Around the office there is a lot of chatter about who will be buying a iPad for their own use and who will wait for the company to buy them one. Folks are helping each other understand how they may use it day-to-day. The iPad is much less expensive than everyone had thought it would be but it is still money that could be used elsewhere.
‘J’ is in the market for a new Mac. Her many year old Macbook is working just fine but it is time to update. The hardware’s 60 gig HD is full. One concern she has about making a iPad her new family addition is if she can still do iPhoto books like she does now. They have proven to be great gifts and a way for friends to remember an event long afterwards.
While we would never assume, you would think that creating books of photos and calendars and cards would be a natural feature of the Photo app built into the iPad, you can’t be sure it will be there day one. Apple is creating a special version of iWork though for the iPad. Which as you may recall is Numbers (spreadsheets), Pages (creative books/flyers) and Keynote (presentations). For the iPad, these will be sold as individual items unlike the counterpart on the Mac that only comes as a bundle.
For many of us, Pages is our Super iPhoto Photobook creation too. And, being able to move images and text boxes about with our finger will be a great new bonus. Currently, Photo Book you create inside of iPhoto on you Mac is the only Apple supported way to create books. There are many online printing services that will take our Pages file and print books for us. Of course, this will cut Apple out of the printing dollars they get now so while it’s a solution we look forward to, we doubt it will be ‘outside’ of Apple for long.
The other two components of the iWork offering, Numbers and Keynote will take the iPad into the boardrooms. Want to get attention for a new product your pitching, just show your presentation slides on a iPad, they will remember you! Flipping through your slides or the numbers on a spreadsheet.
