Apple giveth & Apple taketh away

[Thomas S. England]

I've been using iWork.com to share Keynote presentations to students for some time.

The beauty of this has been that the students do not need to have Keynote on their computers to view the presentations with all the effects/transitions that Keynote offers.

As of July, iWork.com will be discontinued.

I've just returned from a chat at the Genius Bar, where I was told that iCloud will not offer anything comparable for sharing Keynote presentations.

Yes, one can convert a presentation to Powerpoint or PDF and put it online. However, just as when you put a Keynote online, you lose some of the effects.

I'd love to be told that the Genius got it wrong, but for right now I'm upset that this fine capability is being withdrawn by Apple with no substitute (no matter how much money you would be willing to give them).

[Xairbusdriver]

I suppose they don't all have access to the Mac App Store... Keynote is only $19.99 there. Of course, some of them may not access to 20 bucks, either! I agree, unfortunately, that there is not equivalent to Keynote. And I doubt Apple will do much more development on it for 20 bucks a pop.

Perhaps Sun/Open (or whoever it is, now) Office? I've heard that Google Docs has a presentation function, also. Alas, I doubt if all the features/animations much less the ease-of-use will be in those apps/services.

[Shades of Gray]

You mean we have to resurrect Steve again to get it right?

[krissel]

Came across this recently. Although it seems at first like just a hosting service, they claim that once they get past the BETA status, they will be implementing more features similar to what MobileMe offered.  Will be interesting to watch.  They are based both in the UK and the US.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1166565/ma...r_mobileme.html

http://www.macmate.me/

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

Your MacMate disk come with a browser-based file manager too

Can we not have real people do real editing at real sites?! And, if you don't see any problem with the praise you don't need to apply for the job there... As I said in another recent post, I have no trouble finding things to complain about... "Meye spel chequr iz awl eye nead too right purfeklie! C?"

I'm also always leery of "Mac-Specific" hosting. Most seem to make it sound as if a Mac can't be used as a real computer. Or that Mac users need extra hand-holding. This one [MacMate/MacAce] sounds somewhat similar:

QUOTE

Can I have multiple sites?

Yes, you can in the way that MobileMe did multiple sites, but not in true multiple sites. It is something we're working on and will have this functionality (much better than MobileMe did) very soon.

So, for more than the price of a vast number of other ISPs, you can have less flexibility? "Yeah, but it's made for Mac's!" No, it's made for taking money from those who think the Mac is not capable of being a real computer or that the user needs more help than a Windows user. I think the basis for this idea is the previous "Mac Tax" people are willing to pay for having a computer and OS that "just works!" It leads some businesses to try to convince Mac users that they are too dumb to do even simple things. Of course, there are Windows users who are just as gullible... probably even more!