[DM-MUG] iWork and the Mac mini

[Bailey Ford]

Next up, iWork!

This is an update to Appleworks, created from the ground up. 2 
Applications: Keynote2 with new themes, animated text, presenter 
display, interactive slide shows, and self-running kiosk style shows, 
He shows some new themes. 'Cinema quality presentation for the rest of 
us'. Support for charts and graphs. Flash and PDF output are added to 
Appleworks, QT and Powerpoint output.

The other app is Pages - a word processor. collums, text and par 
styles, all the expected features. He is really pushing Apple 
templates. Phil Shiller is going to do a demo. Pages starts up by 
asking what template to start with (like keynote). The templates start 
off with dummy text and graphics - so you don't just have the 
formatting and a blank screen- there is already data everywhere. 
Integrated with iPhoto to get images. Matching the image to the 
template is totally automatic - scaling and rotating and alpha 
transparencies are all done automatically to match the theme. There are 
even guides like in Keynote. The themes have different types of pages 
that match (again, like keynote). Table, image, and chart object are 
supported. You can also alter the themed pages very easily. Looks 
excellent, but the big feature that is needed (IMO) is word 
compatibility. He very quickly goes over compatibility with Appleworks, 
Word, and PDF.

"why doesn't apple offer a stripped down mac that is affordable?"
Today they introduce the Mac mini. Looks like a big iPod. Width of an 
optical drive. Firewire, USB2, DVI, ethernet, modem, etc. Very very 
very tiny. beautiful. BYODKM - bring your own display keyboard and 
mouse. Comes with Panther and with iLife 05. Priced for switchers. 2 
models $499 for 1.25 GHz, 256MB RAM, 40GB drive, combo. $599 for 1.42 
GHz. and 80GB upgrades. Avail Jan 22!