With Macworld only days away the rumour mill has been relatively quiet on the two most likely appearances at the annual mac event. Apple’s consumer creative suite has received updates the last few years. But with everyone concentrating on the mythical iPhone, there has been little speculation about what might be contained in a revised iLife suite. There was some speculation about iWork earlier in the year.
According to a report on think secret in July, Pages 3 will support improved word processing features and improved layout capabilities.
“Apple hopes the new Word Processing mode will better position Pages for day-to-day document creation. A number of convenient features catered to writers and typists will also be wrapped into Pages 3, including a thesaurus and integration with Spotlight, Wikipedia, and Google.”
There is also the long running speculation of an Apple spreadsheet also making an appearance as part of the iWork suite. According to Think Secret again, the software is dubbed charts and will be positioned as a basic spreadsheet rather than a full featured competitor to Microsoft Excel.
But what of iLife?
Usually there is some chatter about future releases but there has very little except for a report, once again on think secret that the suite will feature a much improved iWeb.
“With iWeb 2, users will be able to update their iWeb space from any Web browser for the first time. Site management will naturally be limited, likely to just adding or deleting content, sources said, but the feature will allow users to update their blog and upload new photos or podcasts regardless of what computer or operating system they have access to. “
What will probably happen is the rest of the suite is unclear. It may well just get an incremental-release without any major new features, focussing on adding additional templates, Leopard support and improved multithreading. In a way it’s hard to imagine what else that could be done.
Feature wise, apart from iWeb, the programs are pretty much perfect as is. If Apple decides to embrace a particular HD format then we might see HD support for iDVD. Other possibilities include better RAW support in iPhoto, and perhaps more use of fullscreen modes. I would expect that time machine support will be added to the whole suite, as this has already been demoed at WWDC. Of course Apple has a tendency to surprise, so they may have just kept a particularly good lid on iLife development this year. I guess time will tell.
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Why should there be new versions of the iLife programs? In the Leopard preview at WWDC, Mr Jobs said that all the software would be included with Leopard. I took that to mean that iPhoto et al would become, well, included with Leopard. What else could it have meant? The same, surely, for .Mac services.
Certainly the current iLife ’07 package could continue to be sold until Leopard comes out (and even afterwards for those who wished to remain with Tiger) but, if you want the next versions, you’ll have to wait until it comes on the Leopard installer.