The Transmug Report
By Yves Avérous
It’s a Mac Macworld
After the big “Year of the iPhone,” in 2007, it was past time for Apple to give the star treatment back to the Mac in this year’s Macworld Conference and Expo held in San Francisco last month. More than ever, with all the recent product introductions, Mac users have an exciting choice of deft machines offering the best productivity a freelancer can get.
On the software side, the Apple suites iLife and iWork—having been refreshed last June—had to yield the center of the productivity stage to the big suite that finally could: Microsoft Office 2008! (The one that doesn’t support macros …) The good news there is the price, with a competitive $150 Home & Student version. Ars Technica’s first look (https://snipurl.com/1wum2) and Macworld’s review (https://snipurl.com/1y9q4) will show you all there is to like and dislike in this release.
Facing the possibility of no longer using Word on the Mac, I have given more consideration to Pages 2 (part of iWork ‘08) and got to really enjoy the elegant new version.
The Mac marketplace is now flush with applications that are as helpful as affordable. In the recent weeks, members of the TransMUG list (https://groups.yahoo.com/group/transmug) were made privvy to a few amazing online deals. On my short list of tools that you may want to try and find via Macupdate.com, I highly recommend content managers such as Yojimbo, Yep!, and Together; password managers such as Wallet or 1Password; and a fresh crop of “Getting-Things-Done”-inspired applications, from the basic TaskPaper, to the powerful OmniFocus, or the elegant Things.
With so much to discover on the Mac lately, do not miss our next TransMUG meeting, on Saturday, February 9 at 11 AM, just before the Annual Meeting, at The Center’s café. This time, it’s tech support (and switcher) extraordinaire Emmanuel Lemor who will MC the meeting. Don’t miss it.
