If you’re wondering why Mac writers get twitchy when Apple goes quiet for a few months, last week’s deluge of product announcements provides the answer. At a special press event on Tuesday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs released new aluminum iMacs along with iLife ’08 (including a completely new iMovie application) and iWork ’08, now supplemented by Apple’s new spreadsheet application Numbers. That would be enough for most companies, but Apple also upgraded the Mac mini and the AirPort Extreme Base Station, and rolled out bug-fix and compatibility updates for the new iMac, the new aluminum Apple Keyboard, Mac Pro desktops and the latest MacBook Pro models. Also this week, Charles Maurer notes a new direction for Asiva photo editing plug-ins and Glenn Fleishman points to increased storage for Google services plus troubles for KisMAC due to a new German law.
Apple has updated the iMac look to be aluminum and glass, and making it significantly thinner, while retaining technical specs that are roughly similar to previous models.
Not long after Steve Jobs left the stage at last week's Apple press event, a succession of small hardware updates began to pop up, some of which applied to the brand-new machines themselves. Affected machines include the new iMac, the new aluminum Apple Keyboard, the Mac Pro, and the latest MacBook Pro models.
Apple has released iWork '08, updating Pages and Keynote and adding the long-rumored spreadsheet, Numbers.
Apple pumps up the speed on its AirPort Extreme Base Station by upgrading its network ports to gigabit Ethernet.
The Mac OS X Wi-Fi sniffing software KisMAC has reached the end of its lifespan due to a change in German law, where its developers live, that criminalizes software such as it.
After a hiatus, Asiva's critically acclaimed Photoshop plug-ins are back, with new names, lower prices, and demo versions.
At last week's press event, Apple took the wraps off the next version of its iLife suite, bumping the name from iLife '06 to iLife '08 and providing a completely new version of iMovie.
Google bumps storage for Gmail, Picasa, if you're willing to pay $20 to $500 per year for 6 GB to 250 GB of storage.
Find out what the TidBITS community is talking about this week!