly when dealing with office suits. The simple fact is that many businesses will not touch a Mac if it isn’t compatible with the most common productivity suite in the world. If Apple makes Works too good they run the risk of MS pulling another stunt like they did with IE at which time Apple’s credibility in the enterprise market will consist of exactly jack squat.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Can they really have that much up their sleeve? I don't think there's a lot Apple can do to make iTunes better, but maybe I'm mistaken.
-Chase

VERY.

 

[Doctor Q]

I agree with JFreak about Excel. It's a great product, which nobody is going to steal much marketshare from anytime soon. And I don't expect a Photoshop-like product from Apple. In my view, Apple prefers the Star Trek method -- going where no company has gone before, i.e., new niches, with a focus on multimedia.

But I've been surprised before, such as when Apple bested Acrobat Reader with the much-faster Preview and when they announced Keynote. Steve Jobs said that Keynote was originally built just for him, so maybe they didn't set out to build a "Powerpoint killer" (which it is not), but they did release it, so there it is -- a productivity application that shares a market with 500-pound gorilla Powerpoint.

 

[MCCFR]

I just don't think that Crossbow and Slingshot are MS killers

After all, Apple patched up its relationship with Microsoft, and M$ reciprocated by bringing out Office 2004, which is clearly, a pretty great office suite

however ---- I would not be surprised at all if Apple is going after Adobe<-snip->

Well, if we're not being spoofed, the codenames are quite interesting.

"Slingshot" may well be derived from the story of David and Goliath - Apple clearly believes itself to be David, so who the heck is Goliath? Hmmm…

"Crossbow" is also interesting from a historical perspective. Harold Godwin was killed during the Battle Of Hastings in 1066 by inconveniently getting in the way of a crossbow bolt fired by the Norman soldiers of William The Conqueror. But if Apple is William I, then who is Harold?

For those who are not interested in English history, it is worth noting that one of the pretexts for the Norman conquest was that William claimed that Harold had, during an earlier failed military adventure, sworn future allegiance to William. Additionally, William - despite possibly being illegitimate - argued that his claim to the English throne (resulting from the marriage of Emma of Normandy to King Canute II) superceded Harold's claim which was simply the result of being named as deathbed successor by Edward the Confessor.

My point here is that someone's dark sense of humour in Cupertino associates Crossbow with some form of "betrayal". Who can this be other than Adobe - the company whose very existence is owed to Apple (through the incorporation of Postscript into early the Laserwriter, as well as investment)? The "betrayal" is easy enough to identify - namely the partial desertion of Adobe to the Wintel camp during the G4 dog days, especially the Dell performance advertisement and the simple fact that many Adobe products simply don't exist in OS X versions.

So what would a Crossbow be in the context of Adobe?

Although it could be argued that Adobe actually makes more money from Acrobat than it does from Photoshop, my personal bet is a Photoshop killer capable of being used as a rotoscoping tool in the context of the Production Suite.

If the tool integrated both bitmap and lineart functionality, such a tool would be a natural addition to Motion (precision creation of backgrounds, behaviours etc.), FCP (rotoscoping) and DVD SP (menus). Add in LiveType, 64-bitness with Tiger compatibility, as well as Automator-savvy batch processing and you have something that would make Adobe bristle.

Just a thought, add your own pinch of salt…

 

[TednDi]

pinch of salt

whatever the three apps are in my opinion, they are apps that will show off the abilities Core Image and Tiger. No other Os has those abilities and if at the release of Tiger there are no apps that can take advantage of the speed and power of the Os then all reviews will end with " great Os but wait till there are some apps that take advantage of it's power"

Apple is just hedging its bets on the fact that there will be ready to go apps for tiger.

iphoto with more photoshop features - yes

photoshop killer -perhaps, if it is far cheaper than the price of photoshop and kicks butt over it. Huge amount of institutionalization to overcome however.

Appleworks - yea for those folks who want simplicity in the home office. Not the enterprise market but the folks who want to write a letter now and again.
ilife for home productivity.


if this little app box has the capacity to scale qt and output to big screens wow just wait. With studios suing the bit torrent guys it is napster/itunes launch all over again.. i tunes movie store.... here we go

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Unless Adobe does an about face towards Cocoa and specifically Objective-C they won't be running out to adopt Core Imaging and Core Data.

Apple employs the creators of TIFFany. If they wanted to created a Photoshop killer they could.

 

[silvergunuk]

My Guess

£10 says garageband is renamed ProBand.

 

[mox358]

I hope Apple isn't trying to build a Photoshop killer... it is a HORRIBLE idea.

On top of trying to convert switchers to Mac, especially pro users in graphic design, web design fields, you want to convert them to a brand new pro-level graphics apps too? I know people who think of Photoshop as a brand name. They don't care if its mac or windows, but they know photoshop. Knowing they can switch to Mac, get the benefits of OSX and apple's cool OSX only software and still use the programs they know is a big boon. To compleatly piss off Adobe, or worse piss them off and have this photoshop-killer be a massive failure, would be a nuclear bomb going off in the middle of the mac world.

Photoshop is such a massive beast, with tons of options, and tons of options for those options, that apple would have to have a developer effort near the size of their Tiger team to accomplish the software part, not to mention the mindshare. Adobe's keyboard shortcuts are hard-wired into designers heads, as is the workflow of the program, and not to mention the interface.

So my question is why is apple wasting time developing this to basically build a clone with possibly a few new features?

Its the exact opposite of the MS Office situtaion - Ms has the marketshare, the mindshare, and this crappy suite which has tons of room for improvement (IMO). Adobe has the marketshare, mindshare, and a very nice program that suits the needs of most of its users. When you figure in the Elements line, apple would have to build a scaled down version of their photo-shop killer to fill in that void, and now you just have a mess. Just my opinion, but I would rather see Apple target their efforts in areas where there is a visible need for improvement or new areas not yet explored.

 

[BWhaler]

i have to disagree. microsoft excel for example is a great piece of software, and if i'm not mistaken it's a mac-first app. it is very true that microsoft's operating system is a piece of junk, but they do have one good app for sale, and that's excel. even if apple did a competitive product, i'd most probably continue using microsoft's. and i'm very dedicated mac user

I agree JFreak. While the UI could be cleaned up a little bit, and some advanced features could be made more accessible, Excel is a fantastic product.

In fact, it is the only MS app I can think of which is really good quality.

Word is a train wreck, however. I really hope Apple releases a pro quality word processor. No need to create an entire suite, because as others have pointed out, Apple needs MS Office on the platform, and to their credit, MS did a good job on the 2004 upgrade of Office. Apple can sell Keynote, Filemaker, and the Pro Word Processor as individual products. It would only inspire MS to put a lot of focus on Word/Office for the Mac, as we saw the latest ppt update.

But an Excel-Filemaker-Keynote 2.0-Apple Pro Word Processor combination would be fantastic.

 

[Platform]

Will all of these new apps do so that to have a machine that does Tiger and the new comming apps nicley, it has to be a G5 with 512Mb minimum of ram to go smoothly??