Apple Launch new iMac, iLife & iWork ‘08
August 8th, 2007 | by Colm |So, a reading from the Book of Jobs.
Yesterday in Cupertino, Apple unveiled the new iMac, as well as repackaged iWorks & iLife. And I must say, I’m not overly impressed.
Let’s take them one at a time, shall we?
The New iMac
Personally, I’m not mad on it. I mean, what’s with that bloody big black edge? It’s disgusting!
The aluminum, I think it could grow on me. I think. It seems pretty thin too, but I’d expect that given how thin the last generation were. Apart from that, design-wise it’s not exactly ground breaking Apple design.
Under the hood is more of the same. All the usual stuff you’d expect from an iMac (and any high end PC). Wifi, Bluetooth, DVD burner, 128mb Video Card, so once again, no real revolution.
Of course, they’ve also rejigged the keyboard. It’s aluminum too, which is to be expected if it’s supposed to complement the iMac. The design of this I really don’t have any love for. It screams snap me in half. But then again, I’ve never really been mad about the Apple Keyboard. The last one was a little too Fisher-Price for my liking.
iLife ‘08
iLife appears on the face of it to be pretty much the same as 07. They’ve added a few new bells & whistles for .Mac, but I don’t bother with it nor does anyone I know. Now, if .Mac was free, then perhaps these features would be a bigger deal. Also, in iPhoto they’ve introduced built in print ordering, and the stuff they put out looks pretty good, but I’ll wager this is Stateside only. Shame.
iPhoto also has a few improved editing features, as well as better album grouping which should be good. Everything else seems to be reasonably cosmetic though.
iWork ‘08
iWork 08 sees the inclusion of Numbers, the new Apple spreadsheet software. I haven’t had a chance to look at it in any great detail, but it’s good to see a spreadsheet program for the Mac. Hopefully they haven’t focused on form over function, as that would be a stupid mistake to make.
One thing I’m looking for iWork to provide is a decent Database app, so I can finally ditch AppleWorks once and for all. I had blindly hoped that Apple would provide one in this release, but it looks like I’ll have to wait another year. Oh well.
All in all, I’m not that excited about these releases, but perhaps they’ll grow on me. And perhaps I’ll convince work to buy me a new iMac for “testing purposes” 
