When iWork first came out, I was quite excited and looked forward to having a play. Despite my best efforts and enthusiastic attempts to like the program, Pages was a disappointment. It was slow, bulky and just not up to scratch compared to Microsoft Word. I’ve always been a fan of Keynote and think that it runs circles around Powerpoint, but Pages really didn’t impress. I found tasks that were simple in Office took much longer to achieve and whilst documents always ended up looking much better, the additional time didn’t make it worthwhile.

I was a little skeptical about iWork 08 for the reasons above, but obviously thought it worth giving a try. Boy am I glad that I did. So many little improvements and enhancements have made this program run rings around its predecessor. Pages is completely re-worked and it a breeze to use. It’s faster, more logical and buttons are better laid out. But none of that compares to Numbers.

Microsoft Excel has been around for quite literally as long as I can remember. It does the job that it is designed to do, but I can’t put my finger on any real major improvements it has provided since Office 97. Nothing is fresh and new, nothing really makes it easier to use. Five minutes after opening Numbers I was pretty sure that Excel would never be needed again - far from the experience I had with the original Pages.

The way that sheets are laid out just makes so much more sense than Excel. The same can be said for formulas and formatting tools, charts and graphs. Everything is straight forward and easy, and the program seems to perform very well. The way that print previews can scale is revolutionary and will save Excel users such a headache. I haven’t tested it under heavy loads and huge spreadsheets (I have no need to), but for my purposes it’s a breath of fresh air for managing finances, shares and all my other information.

Microsoft Office is still a massive cash cow and is more popular than any other software package, but it’s being gradually chipped away. With continued improvements and advancements such as this one from Apple, it runs the risk of looking outdated in the very near future.

For many people, iTunes has one major flaw - it’s only possible to organise and play TV shows which were purchased from the iTunes store. For people over in America that’s no problem, but TV shows haven’t made it to Europe yet and that means showing them on your iPod or Apple TV isn’t quite so straight forward. I had several TV shows in the form of DivX AVI files - Scrubs, Friends and Lost to name a few - which I wanted to be able to play on my new Apple TV. This is the process I go through to convert them to the appropriate format, and tag them with season information and artwork:

Step 1 - Convert the files

iTunes isn’t happy with handling DivX or AVI’s, so we need to convert that file to one that is compatible with iTunes - MP4. There are several ways to do this, one simple on is using Quicktime and exporing the file to Apple TV. However the best method I’ve found is a program called Visual Hub. It’s about £10 but really is well worth it for the quality files it produces. These are the settings I use:

These convert video at a good quality resolution with fairly high settings. For me, filesize isn’t really an issue - quality is more imporant - so these work well. It generally takes a little less time to convert the file than it would to actually play it, that’s on a Macbook with 2gb RAM, you may find the time varies.

Step 2 - Tag the files

Once you’ve got your nice MP4 file, we’re nearly there. At the moment, if you drop that into iTunes it will think that it’s a movie which is fine if it’s a movie you’ve converted, but if it is a TV show you need to alter it’s embedded data to give some information about the TV show name and series etc. A great program for doing this is called Lostify. This is completely free, and lets you tag a TV show with all the relevant information - it’s really easy to use. This is a shot of the interface:

Once you have run your files through this tool, just drag and drop them into iTunes. You’ll have a great collection of TV shows in no time, all of which stream to and look great on your Apple TV.

Coda is the latest application from Panic, the creater of other great apps such as Transmit - by far the most popular FTP program on the Mac. It’s aim is to combine all the tools you use regularly as a designer into one easy to use application. It combines a version of Transmit with code editing features, preview capabilities and keeps track of everything you change to make publishing your site a breeze.

I’ve been using it most of today, and have found it to be incredibly useful. I’ve moved most of my projects across into Coda, and will hopefully get to grips with it more and more over the coming weeks. The only downside is that it doesn’t have any blog editing capabilities, so I’m still having to write this post in the good old Wordpress control panel. Add that to the mix, and it’d be a program I could do all my web editing in. Period.

