Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"A free seminar from Apple extols the virtues of using Macs for business needs. Titled "Your business on a Mac. A better bottom line," the seminars are being held around the US starting this week."

The seminars are geared to show you how to integrate a Mac into your business, and add to your productivity. The seminars also discuss how to integrate Macs with existing Windows applications and networks. The seminars area about an hour long, and highlight iWork '09 and iLife '09. Currently the seminars are scheduled for only 11 states (Alabama, Arizona, California, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), but you can request a seminar for your area at the Apple site. Apple also has a variety of white papers on the subject that you can download.

"As usual, Apple has rolled out a low-cost upgrade ("up-to-date" in Apple parlance) program for iLife ‘09. It works like this: if you purchased a Mac (even a refurbished one) on or after 06 January 2009 that doesn't come with iLife ‘09 you can upgrade to iLife ‘09 for $9.95 plus tax. The reason is that all Macs sold after last Tuesday's Macworld Expo keynote address are sold as "shipping with iLife ‘09." To be able to claim that Apple needs to make iLife ‘09 available inexpensively to every Mac sold on or after that date."

When I bought my first iBook back in 2004, I took part in this program also. It's not a bad deal, really. A $10 upgrade path to the latest version of iLife is definitely an enticer for people who are on the fence based on the included bundle potentially being outdated.