Apple's new iLife '09 and iWork '09 suites feature guitar lessons from Sting, online document sharing and improvements all around.
Apple today took the wraps off the latest update to their productivity and lifestyle software packages. Both iLife, which includes iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand, and iWork, which includes Pages and Numbers, word processing and spreadsheet software respectively, got feature bumps for the '09 edition. Arguably the best of these features are available in the new iPhoto '09 appliction, though investors might be excited over the idea of a new revenue stream in a music lesson store for the GarageBand software.
Learn to Play guitar with Sting
In addition to its music recording and mixing duties, GarageBand will offer a "Learn to Play" section, with high-definition videos and lessons for learning how to play guitar and piano. Apple has also enlisted some celebrity artists to offer lessons and a brief chat for one of their songs. Artists like John Fogerty and Sting will sell lessons for $4.99 through a new GarageBand Artist Lesson store.
Face facts
While the Artist Lessons sound intriguing, we're even more interested in the improvements to iPhoto '09. Besides some new slideshow and album templates, iPhoto sees some significant improvements with new face detection technology. The photo management software will identify faces and tag your friends and family in photos. If this sounds similar to Facebook's photo tagging system, it probably isn't a coincidence that iPhoto can now synchronize with a Facebook account, making photo uploads easier. iPhoto will also upload directly to Flickr.
In addition, iPhoto will finally support more robust geotagging. The software will gather geotagging data from enabled cameras and phones, like the Apple iPhone 3G, of course. This information can then be used to create travel books and photo maps to document photo excursions.
An online mode, in beta
Apple has also announced a beta trial for iWork.com. iWork.com will let iWork users share documents and collaborate with comments and notes. The service will use a direct link from the Pages or Numbers application to send notice to other collaborators. Then, users can log onto iwork.com and edit documents, add notes, or download a copy. The service looks like a direct competitor to Google Docs, though Apple says that, unlike Google, they will be charging a fee for the service once it leaves the beta testing phase.
An iPhone app and more
There were plenty of other minor improvements to the software packages, some of which were noteworthy. iMovie '09 will get back some of the features that were cut in the last, somewhat controversial version of the movie editing software. The app will also get an anti-shake correction feature that will help with jittery video, though we're not sure if resolution or video quality will take a hit, as it usually does when digital shake correction is applied.
In the iWork suite, the Keynote presentation software will get its own iPhone app, which sounds like a great idea. The iPhone software will show you either notes for the current slide, when held in portrait mode, or current and the next slide in the deck, when held in landscape mode. The app will be available for $0.99, though it should really be free if you're paying all that money for iWork.
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