Oct. 27, Apple Tools

Social Media: Updates October 27, 2010

I spent hours in the Apple Store today at two workshops, looking at the new MacBook Air, and upgrading my MacBook to Snow Leopard so I can upgrade iWorks and iLife. A big part of this age of computers is staying current and constantly upgrading software and the machines themselves. There is pleasure with Macs as the large screens are so inviting and high definition and designs on products as well as the environment there is an experience that is energizing. I asked several Mac assistants about security issues as that have been in the news a great deal, and one said yes there are issues and safeguards but today people are just going ahead with all sorts of info and not worrying. So, personal and business are separate issues and viewed differently by most savvy people. The ability to do so many interactive things with various media is indeed more captivating and encourages experimentation.

I went to tow workshops and learned something about Pages, which is Mac’s word processing and layout program. It is so much more fun than Microsoft Word!! The second workshop was on Keynote, which is Mac’s PowerPoint presentation program. Perhaps with new developments in adding media to text presentation, presentations, which we have all been to that are so boring and uninteresting, can be much more alive and engaging. One can add music, images, and movies by clicking and dragging and dropping into templates. These programs can do things and have features that Word does not, so, a possible problem might be in exporting. It is possible to share as a PDF, or a Word document, and more, but not all features can transfer. Mostly it seems fine if one adjusts settings and knows what projectors will be available for a presentation. I am going to try and learn these as it does seem as if things have gotten much more user friendly. The recipient has to have QuickTime. These is a general limit to file size which is 5mgs. The file can be saved to iWorks which is web based and can be password protected, but available to others who have that.

Pages is part of iWork which contains Keynote and iLife as well and these make up Mac’s productivity programs. The two parts of Pages contain the work processing, its Word, and Page layouts, which allows all sorts of uses such as newsletters, flyers, business cards and more. Inserting photos in text used to be so hard and now it looks easy, I will experiment and see. The charts and pie graphs are amazing in going from 2D to 3D and for example, exploding a pie chart for emphasis. Another example, which appeals to me as a sculptor is that you can have cylindrical bar graphs in metallic colors that can be rotated! It could be that I am just getting familiar with these, but I did my Pilot Study having to invent some things that were clunky and hard and these seem more visually exciting and offer many more choices in how things look and convey information. The good news is that Apple apparently has video tutorials on iWork at apple.com.

How I might use these and other programs that we have been investigating takes time and is often a distraction from doing the necessary research and thinking of the content that needs focused attention. Putting them together down the road promises to be much more visually oriented and captivating if this learning can be applied effectively. Making it fit together seamlessly is indeed a challenge and pushes one to think and make things differently and in innovative ways. The raw source material and one’s own creativity, motivation, and message are still at the heart of it.