Bournemouth — Sep 19th 2007
It has become very clear that clashing with important football matches is a very BAD idea! In August it was an England match, this month Manchester United, while next month apparently runs headlong into a another important match - England v Russia! Consequently numbers were very low for this meeting - down to single figures for the first time. However a move to a non-clashing date will bring numbers back up, so watch the WAGs iCal for details - the meetings will probably take place on Tuesdays in future. And it is a great shame that there wasn't a bigger audience to see a most excellent presentation on iWork '08 by Sebastian of Solutions, our hosts. The new features - splitting Pages into a separate word-processor and a desk-top publisher, and adding on top of these a stunning new approach to spreadsheets make this application now well worthwhile. Especially as a replacement for the infinitely more complex Word and Excel. The other half of the set of applications is Keynote, which before updating was more than a match for other presentation programs. It has now been further enhanced and it is possible to create, with ease, really great presentations, complete with animation, video and audio - you can even add your own commentary.
The ease of use and the many features in these packed applications were ably demonstrated, but we hardly had time for more than one cup of tea! But it was an evening well-spent and several of the audience looked as if they needed restraining from dashing upstairs to buy the upgraded programs.
Michael Corgan
