Preview, Mac OS X’s PDF/image viewer, has always been kind of an iffy subject and its fate has been uncertain. When Panther was released, Preview was hailed as the fastest PDF reader on the market, but it still was a bit clunky, and for me, personally, the relatively recent release of Adobe Reader 8 persuaded me to make that my default PDF reader.

However, Preview in Mac OS X Leopard has been greatly enhanced with a significant number of new and enhanced features which really define it as a serious PDF reader, and also brings a few tricks up its sleeve that formerly have only been available to PDF consumers after the purchase of Adobe Acrobat Pro. So what’s new? Let’s take a look.
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Tags: editing, features, images, iWork, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, PDFs, preview, review, viewing

Us Mac users may have teased Windows lovers because it took Microsoft 5 years in between the releases of Windows XP and Windows Vista, but now we’re a little guilty of lengthy releases too. Mac OS X Tiger was released on April 28, 2005, and now Mac OS X Leopard will be released on October 26, 2007. Exactly 2 and a half years, which is half of the length of the interim between XP and Vista.

In preparation for the upcoming release of Leopard, I will be doing a 5-part series on my blog this week taking a look back at everything that has happened over the last 130 weeks. I was originally going to make this a single article, but after getting so many ideas, I have decided to split it into five posts covering five different categories of events. If you have any additional ideas of significant things that have happened during the last 910 days, leave them in the comments. (Although note that I will be out of town for a portion of this week; I have this full series pre-scheduled.)

In this first part of the Tiger-to-Leopard series, I cover the significant events affecting Apple themselves since Tiger came out. Be sure to check out the other articles in the series.
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Tags: announcements, Apple, article, history, iLife, iPhone, iPod, iWork, Mac, Mac OS X Leopard, Tiger-to-Leopard

Many of my readers know friend and PreviewCast regular Caitlyn Imburgo. She just got a brand new design up on her blog, which is great to see her blogging again. Today she posted a guest blog article that I wrote for her blog about a month ago which talks about how iWork ‘08 completely changes the game for Microsoft Office for Mac, and calls into question just how many people will be upgrading to Office 2008 when it comes out next year. Check out the article.

Tags: 2008, Apple, Caitlyn Imburgo, guest blogging, iWork, Microsoft Office, productivity

Apple is now offering a 30-day trial of iWork which you can download. The trial provides full iWork functionality for 30 days, after which you’re restricted to only opening documents until you purchase. If you download the iWork trial, then you can actually order just the serial number online from Apple instead of having them mail the boxed version to you, if you’d like. Both the serial number and the boxed version are $79, however if you qualify for one of Apple’s educational discounts (my parents are teachers, so I do), then you can get a serial number for $49, whereas the boxed version is $71. Therefore, if you’re an educator, you can save some serious money by downloading the iWork trial yourself and unlocking it with the serial number that Apple e-mails you. All that you sacrifice is a physical CD and physical documentation, but the docs are still available to you electronically. Just don’t lose the serial number and you’re all set, or you can easily burn the disk image download direct to CD!

UPDATE: Apparently the $49 was a misprint. The online Apple Store now lists that for educators, both the instant serial number and the boxed version are $71. Oh well, easy come easy go.

Tags: Apple, Discounts, Educational, iWork, Mac, Software

No, I’m not talking about the next season of new cars. For one thing, I wouldn’t call 95% of the cars out there “worth it”, mostly because their gas mileage would make any non-American laugh with their fingers pointing, and for another thing, I really don’t care about cars anyway. Nevertheless, yesterday, Apple released iLife and iWork ‘08 (along with some other new stuff, which aren’t the focus of this article), which Steve Jobs claims to be their biggest updates ever to both releases. But after spending a couple of hours today following the announcements through Engadget’s live coverage, rubbing my eyes all over the Apple.com website, watching demo videos and tutorials, and all that stuff, I’m ready to judge for myself if iLife and iWork ‘08 are really that substantial, and if they’re each worth their respective $80 upgrade price.
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Tags: 2008, announcements, Apple, documents, GarageBand, hardware, iDVD, iLife, iMac, iMovie, iPhoto, iWeb, iWork, Keynote, Mac, Microsoft Office, movies, Numbers, Pages, photos, podcasting, presentations, PreviewCast, Software, Special Event, spreadsheets, Steve Jobs, web design

Well, let’s face it. Tomorrow is a special event-style Steve Jobs keynote, and for like the first time since Apple has started doing these special events, they’re actually planning to talk about the Mac, instead of music. We didn’t do a PreviewCast this weekend because I was busy doing something else. But, I guess I shouldn’t let the day come without expressing some opinion of what I’d like to see be announced, particularly with the rumor websites going crazy again. You know what? I think I’m getting sick of rumor websites. Maybe I should stop subscribing to them. Oh wait, I’m a Mac podcaster. Damn.

Now, let’s get one thing clear: this is not a rumor list. The stuff that I’m talking about or speculating on here has absolutely no source backing it other than my wild imagination. I’m not even calling this rumors, I’m calling it a wishlist, because it’s stuff that I’d like to see (or not see) relating to the aging Mac lineup.
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Tags: announcements, Apple, iLife, iMac, iPhone, iWork, Mac, Mac mini, multi-touch, PreviewCast, Steve Jobs