Macworld Conference: A New Update for OS X Tiger, an Overview of Aperture and iLife 06

Tiger 10.4.4 released today with new widgets, iLife welcomes one new “iMember”

After the overview of Apple’s achievements in the digital music market with iTunes and iPod, Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, moved onto the enhancements of Apple software. The conference spanned from Apple’s Aperture through OS X Tiger, its widgets, iLife 06 and a very quick view at iWork.

Aperture for Professional Photographers

Before showing an inspiring visual on Apple’s photo management product, Steve Jobs stated that Aperture is the tool for professional tools just as Final Cut Pro is for professional digital video editors. Photos can be organized, tagged, edited and RAW image retouching is instantaneous—Aperture provides photographers all the tools they need to handle their photos quickly and efficiently.

New Update Available for OS X Tiger

Tiger 10.4.4 was released today together with new widgets with which you can access Google Search, your address book, know about snow conditions, look for people in the White Pages and more. Both widgets and update are available in one download.

One More iMember Added to iLife

Steve Jobs also introduced iLife 06, the latest version of the iLife product suite which boasts numerous application enhancements and the new iWeb.

iPhoto can handle 250,000 photos as opposed to the 25,000 of the previous versions and is now much faster—as Steve Jobs said, it “scrolls like butter”. You can now edit full screen and compare 8 photos at once, effects are easily applicable at the touch of a button—Jobs calls them one-click effects—and are fully revertable.

The printing quality of books created with iPhoto is much improved, while calendars and cards can now also be produced. Just put them together with iPhoto and order them online.

Yet the biggest new feature of iPhoto is photocast. A podcast inspired concept that lets people share photo albums with anyone they choose through RSS. Though you need to be subscribed to .Mac to create photocasts, the use of industry standard RSS technology allows anyone to subscribe, even if they don’t have a Mac.

iMovie has also been improved. You can now apply real time effects to your videos and export these to your iPod with one command. You can also use iMovie to create video postcasts. Jobs also demonstrates animated themes. You can drop photos and videos into animated frames, books and so many other kinds of themes that really have to be seen.

iDVD has now widescreen features, produces greatly improved slideshows and supports 3rd party DVD burners. The biggest new feature is Magic DVD, which allows you to once again use themes to create DVDs fast and in a few clicks.

Garageband has also had several enhancements, one of them being the addition of a podcast studio, which by Jobs words makes Garageband “the best tool for podcasting”. There are now 200 royalty free sound effects and 100 royalty free jingles. Featuring also auto-ducking (background track’s volume is automatically lowered when the voiceover starts) and speech enhancements when recording voice.

If you ever wanted to interview someone on the other side of the globe, you can now do it without having to fly on a plane for hours, as you can now do your interview and record it with iChat.

But the iLife’s biggest hit is iWeb, an application that lets you create nice web sites with speed. Just use the smart looking templates provided by Apple and customize them for your needs. iWeb is fully integrated with the rest of the iLife applications. The podcasts, photo albums and so on that have been created with the rest of iLife software can be published in one click with iWeb. All of the RSS functions are taken care of automatically by iWeb also. The objective of this new application is to enable users to create nice web sites easily and fast.

iLife 06 is available today at the same price if its previous version, despite the enhancements and the added and new iWeb.

2006 Macworld Expo

Let’s put our minds to iWork

The next feature in the Macworld conference was iWork. Amongst the enhancements we find the ability to create 3D charts, advanced image editing features, free form shapes and tables that can be used to do calculations.

Article written by Elisabetta Bruno on behalf of Vadim Litvak, Designorati’s reporter at the Macworld conference.