iLife '11 - Installed

 I've been a fan of iLife since I first saw it in 2007.  For me the winning product was iPhoto.  The way it manipulates photos gives very powerful editing through a simple user experience.  When I bought a MacBook Pro last year, one of the first things I did was use iPhoto to create some printed photo albums.  Apple aren't the only company offering this service, but the are the best at getting the image from the camera to the printed page.  iPhoto makes it a seamless operation.

While experimenting during the course of this year, I managed to use iMovie to create a pretty good movie sequence recorded on an iPhone 3GS.  The templates, transitions and thought that has gone into this is wonderful.  Again it gives the non-professional film-maker a chance to maximise the quality of their footage.

 With GarageBand I'm a relative novice.  I've launched the program a couple of times and put together some loops, but nothing I wanted to save and call my own.  It's nice to know that it's there though.

And so to iLife '11.  The big deal seems to be full screen mode, which allows these apps to glow from the 21.5" or 27" iMac screens, or if you're old school, upto the 30" Apple Cinema Displays on your Mac Pro.  Smare moves for iPhoto are the Facebook integration directly from the app, and extending the printed matter from books to letterpress cards.  This means that home users can make their own wedding invitations, or any other greeting cards.  Look out traditional wedding stationers.

iMovie '11 brings styles to your movies, and improved audio editing.  When I get some tim I'll be throwing a few movie clips at it and see what the results are.

GarageBand '11 I'll probably never use, and there's plenty of detail about it all over the Apple website.

I also want to mention iDVD and iWeb, which are both updated in this release.  iDVD builds on the iMovies you create and allows you to burn them to DVD and add menus and controls for all DVD players.  I suppose we might see iBluray once the hardware is eventually brought into the iMac family, but it's not there yet.  iWeb grabs content from the other iLife applications and shares it through MobileMe.  Although I have a MobileMe account (Find My iPhone/iPad requires it) I've never used iWeb.  It probably deserves some attention, if only because my kids will one day ask me about it.

So that's my precis of iLife '11.  It took about 10 minutes to install on my iMac while I wrote this.  I'll review the apps in more detail once I've played around with them.