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Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/7575
110 MacDirectory
REVIEW
MAC BOX SET
WORDS BY TREY YANCY
The year 2009 marks the 10
th
anniversary
of the introduction of iMovie, the
iconoclastic application that turned
millions of average people into video
editors and that turned the heads of such
film icons as Francis Ford Coppola.
Beginning life as a free download, it would
be joined by iDVD and iPhoto, and
eventually Garage Band and
iWeb, to form iLife, the best
free bundle of software
available on any platform.
While iLife may get all the
glory, its sister product, the
productivity bundle iWork, is
an excellent suite in its own
right. Offering a combination
of Pages, an intuitive and fun
page layout program,
Numbers, an excellent
spreadsheet application, and Keynote, a
best of class (and also downright fun)
presentation program, iWork 09 also has a
lot to offer and at a very reasonable price
of $79.
Upgrading to a new Mac is not always an
option, so iLife '09 is also available for the
bargain price of $79. While both iLife '09
and iWork '09 are available separately
Apple has combined the two and tossed
in a copy of Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) in
a $169 bundle entitled Mac Box Set.
Available only for Intel-based Macs, the
box set provides eight excellent
applications and a copy of OS X all for a
couple of dollars less than the suggested
retail price of a copy of Microsoft Excel
2007. Not bad at all.
Due to space limitations, we cannot cover
everything in detail in one review, so for
further reference to Snow Leopard, please
refer to
MacDirectory
's Final Cut Studio
review in the Fall/Winter 2009 issue or visit