Ars Reviews iLife '09: making the cut with iMovie and iPhoto

The latest version of Apple's popular iLife suite of media applications brings a number of new features, as well as tweaks to some existing functionality. Ars dives deep on two of the members of the suite: iPhoto and iMovie. If you're wonder whether an upgrade is worth it, read on for our take.

Since its introduction in 2003, the iLife suite has become an integral part of Apple's sales pitch for the Mac platform. And as the Mac has evolved, the suite's makeup has also changed with the times. iTunes has more or less been made a permanent part of Mac OS X, and so is no longer in the collection. iWeb was added in iLife '06 for creating simple, template-based websites. And iDVD has been relegated to a quaint anachronism as more and more video is shared and streamed online. (Indeed, because iDVD hasn't received any significant updates since iLife '06—and none at all since iLife '08—we have not reviewed it here.)

In the suite's 2009 incarnation, all of the iLife apps add numerous small interface tweaks (except for, again, iLife's appendix, iDVD). And while the apps continue to integrate with Apple's MobileMe (née .Mac) service, there is also added integration with other online services, such as Facebook and Flickr. All told, the individual apps in iLife continue to make some rather amazing capabilities—sorting and editing thousands of digital images, editing digital video into watchable form, creating and editing great looking websites, or creating (or learning to create) music—accessible to mere mortals. This series of reviews will walk you through the suite, starting with the latest versions of iPhoto and iMovie, and tell you what improved, what stayed the same, and whether you should upgrade.

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20 Helpful iLife '09 Tips and Tricks

Every year Apple rolls out another version of iLife. While iPhoto and GarageBand got major updates, some apps, like iWeb and iDVD, ended up being nearly forgotten about. Still, with updates come new features to figure out and a navigation that's changed ever so slightly.

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The Macworld Aftermath

Macworld Aftermath: A Closer Look At iLife, iWork

By John C. Welch
InformationWeek
January 17, 2009 07:00 AM

iLife '09
The first product was the latest version of Apple's "lifestyle" suite, iLife, now iLife '09. The suite contains 5+ applications: iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD, with iTunes being the "+", since it's occasionally part of iLife, but exists on its own outside of that suite. Every Mac has iTunes, but iLife is a separate install.

iPhoto '09
The major changes in iPhoto wrap around two words: Faces and Places. Faces is Apple-ese for the new facial recognition code in iPhoto that allows you to pick a face in a picture, tag it with a name, have iPhoto find that person in every picture in your library and tag them in those pictures.

iMovie '09
While Steve Jobs may have thought iMovie '08 was an amazing new version of Apple's consumer-class video editing product (and for many customers, it was a good product), for those used to iMovie '06's feature set, it was ... disappointing.

IMovie '09 aims to fix many of these complaints by adding/returning more advanced features, so that "consumer" isn't a synonym for "dumbed-down." The one that appeals to me the most, at least personally, is the advanced drag and drop, which allows you to move video and/or audio clips around the same way you would text in a word processor. Select, drag, and drop, or "video editing for people who don't care about the tape paradigm." This also allows you to drop just the audio from a clip, or create things like cutaways, picture-in-picture, and other effects via drag-and-drop.

GarageBand '09
GarageBand '09 adds the next logical feature: lessons. The big new feature for Apple's home recording studio application are "how to play guitar" and "how to play piano" lessons. Taking this concept one step further, Apple not only includes "generic music teacher guy" lessons, but Artist Lessons. So, want to learn how to play "Roxanne"? Sting shows you how, along with background on the song itself. Other artists include Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones, John Fogerty, and others.

Numbers '09
Like Pages, Numbers '09 improvements are in the "well DUH" category: formula improvements, table improvements, better charts, better template chooser, etc. What wasn't talked about, and isn't even on the "What's New" section for Numbers on Apple's site is the addition of an AppleScript dictionary to Numbers, so you can finally automate the silly thing. Having had a bit of time to look at the AppleScript implementation, it's a decent 1.0 setup. You can't create formulas or complex spreadsheet operations via AppleScript, but you can do a decent job of setting up spreadsheets and some basic formatting.

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