Apple unveils iWork '09

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Apple has 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 organise your thoughts. Numbers ’09 introduces a quick way to group and summarise 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. “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.

The 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 Appledesigned templates, including newsletters, posters, certificates and coordinated stationery.

Numbers ’09 provides a great way to quickly categorise data by column, which you can then collapse, expand and summarise 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.

Pricing and availability

iWork ’09 is now available through the Apple Authorised Resellers for a maximum retail price of Rs. 4,700.