Apple Training Series: iWork 09 [Paperback]

I'm finding these PeachPit Press Apple Training Series books to be a great resource for learning the Apple Pro and Consumer software products. I've always looked at another product previously for more information on Apple software. Since learning Aperture 2 with Harrington's book, I decided to try iWork as well. I'm a newcomer to iWork and bought iWork for the first time. So, I needed instruction to bring me up to speed. This tutorial/project based resource was just the ticket for me. This book covers the basics very handily and goes into a few specific and outstanding features for each of the 3 programs. With Keynote, I was most impressed with one of the actions that animated a motorcycle to appear to 'drive' off the slide. What is amazing, is how simple this is implemented in Keynote. Pages had a few hidden features that Harrington's book pointed out. One was autoflowing text between text boxes and another connected objects with a connector line. Again, Apple's software engineers use elegant solutions to implement. Numbers is different from Excel in that while both use sheets, tabs are accessed from a sidebar rather than at the bottom of the page. Numbers spreadsheets are designed to offer richer formatting options and content than you would find in Excel. I think the most outstanding features in Numbers would be the unique way of categorizing columns and the exceptional way that address book integrates with tables. Just remarkable the way this all comes together especially if you've been building on OS X for years as I have. I recommend this book and while it doesn't cover every detail in the iWork suite, it does encourage you to explore and create on your own. It covers integration with other Apple software. It gives examples of how to share your work with others via email, websites(i.e. iWork.com beta), pdf's and printouts. It also explains how Apple can play nice with Microsoft. Clearly, not every transition in Keynote will translate to Powerpoint, but Keynote does a pretty good job of cleaning up a Powerpoint presentation ( with some editing tools). This book will explain some of the pitfalls that can befall a user without being armed with the knowledge contained in these pages, so it pays to take your time and follow all the examples to a 'T.' The organization, writing and illustration in the book are all well done making it less likely you will get lost along the way. Harrington takes you through each program's interface, associated inspectors, format bar and Apple predefined templates. He takes you through menu items and shows you many keyboard shortcuts explaining many ways to accomplish the same task. It is easily worth investing time to complete this book because I will guarantee you will learn something you never knew about the iWork software. Some of these tips in their aggregate are worth more than the price of admission. Pick up a copy today and see how iWork can bring greater productivity to your life or just have fun learning iWork. Warning: After learning iWork you may become addicted to formating and creating spreadsheets, presentations and newsletters.

The first 40% of Apple Training Series iWork '09 contains a wonderful set of tutorials and advice about creating great presentations. Richard Harrington, the author, is the owner of an award winning visual communications company. The result is reflected in the quality and content of the tutorials. The Apple Training Series is the official curriculum for the Apple Training and Certification Program. The subject of the tutorials and the accuracy of their presentation is as high as you would expect from Apple in their official training.

Each of the 16 lessons in Apple Training Series iWork '09 ends with open ended questions and their answers which provide valuable feedback about how well we have learned what was in that lesson, and a summary of some key information.

iWork is a well integrated program. Once you have learned to use Keynote you have learned much of what you will be using in Pages and in Numbers.

For those most interested in learning Keynote, Apple Training Series iWork '09 deserves five stars.

I guess that the number of Macintosh users who will ever give or create a Keynote presentation is somewhere between one 20 and one in a 100. For the rest of us, trying to learn iWork through beginning with Keynote makes learning more difficult. It is easier to learn if you begin with something you already know, and learning is best if it is something you are really interested in. Practically everyone is interested in creating some kinds of documents on paper.

The readers who are not interested in Keynote are expected to recognize, pay special attention to, and remember the parts that we will need to know later when we begin to study how to create those wonderful documents.

The tutorials on Pages: Publishing Made Easy, and Numbers, Working With Spreadsheets are just as outstanding, but they sometimes take longer to complete when you need to use some detail that was covered earlier when you may not have been as interested in the subject.

"The rule of thumb is: Think first, design second, and then present." Lesson 1, Creating a Presentation, page 16. I believe the first thing you should think about is: Who is your audience?"

This is a very good book, but it could have been much better if it had been organized to fit a larger share of its potential audience.

This Apple-certified training guide packs in details on the iWork suite of tools, pairing real-world project examples with keys on how to design presentations, add animated charts and custom backgrounds, and publish on the Web using the iWork tools. Both business and computer libraries will relish a training workbook that comes with a DVD-ROM with lesson and media files attached, and tells how to use iWork to create professional, polished results.

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