Macworld 2007 Wishlist: iLife, iWork and .Mac

Macworld 2007 is just days away. Here's a look at what's likely to be revealed, some promising ideas that are less likely to get delivered, and things that have no chance of happening. Part three covers Mac software.

Part 1: iPod, Phone, iTV | Part 2: Macs and MacBooks | Part 3: iLife, iWork and .Mac | Part 4: Mac OS X Leopard

Part 3: iLife, iWork and .Mac

As the previous articles on the iPod and Mac pointed out, Macworld has typically only revealed one or two new hardware products. However, over the last half decade, Apple has used Macworld to introduce an increasing number of new software applications, from basically nothing in 2000 to seven significant apps last year.

•Macworld 2000 - Uncovered Mac OS X's new Aqua look and introduced iTools, the free precursor to .Mac
•Macworld 2001 - iTunes, iDVD, and availability of Mac OS X 10.0 in March.
•Macworld 2002 - iPhoto; announced that Mac OS X 10.1 would be installed as the default OS on all new Macs
•Macworld 2003 - Final Cut Express, Safari, and Keynote; introduced the iLife bundle
•Macworld 2004 - Final Cut Express 2, GarageBand in iLife 04
•Macworld 2005 - Final Cut Express HD, Pages with Keynote 2 in iWork 05, iMovie HD in iLife 05
•Macworld 2006 - iWork 06, iWeb in iLife 06

Dotting the i in Work and Life

The seven new apps hiding in iWork and iLife will no doubt all be refreshed again this year, along with the possibility of some new additions.

Common scuttlebutt calls for the addition of a spreadsheet to iWork, supposedly called Numbers. I'd prefer to see some sort of flexible CoreData database/spreadsheet hybrid, with practical iWork style templates for inventory, budgeting, and other common and practical tasks, not just an blank Excel clone.

After all, Keynote and Pages offer original and practical template driven tools for creating documents, and are not just clones of Word and PowerPoint, as every other competing office-style application is.

Keynote offers an easy to use presentation system reminiscent of HyperCard, except that it can create interactive movies, not just proprietary stacks. It begs for integration with iWeb to dump out its interactive presentations in a form ready to post on the web.

Pages isn’t a typical 1980s word processor either. The iWork team also created iWeb--bundled in iLife--which is similarly designed to be practical, not just a clone of FrontPage.

iWork for Free

As it is, iWork 06 doesn’t offer enough obvious functionality to sell well on its own. That’s too bad, because both Pages and Keynote are really good apps, and deserve a broader audience.

Apple should give away iWork 06 with new Macs, and offer iWork 07 as an upgrade. That would introduce many more users to the tools, create a larger user base, and of course sell more copies.

Along those lines, it seems useful to point out that the demo-only version of iWork that is already bundled with new Macs can already be used in a limited sort of way for free.

While Keynote and Pages demo documents can’t be saved, both apps can be used to create graphics that can be copied and pasted into other applications. Prior to buying iWork, I commonly used the free version of Keynote to create charts and graphs that I pasted into iWeb, such as the pie charts in The Secret Failures of Microsoft.

Getting More out of iLife

As for iLife 07, I'd like to see a drawing and painting application added, with features to fix and embellish photos-- and perhaps even videos--with touch up airbrushing, thematic filters, and other effects.

Apple already has a couple free demo apps included in Mac OS X Tiger’s free Xcode Developer Tools, Core Image Fun House and Quartz Composer. Both are designed show off Image Units and Quartz filter features in Mac OS X's Core Image library.

These effects also drive Photo Booth effects and Leopard's new iChat features. It would be a short jump to spin off an iLife Paint app along the same lines. While Preview is very useful for conversions and cropping, Mac OS X needs to ship with a basic paint and draw application, powered by Core Image features.

After all, the first Mac app ever seen by many early users was likely MacPaint or MacDraw. I’d even settle for basic paint tools added to all the iLife apps, along the lines of the Adjust tools available for photos.

Work Your Life, Life Your Work

There are several opportunities for increased integration between iWork and iLife. Already mentioned is the need for taking Keynote presentations and dumping them out into ready to post web pages with iWeb.

