Apple's big announcements

Steve Jobs made some big announcements at the MacWorld Expo. Perhaps the biggest is the introduction of a new notebook computer. It looks like the current Powerbook G4, but it has dual Intel chips and has been renamed the MacBook Pro. My Powerbook isn't up for replacement for another year, so the announcements that had more immediate consequences for me were those concerning the software updates: iLife 06 and iWork 06.

iLife 06 has some incremental (but nice) updates to iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband and iDVD. Potentially the most important for me is iPhoto's ability to handle 250,000 photos and Garageband's new podcast authoring capabilities. The most drastic change is the addition of a new web authoring application, iWeb. The application can be used to author web pages, blogs, podcasts, etc. In a bit of a surprise to .Mac users, iWeb replaces Homepage. Any sites authored with Homepage remain, but gone is the ability to edit them unless users spring for a copy of iLife.

iWork 06 appears to have less dramatic changes. However, the enhancements to Keynote 3 and Pages 2 are significant enough for me to want this software immediately, as I use Keynote in the classroom everyday.

Related: See Steve Jobs' Keynote address