Jan 18, 2009
iLife ’09
For the past few years I’ve had a little Apple-related ritual. Whenever iLife is released I walk over to the Apple Store in Regent St and buy it. iLife ’06 and ’08 (they skipped ’07 I think) sit on a shelf in the study upstairs.
The one application from the suite that gets used much more than the others is iPhoto. iPhoto ’06 was a slow, clunky beast but I still faithfully used it to organise, tag and upload to Flickr (using Connected Flow’s FlickrExport) and even created and ordered one or two hardcover books. The ’08 version was much faster and the Events feature was fun to use.
iMovie ’06 was simple and straightforward. ’08 had me scratching my head a few times and came to the conclusion that I preferred the previous version. As for iDVD ’08, I don’t think I even launched it once. That’s no reflection on the software which I think is pretty good but times have changed. The ’06 version was used and used a lot. Garageband is great for recording scratch tracks for work and the ’08 release had a very handy Movie layer to sync voiceovers.
The one app I never used was iWeb. The fact that it doesn’t talk to TypePad, WordPress or Blogger was a great disadvantage and even though I know that it isn’t tethered to .Mac/MobileMe, it still feels constrained.
So, iLife ’09 is the one that’s going to break my little ritual. The one I have no interest in buying. Faces and Places? My D60 doesn’t have a GPS function (there is a third party shoe-mounted one apparently) and I can tag my photos with the person’s name. iMovie? No thanks, Final Cut Pro does the job a lot better. If iDVD had BluRay support it would be really interesting as opposed to being nearly useless now.
There isn’t a single feature that would compel me to buy this version, not one. Does anyone else have a different opinion?
I actually ordered both iWork 09 and iLife 09 last week. I did that without even delving too deeply in what they offered, but like you, I am looking at performance improvements (particularly in Pages and iPhoto) more than features.
Like you, I don’t use the other apps in the package, but those two make it worth my while to go and get them.
iWork has already shipped and I expect to get it any day now, the iLife is whenever they release it. As everyone (except for Frances) is a MacHead, I bought the Family version of both!
I really like the improvements in Pages, Keynote and Numbers. Let me know what you think of the new iPhoto when you get it!