Keynote isn’t just a way to create slide shows, but actually offers a lot of the features of the old HyperCard, such as the ability to create interactive kiosk-style presentations.

It can already export slideshows into hyperlinked graphics for the web, QuickTime movies, interactive PDF, or Flash, but iWeb could offer an extra bit of slick iLife style integration to make it very easy to develop and share high quality presentations online.

Caught in iWeb

iWeb itself could borrow more from Keynote, particularly in the area of creating master pages. Currently, pages created in iWeb are all self contained; each page maintains a folder full of common graphics.

The app also begs for an easy to use template editor, so that the dozen templates included can be significantly tweaked or new ones can be created from scratch.

What's Broken in iWeb: A Wishlist listed several other limitations of iWeb that beg for attention, including the ability to embed special HTML elements for third party features; iWeb should also offer to tag images and elements with metadata, and build separate topic lists for blog entries.

Features that don’t make it into iWeb 2.0 might end up in Press Pro, the pro app version of Pages and iWeb that was imagineered in Leopard Predictions for WWDC 2006, along with a software PBX called XPhone Pro and Personal WebObjects.

Of course, it’s easy to wish for things. As they say, wish in one shoe and spit in the other, and see which fills up fastest. The largest and perhaps most significant problem with iWeb is that it’s inexorably tied to .Mac, which is decidedly lacking.

.Mac Makeover

Plenty of people are complaining about Apple's .Mac service: it’s slow, and not competitive in price or features with free adware from Google or other paid services. John Siracusa thinks Apple should discontinue .Mac, but the company really just needs to invest in fixing .Mac’s problems, which would be very easy to solve.

Last summer, I presented why Apple has unique potential to deliver web based services that no other entity--not even Google or Microsoft--could, in the article Ten Reasons Why Apple Can Kickstart Web 2.0. A followup series presented eight specific ways Apple could fix .Mac:

•more integration with Safari to provide comment, feedback, and security services for the web
•reinvent .Mac as a community service with a reputation system
•provide Friendster-like member associations
•build a .Mac markeplace integrated into the Finder, similar to the iTunes Store
•offer online secure identity and privacy features
•enhanced file sharing services
•and .Mac subscriber tie-ins to iTunes.

Idea nine, never written, intended to set up .Mac as a VoIP gateway, allowing Apple to plug iChats into the plain old telephone system, akin to Skype's SkypeOut service.

Idea ten for .Mac was intended to be .Mac Pro, a rebranding of ProCare, for express service privileges in Apple Stores.

Another idea for enhancing .Mac would be to create a virtual realm for .Mac subscribers to create 3D avatars, something between Second Life and World of Warcraft, where participants could dress up as a character, invent virtual crap, learn virtual skills, and run around in a vast virtual world blowing huge amounts of time and fake money, all while paying subscriber fees. It works for Blizzard.

Or perhaps, by injecting some intelligence into the fake world genera, Apple could create a modern eWorld, where participants could actually learn real skills, from code development to Photoshop and SketchUp tricks, and then draw and build parts, models, widgets, and applications to use and trade online.

Hey Apple: Fix .Mac

In any event, Apple clearly isn't going to dump .Mac. It is already investing in improving the .Mac Sync Services available to developers in Leopard, and could easily address the limited bandwidth that currently insults .Mac subscribers.

After all, the iTunes Store can blow out feature length movies without much effort, so the problem isn't technical. If Apple can offer free HD trailer downloads, why not throw paying .Mac users a bone with decent speeds?

In fact, why not offer blazing downloads and decent capacity at the price people are already paying, and sign up twice as many users? If Apple implemented half of my .Mac ideas, I'd gladly pay twice as much for the service.

Further, considering that people have no problem paying $75 or more per month for mobile service, Apple could easily tie sophisticated .Mac services into its mobile plans and offer a suite of services far beyond anything other providers could even imagine. Perhaps Macworld will shed some light on this particular mystery.

Macworld Scorecard: iLife, iWork and .Mac

Likely to be revealed