Apple Introduces iWork ‘09

January 6th, 2009 at 1:11 PM - News by Brad Cook

During his Macworld Expo keynote address, Apple Vice-President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller on Tuesday discussed iWork '09, the company's productivity suite containing Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. Mr. Schiller also introduced the collaboration tool iWork.com, which will soon enter the Beta stage of development. Users are invited to sign up for the Beta, which will be free until the final version launches, at which time iWork.com will be a fee-based service.

New features in Pages '09 include a full-screen mode, a dynamic outline view, mail merge with Numbers, MathType and EndNote support, and 40 new templates.

Keynote '09 offers Magic Move, which lets users select the start and end points of objects for custom transitions. It also includes new slide transitions, and new chart animations. Apple has also released an iPhone app, Keynote Remote ($0.99), that displays the slides as well as speaker notes, with the ability to flick the screen to transition to the next slide.

In Numbers '09, users will find such new additions as table categories, easy formula writing, advanced chart options, automatic updating of charts crosslinked with Pages documents, and templates.

iWork '09 is available now for US$79 or $99 for a family pack of five licenses. Owners of new Macs can buy it for $49. Apple had not updated its iWork web site at the time this article was published. The Mac Observer will update this article as more information becomes available.