iLife and iWork: Better, But More Importantly Free

Along with the flurry of hardware updates, Apple announced substantial upgrades to iLife and iWork. Features run the gamut from seamless integration with iOS to powerful automation tricks like a robotic drummer. And like OS X Mavericks, everything is available immediately, for free.

The upgrades to iLife start with iPhoto and iMovie. It’s now easier to make and order photo books with iPhoto for iPad. For iMovie, it’s easier to make pro-quality movies both on iOS devices and OS X machines thanks to a new user interface that puts your movie, clips and trailers all on the same screen. New iCloud integration makes working on movie projects seamless across all devices.

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Garage Band gets a little bit more magic. The program now supports 32 different tracks, even on iOS devices, and you can purchase new instruments and effects from inside the app. Apple brought out a guy named Zander to demo a new feature called Drummer. Just like the synonymous feature in Logic Pro X, Drummer provides smart, adaptable drum tracks to any Garage Band song. The demo used a robo-drummer named Kyle. He sounded pretty good!

The iWork updates don’t seem quite as fun as robo-drummers, but they sure do look useful. Keynote gets a bundle of new effects and animations, some of which were used in the Apple event itself. Pages looks more friendly to graphic designers with loads of neat text effects that can create professional quality posters with just a few mouse clicks. And it all happens on iCloud making collaboration super easy.

Again, the new iLife and iWork is available immediately, and it’s free with the purchase of a new Mac or MacBook.