I signed up for two Apple Workshops this week, one for iWork and another for iLife. I’m pretty proficient when it comes to using both product families from Apple, but my parents can barely do anything past the basics. I convinced my step-mom to come with me, but unfortunately my dad was busy with tennis. We showed up to our local Apple store and didn’t really have any idea what to expect. It turned out just being us and one other lady who hadn’t actually bought a Mac yet (so I questioned how effective the workshop would be for her). One of the employees set up some folding chairs in front of one of the Mac Pro display models and started up Keynote.

It was kind of distracting running this informal workshop in the middle of the store where there were a hundred other people running around and making tons of noise, but then again it was a free workshop. Since I’ve taught a class that introduces people to an office suite, I was pretty curious as to how the Mac Specialist would approach this quick overview.

He started by inserting text and then moved on to inserting photos from iPhoto. Very simple, very intuitive, duh, it’s Apple. The animation was a little trickier. I’ve only used PowerPoint to put together presentations and I couldn’t tell you the last time I had to use it. Another class I’ve taught requires an automated PowerPoint presentation, I tried to challenge the Specialist with making the entire presentation play without any interaction from the user. After a slight stumble, he delivered and I thought the solution was much easier than what you have to do in PowerPoint. He ended the Keynote overview by inserting a chart. I was a little disappointed that you couldn’t link data between Keynote and Numbers (have a spreadsheet in Numbers with data, insert that data into Keynote, change something in Numbers, it automatically updates in Keynote)

Next, he showed off Pages, which is Apple’s word processing program. It was much of the same. Started with text, inserted images next, tried to explain the difference between positioning them inline vs float but I didn’t think it was the greatest explanation. Something I found neat was the ability to fill shapes with images so you could take something like a starburst and insert one of your photos from iPhoto behind it so it looks like you masked the photo with the starburst.

The last part of the workshop briefly covered Numbers, Apple’s equivalent to Excel, but the Specialist was honest in saying he had very little experience using it since he didn’t ever work with spreadsheets. The most advanced feature he showcased was the ability to “AutoSum” a column (whoopee).

After we had all these documents created, the Specialist gave us an overview of exporting options. Pages has the ability to export as a PDF, a Microsoft Word document, a Rich Text File (RTF), and as plain text. I was most impressed by Keynote’s ability to export as a PowerPoint presentation, Quicktime movie, Flash movie, as a set of Images, and as HTML!

Since nothing is free in life, the workshop ended by promoting Apple’s One to One personal training. It sounds like a great deal. For $99 you get 52 classes with a specialist where you ask all the questions and get to choose when and what content you’ll be covering. I’ve seen other personal training where $99 gets you just one session!

All in all, I thought it was a very positive experience. My step-mom, who is a complete newbie to Mac, said she learned a lot in the short hour long workshop. She’s planning on going to another free workshop that covers iLife this Friday, but since I’m moving back to Bloomington I won’t be able to accompany her.