Digital Home Thoughts: iLife '04 Retrospective

iLife '04 Thoughts
iLife ’04 is Apple’s first attempt at marketing its creative apps as a bundled commercial software package, available for resale. As such, it falls short in a number of ways, yet balances well in others. iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie are the signature apps in iLife. iDVD is more of a utility than a full blown application, and GarageBand is still a work in progress. What concerns me most is that iPhoto is missing some key editing and effects features to make it a worthy commercial photo editing solution. It covers the basics quite well, but is limited by its crippled editing capabilities. I look for this to improve in iPhoto 5.

iMovie desperately needs an overhaul, as it is plagued with rather serious performance issues and clumsy execution. If Apple can address this in the next release and offer some more advanced features lifted from Final Cut Express, I think iMovie will be one of the best consumer video editing solutions on the market.

GarageBand is unique and ingenious. But it has all the earmarkings of first generation software; slow and buggy at times, in need of some polish. The same holds true with GarageBand as with iMovie. If Apple can smooth out the rough edges and add new features designed for the more advanced audience, it is going to rock!. Right now I see it as more of a live experiment.

iLife '05



The release of iLife ’05 is just days away now. With it comes the promise (at least by Apple) of new features and improved performance. And judging from the list of new features it looks like Apple has addressed most of the issue I encountered, at least on paper.

iPhoto 5


Figure 1: iPhoto 5

iPhoto 5 will include new advanced photo editing tools, exactly what I saw as lacking in the last version. And the Photo book feature has received some lavish new book format options, another item I requested, as well as a customizable slideshow capability. I look forward to that.

iMovie HD


Figure 2: iMovie HD

Apple has really taken iMovie back to the drawing board with this release, and rightly so. Even the name has changed to reflect a new focus on High Definition, a much needed feature. Along with HD support, a new Movie Magic feature automatically imports video from your DV camera and places it in the timeline, with one click burn to DVD. Brilliant! (Apologies to Guinness Beer for stealing their line ;) ). Apple also promises “dramatically improved performance”, but I’ll believe that when I see it.

iDVD 5


Figure 3: iDVD 5

iDVD, like iMovie HD, now supports High Definition video and can burn to new DVD formats like DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW. New themes have been added as well as an improved Map view function. iDVD also supports Apple’s new “OneStep DVD” feature found on iMovie HD for automated DVD movie importing/burning.

GarageBand 2


Figure 4: GarageBand 2

GarageBand 2 steps out of infancy into adolescence with improved performance and new features. The biggest addition is Multitrack support, something the previous version lacked. You can also see musical notations presented visually (in animated form) in the timeline, which is really cool. Audio recording has been improved, as well as the addition of new loops. I look forward to this release.

iTunes 4.7


Figure 5: iTunes 4.7

iLife ’05 features an exicting new release of iTunes with tons of amazing features! Just kidding. ;) No, the same release which you can download right now from Apple’s web site is the same that comes bundled with iLife ’05. Since the iPod and iTunes music store are such a vital new asset to Apple, it gets updated and distributed independently of the iLife suite. If you want to find out more about iTunes 4.7, visit Apple’s web site and download a copy.

Stay tuned for my review of iLife '05 in the coming weeks.