iWork ‘08-Keynote Review

iWork has been growing in popularity. iWork ‘08 isn’t one giant program as some may think; iWork is composed of three comprehensive applications -Keynote ‘08, Pages ‘08, and Numbers ‘08. These applications are designed to help you and your diligent lifestyle, and they do so with Apple style-beauty and simplicity. This is the first part of my review on the Keynote application for iWork ‘08.

Personally, I have not used the iWork application suite until now, so I cannot compare to the previous versions. However, I can say iWork ‘08 is very nice, and I am almost tempted to stop using Microsoft Office for Mac. From what I was told, Keynote has seen some changes, and they are not bad.

The most work shows in Animations, and the great thing about Keynote is that it has allowed me to concentrate on my content and not worry about trying to make animations work and slides look good. There are cool Text Effects and new Transitions, which you will have seen already if you saw the MacWorld or WWDC07 Keynotes. Even better, there is A-B pathway animation, which is actually easy and fun to use.

Smart Builds allow you to drag images onto a bar, and Keynote will animate them. What would previously have taken a whole slideshow to do on PowerPoint, using transitions, can now be done on a single slide. Simply select which animation you want, drag the images on, and you’re done. It’s a great way to show different pictures during one slide.

I think I prefer Keynote to PowerPoint due to the Apple design and the ease of the application in general. This update makes it that much better to create an outstanding presentation like many of you might have seen at MacWorld. The new spinning logo effect (first seen in the iPhone intro) is brilliant.

There are two more applications in the iWork ‘08 suite. Be sure to check back with us as I will be reviewing my favorite application - Pages ‘08.