Have a look and try it for yourself - it’s really great.

I’ve been looking into Microsoft’s new Office 2008 suite which will be released later this year for the Mac platform. I have to say I’m impressed! Office is one of those tools which you still really can’t do without on a Mac, with Apple’s offering of Pages and Keynote excelling in some areas but still definitely lacking in others. I’ve been using Office for Mac since I bought a Mac Mini a couple of years ago and I really do need it in my day to day workflow.

The new version of 2008 to be released later this year will already be a ‘must have’ upgrade simply because it will be a universal application. Microsoft have sure taken their time to make Office universal, but then again so have companies such as Adobe so it doesn’t really seem to be a case of spite for Mac owners. Rather that it’s a large program and a difficult one to port across to a universal binary.

Excel appears to have really redefined itself, now offering several templates making the tasks people actually use Excel for a great deal easier. Managing finances through the program is greatly simplified using these new tools and wizards. This should be very useful and save a great deal of time for people who don’t need to get to grips with the advanced features of the application.

Powerpoint also seems to be taking a step in the right direction. I imagine Keynote will remain my presentation tool of choice, though I’m open to being proven wrong by this new version. The interface seems to have undergone a complete overhaul and it seems much more concise. The graphical effects and visuals offered also seem much more impressive and it seems more like a sleek presentation package than the clunky and generic Powerpoint I’m used to seeing.

I’m looking forward to buying and using this for myself, simply because it seems that Microsoft are starting to understand that Mac users are a growing market. Who knows, they may one day be known solely for making Office for Mac (once Windows has been well and truly killed off by OS 11) - they need to keep their future options open!

There are many different word processing programs available for a Mac, ranging from fully fledged offerings such as Pages and Microsoft Word through to more basic apps, such as TextEdit and Text-Wrangler. All of these follow a similar theme and, whilst they all focus on a slightly different target market, they are all very similar.

I’m writing this review using a new piece of software called WriteRoom. It isn’t like your average word processor in that it has (more or less) no interface at all. It creates a completely distraction free environment in which you can work uninterrupted and without anything bouncing around persuading you to do something else. It’s writing bliss.

When looking at the site at first I was quite skeptical. I like the interface and features my Mac has to offer and wouldn’t really want to sacrifice them. I also really didn’t like the whole green on black text style. I downloaded it anyway, being inquisitive and all, and discovered that it’s actually very advanced. There are a great deal of options you can play with in the preferences to customise it exactly how you want it. Mine is a completely white screen, with black Garamond 14-pt. It looks stunning, and is “minimalistic bliss”. At the moment, I’m not honestly sure I’ll ever use something such as Microsoft Word again!

Obviously it isn’t perfect for every situation. There are times when you need to be able to format text more effectively, insert images, or use all the features of a full word processor. But when writing blog posts, essays or letters, this does seem to be one of the best programs out there.

Try it and you’ll be hooked straight away. Promise!

Enjoying your Macintosh experience? There may be one ingredient you’ve been missing out on: the many amazing products created by the Mac community’s extremely active independent software development community.

That’s why we’re declaring this The Week of the Independent Mac Developer, and in an effort to spread the word about these hidden gems, we’ve put together a collection of some of the best darn software available on the Mac for a steeply discounted $49.

MacHeist is something that managed to more or less completely slip by me until around 4 days ago. It’s a great scheme set up by several large Mac software developers to help raise money for charity, and get their product’s noticed. You have the chance to buy a bundle of applications for an incredibly discounted price - the cream of the crop of Mac applications.

Software includes Delicious Library, Shapeshifter, NewsFire, Disco and more. I’m tempted by the price, but already own Shapeshifter and NewsFire - shame I bought them so long ago, could have saved a packet now! Have a look, and remember that 25% goes to a charity of your choice!