Follow the Australian Telecommunications scene NEWSLETTER- FREE TRIAL
Core Dump
Core Dump RSSStephen Withers turns his gaze on the world of Apple, with detours into other aspects of IT and communications as they catch his attention.
Apple updates iWork 08 E-mail
by Stephen Withers   
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Apple has pushed out a set of updates for the components of its iWork 08 package, but with very little information about what benefits they deliver.

Keynote 4.0.2 "primarily addresses performance issues while playing or exporting presentations." Well yes, that sounds worthwhile, but what else has changed? If you had put off buying iWork 08 because of an obscure - but show-stopping for you - bug, how are you supposed to know when it has been fixed if Apple doesn't provide detailed descriptions of updates?

I imagine the problem is that if you say you've fixed - or "addressed," to adopt the usual terminology - a bug, then you're admitting it was there in the first place. If you fix a few dozen bugs that each affect a tiny minority of users, it's quite possible that someone will judge that disclosing what you've done will harm your image more than it helps.

That seems to assume that customers have a rather immature view, but perhaps that comes from Apple's concentration on the consumer market and the litigious nature of its home market. Any halfway serious user knows that software ships with bugs, and that they get squashed over time. Perhaps Apple is worried that an element will go crying to the lawyers specialising in class actions complaining "they sold me a faulty product"?

As for the other two updates in the batch, all we are told about Pages 3.0.2 and Numbers 1.0.2 is that each  "addresses compatibility with Mac OS X." Right. So a pair of applications written by Apple specifically for Mac OS X had compatibility issues with the operating system.

Presumably we're talking about compatibility with a specific version of Mac OS X. Humm... isn't 10.5.2 supposed to be appearing any time now? Maybe today's iWork update is in preparation for its arrival.

Powered By Joomla Tags

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to post your comment!

 
< Next story in category   Previous story in the category >
iTWire user statistics Visitors last 30 days
694,279
Subscribers 15,210
#1 independent technology news advertise here
  •   *  
  • Search
  • AdvSeach
  • Login
  • Events
  • FreeStuff

- Advertisement -

Featured Whitepapers

Follow iTWire on Twitter

About iTWire

iTWire is all about technology news, information, jobs and community for the IT and telecommunications industry professional. Subscribe to our free ICT daily newsletter