OxMUG meeting 13 May 2008

iWork 08

Nuclear Physics Lab, Keble Road, Oxford
 

Door Prize

A copy of iWork, won by Colin.
 

Apple’s answer to “bloaty” Microsoft Office.

Looking at my notes, I thought that said “bloody”. Be honest, who would have noticed anything wrong?
 

Keynote

The presentation program. Not entirely dissimilar to PowerPoint, except for the bit where it’s awesomely slick, easy-to-use, and has a wealth of tasteful templates available. Legend has it that Steve Jobs insisted the program be written so he could have something decent to do his speeches with. Keynote is the longest-established of the new Apple ‘office’ programs, and is consequently the most well-integrated and robust.
 

Pages

Doing the jobs of Word and Publisher at the same time.

Lots of good-looking templates: many of them US oriented, but can often be resized to UK sizes.

Huge control over objects and where they appear on the page. Although freehand drawing is not really as good as PowerPoint’s.

Track changes.

Other templates available (especially at www.templatemonster.com)
 

Numbers

“If you’re used to spreadsheets, Numbers will freak you out slightly.”

More graphicy layout than usual. Instead of the default set up of a screen-full of cells, Numbers presents you with a blank sheet of paper and lets you plonk data, tables, charts and pictures on top.

The defaults (fonts, colours, layouts) are so much nicer than Excel.

Includes a comprehensive list of functions. Plus: on-the-fly previews of common functions for selected cells.

Conditional formatting.

Lots and lots of palettes. Doesn’t require widescreen screen estate per se, but really benefits from it.

Media Browser for iLife and Aperture integration. “How much use,” one might think to oneself, “can that be?” All I can say is, gaze upon the picture of Paul’s cat, and her cat castle, casually dropped into a spreadsheet, and wonder no more.
 

Other useful apps

Writenow: simple full-screen (removes DISTRACTIONS) typing program.

Write Room: much the same.

Task paper: a simple task list.

Next meeting :10 June Information management – Burning CDs, using memory stick