iLife

Rating:
Summary: iLife puts it all together!
Review: If you're on a Mac, you've probably used at least one of these programs by now. If not, you're missing out on what Steve Jobs calls "The hub of your digital lifestyle."

iMovie - For the amatuer film maker, or somebody who just wants to edit their own home movies, this is a cakewalk. Once you connect your camera through a Firewire port, you import your video. Add titles. Add fades, transitions, etc... Add some background music. Then, download it back to your camera (or, with a bridge, to a VCR). Better yet, save it out and import the video to iDVD for burning.

iDVD - I can't begin to tell you how easy this is. Create a menu (or select one of the many theme menus). Import your video. Click burn to DVD. It is literally that easy. I made a DVD of our improv troupe for all the members' Christmas gifts.

iTunes - If it's a music file... mp3, aiff, wav... it can import to iTunes. Create a music CD. Burn it as a standard or mp3 CD with a single click.

iPhoto - You can set this up to open and import the images as soon as your camera mounts to the desktop. Organize the images. Edit them for color or size. Then, burn a CD, make a slideshow, or even order a personalized bound book with your images and text.

The one major flaw of these programs has been the lack of manuals (except through third parties). A small price to pay for this kind of quality. Also, if you have no need for iDVD, the other three are available for download from the Apple web site.

Rating:
Summary: iLife puts it all together!
Review: If you're on a Mac, you've probably used at least one of these programs by now. If not, you're missing out on what Steve Jobs calls "The hub of your digital lifestyle."

iMovie - For the amatuer film maker, or somebody who just wants to edit their own home movies, this is a cakewalk. Once you connect your camera through a Firewire port, you import your video. Add titles. Add fades, transitions, etc... Add some background music. Then, download it back to your camera (or, with a bridge, to a VCR). Better yet, save it out and import the video to iDVD for burning.

iDVD - I can't begin to tell you how easy this is. Create a menu (or select one of the many theme menus). Import your video. Click burn to DVD. It is literally that easy. I made a DVD of our improv troupe for all the members' Christmas gifts.

iTunes - If it's a music file... mp3, aiff, wav... it can import to iTunes. Create a music CD. Burn it as a standard or mp3 CD with a single click.

iPhoto - You can set this up to open and import the images as soon as your camera mounts to the desktop. Organize the images. Edit them for color or size. Then, burn a CD, make a slideshow, or even order a personalized bound book with your images and text.

The one major flaw of these programs has been the lack of manuals (except through third parties). A small price to pay for this kind of quality. Also, if you have no need for iDVD, the other three are available for download from the Apple web site.

Rating:
Summary: Great Collection
Review: This is a collection of iTunes 3, iPhoto 2, iMovie 3, and iDVD 3 that Apple offers on all their latest machines with Superdrive installed. All but iDVD 3 are available as downloads from the Apple website, but it is worth the $...or whatever to get them altogether and include the iDVD 3. The iDVD 3 is not available as a download because of its size (>1.3 gig) Each of the four programs is good, but the seamless combination of the four (five including iPod) makes this system an easy to learn combination. After looking for almost a year and a half at different software/hardware combinations for editing and converting (to digital for DVD), I decided on the Mac and the iLife package. There are certainly more powerful individual programs available on both the PC and Mac platforms, but this combination beats everything else that I looked at for ease of use and simplicity in learning. I am very pleased with my decision.

Rating:
Summary: Worth four times the price
Review: Where to start to talk about how amazing the latest offering is from Apple for the Macintosh? Let's take it one step at a time.

iMovie 3: Apple took their already great DV editing program and added so many new features it's almost mind boggling! Drag and drop from your iPhoto photo library. Drag and drop from your iTunes music library. Granted, you were able to do these things before in a somewhat clumsy way through the "import" command, but this makes it beyond easy. Chapter support (The ability to break up longer videos on DVD's to easily skip back and forth) for iDVD. Individual volume control for each audio track at any point in the track. One click access for all three of the other iApps. New titles, new transitions, the "Ken Burns" effect with stills. No other DV software available for ANY platform is as easy to use as this. Also if you download from Apple it's FREE!

iPhoto: Still mostly looks the same, but there is now support for the other digital lifestyle iApps built in. The "Retouch" editing feature works amazing well. Also if you download it from Apple it's FREE! If your into serious photo editing, you'll still want a companion program. Photoshop Elements is a good choice. 70% of Photoshop at 1/5 of the price.

iTunes: I honestly don't see much difference here. I'm sure changes were made to integrate it with the other iApps. Still a great program though. If you download it from Apple (deja vu) it's FREE!

iDVD: Some new themes, some new features make this a worthy addition to any SuperDrive equipped Mac. No other DVD authoring software I've seen is as easy to use and as intuitive as iDVD. AND if you download it from Apple it's....um....not available. iDVD can only be purchased as part of the iLife package AND then only installed if you have a Superdrive equipped (internal drive only and as far as I know ONLY if installed by Apple) G4 PowerMac.

Complaints: Yeah a few. iMovie crashed a few times while performing multiple operations (granted it was doing 4 "Ken Burns" and 5 transitions at the time) on my 933 SuperDrive G4 Quicksilver Tower. Also the Apple restricts iDVD to only those people who bought their SuperDrive equipped G4 computers. C'mon Apple! We bought the hardware. Let us configure it ourselves without penalties! Also, you must be running at least 10.1.5 or later (10.2 HIGHLY recommended). System 9 users are officially out in the cold for this product.

In conclusion: If you meet the hardware/software specs, this is a must buy! No SuperDrive? Find a fast online connection and download the other pieces.