Apple briefly had a link to iLife ‘06 posted on its website earlier today which indicated the existence of a new App called iWeb. Since its discovery the website has reverted to showing the current iLife suite and any reference to iWeb has disappeared.
It is no surprise that iLife ‘06 will be released this year, after all there has been a new version each year for a bit now. I was wondering what Apple would add to the bundle this time around to make it a must have purchase for the masses. After all, a revision to the current programs would be nice, but it is questionable if it would be compelling enough to garner enough interest for most iLife ‘05 users to upgrade. So could iWeb be the next killer app getting us all reaching for our wallets?
The question is, if indeed iWeb does exist, what functionality it would offer. The name itself in non-specific enough to leave the potential field of operation wide open. However, its easy to speculate where Apple could be going with this app. So here is a possible feature list, certainly features I would like to see included:
1) A web design tool : I would see this as a basic design tool, offering similar options to those I have available on the web based client for this Typepad account. It is likely that there will be a number of pre designed templates a la Pages, which can then be tweaked with colours and fonts. Once sorted, the software will link to a .Mac account or other webspace for publishing. This would encompass all the usual features such as blogging and photo uploading. It would be nice to have the feature of adding iTunes links built in (with the ability to make some money off being an affilate) but this seems unlikely.
2) A podcast delivery tool: this is quite likely as podcasts have become a large part of the iTunes experience for many and Garage band already has the functionality to create said podcasts. This is a feature I would see being streamlined in garageband itself to make it more intuitive to achieve, and to allow the two apps to talk together easily.
3) A vidcast delivery tool: as above but linking to iMovie instead. This could be important for Apple as vidcasts are ideal content for the iPod, being about the right length and with quality of video not being a major concern.
Options 2 and 3 would have seamless integration with iTunes, make the process of uplading your work even easier.
4) A .Mac frontend: I am not a .Mac subscriber myself so I am not familiar with the way the accounts currently work. I do often hear that .Mac is underwhelming to say the least, so maybe iWeb will become the software which will change all this around, linking the above three functions as well as the iCal and Address book functionality into one easy to use package.
I’m sure there are other possible uses as well. If anyone has any interesting thoughts, post them below. Anyway, its not long before we find out if this is a reality or not. MW is just around the corner!
I remember a couple of years ago at WWDC, Apple was talking quite a bit about their APIs for integrating with .Mac. They really wanted developers to use those APIs. And yet when iLife '05 and iWork '05 came out, there was nothing. It really surprised me.
Sounds like it just took an extra year...
Posted by: Peter | Thursday, January 05, 2006 at 19:33
I think this will be an apple style blogging tool.
Posted by: | Thursday, January 05, 2006 at 19:30
iWeb sounds intriguing. I bought RapidWeaver last week and it's a lot like what you describe, including .mac integration, iPhoto integration, iApp look-and-feel, photoalbums. RapidWeaver costs $35, in the price range of an iLife app, and, although its a mini web site creation tool, its aimed at single authored sites.
An iWeb product would be greatly enhanced if Pages had serious web export capabilities. Pages will either be dropped (unlikely) or enhanced. It currently supports things like inline movies and tunes, but these are sort of stupid -- why would you put a movie in a pages document if you could only share it with other pages' users? But, this makes a lot more sense if Pages could export these to a webpage with elegant formating.
I'm really curious to see what Apple has up its sleeve.
Posted by: John Kubie | Thursday, January 05, 2006 at 18:55