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I’ve been quiet lately which means I’m both busy and have a number of new things I want to research and comment on. Lately, the “busy” is because of work (and, of course, planning for the arrival of our baby) and the “new stuff to research” comes mostly from Apple. Here are some highlights:

iLife ‘08

I like it! Some freshening to all the products but the big areas of improvement are in iPhoto which finally manages photos they way I want them to be managed (by events and with more sorting/keyword options) and iMovie which the jury is still out on. The new iMovie looks PERFECT for someone starting movie editing at home. However, I already felt like I was pushing the limits (or running into bugs with…) the old version. I need more face time with this to figure out if its an improvement, step backwards or shift in direction.

One thing I don’t like is that iPhoto is abandoning Photocasting. I use this as a way for the screen savers on my parents’ computers to be updated with fresh photos of what we’ve been doing lately. And, with a kid on the way, I really look forward to keeping it current. The main computer in my parents’ house is in the entryway and I know they’ll see new pictures as they walk in and the screen saver is active. — iPhoto ‘08 supports current ones but won’t allow you to create new ones.

iWork ‘08

Very nice improvements here. More themes and templates in Keynote and Pages, as you’d expect. The core functionality seems to still be there and have mild improvements. The big news is “Numbers” a product that is designed to compete (to some degree) with Excel. What I love about this product is that it makes my boring Excel sheets look more interesting. It has dynamic themes you can apply to improve the look and feel of your reports. Suddenly, even looking at bad financial numbers LOOKS nice. Again, time will tell if this thing can truly replace Excel, but so far its promising.

New Apple Keyboard

The new keyboard is thinner and feels more like a laptop keyboard. This may sound geeky, but that’s exactly what I need! I find that I press the keys too hard on the old keyboard and after a long day of typing (or if I switch between the laptop and external keyboards a lot) my fingers start hurting. Its a sort of subconscious inability to control the pressure I use to type. This keyboard does a great job of leveling that out since its very similar to the laptop one.

The other big change with the new keyboard is the function of some of the buttons themselves. This is a pain and will no doubt cause problems until all the keyboards on all my Mac are in sync. Its simple things like F12 not bringing up the dashboard (its now F4 – and has an icon showing it). However, that has prompted me to find a clever little shortcut that’s built-in to the Mac and allows me to make screen prints (below). Until now, I’ve been using a dashboard widget for this. Now I don’t have to.

That’s all for now. Obviously, I’m not covering much about Notes 8, since everyone else is. But that commentary will be on its way shortly….