iLife '08: Impressions & Discussion (1 Viewer)

[Aaron Reynolds]

iLife '05 stank -- iLife '06 was far more stable and mature.

Played a bit today, and will give some of the apps a real workout tonight and this weekend. Compared GarageBand '06 and GarageBand '08, and the new version is massively faster on the same hardware. Really, much much faster. I was shocked. Magic GarageBand is a silly idea, and intellectually I know it's pointless -- and it's a ton of fun. Don't know how much I'll use it, but it'll probably kill three or four hours of my life.

iMovie -- people can relax. These reviews complaining that you can't do this or that must be so rushed that the reviewers didn't bother to look in the help files. It's radically different from '06 and I don't know that I like it, but it's not the pile of uselessness that some people are making it out to be. A co-worker of mine successfully brought the audio alone from a video clip into a movie project, which has been one of the gigantic wailing cries of "now it's impossible".

iPhoto -- oh, I love it. .Mac web galleries are so easy! I'll be transitioning my personal domain to .Mac and iWeb and we'll see how easy that it. I'm going to try to move my 13,000 photo library on my main machine to '08 tonight and start making some new web pages. I'll post links if and when I get them up.

 

[DaveF]

That's very encouraging! I hope they do a quick revision to allow plug-ins, and provide a broader of selection effects -- it sounds like the first go is more limited than 06, which frankly was not that deep to start (arguably a lesser selection than in Windows MoveMaker). I don't need a zillion effects, but the more available, the more likely the couple I need will be there

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Dave, the effects that are gone are like the laser bolts you could have coming from people's eyes and the cheesy faux-rain video overlay. The ones that were spectacular in a demo that no one ever, ever used in a video.

.Mac web galleries are easier than I thought. I used to spend an hour updating my website; with .Mac and iWeb I was spending ten or fifteen minutes. These galleries (on my wife's .Mac account -- hit a snag trying to install iLife '08 on my G4 desktop which I'll detail if I can't resolve it by tomorrow -- it's likely limited to me and my weird gear) I made by clicking on the album I had made and then clicking on "web gallery". A little menu comes down with about six checkboxes to set the behaviors of the gallery (like, can other people upload new pictures or download the full-sized originals), and that was it. Under a minute.

http://gallery.mac.com/drvanessa

I uploaded the full-sized 2000x3000 images, so I'd be curious if any PC users (or anyone at all) see that same cragginess that Kyle was talking about in the .Mac thread.

edit: if you haven't, download the iPhoto update -- .Mac web galleries don't upload properly without it.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Aaron,

First, very nice photo page. Why is your kid shaving?! I didn't
start till I was 40.

Secondly, concerning the photos....

Never figured out how to drag a large picture to the template which
then resizes it to a smaller photo --- but THEN be able to click on
that photo to go to a full-size one like you did on your page.

Perhaps the problem is I am not using the photo template when
doing our HTF coverage webpages.

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

He's obsessed with Disney's Cars (which I maintain is like some kind of perfect storm of things that little boys like), and so we've been given every piece of Cars memorabilia that exists, including a fake shaving kit with a brush and foam and a razor. Naturally, having a shaving kit with Mater on it means that we have to shave with daddy in the morning.

And you figured it out -- it's a function of the template. You can add all the other stuff around the photo part of a photo page, so it's best to just start with one of those.

Did you check out the other views -- mosaic and carousel?

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Actually, I received iLife 08 from Apple.com yesterday
and installed it in my computer minutes before I had to leave for
work this morning (where I am now).

I only really glanced at everything quickly. I saw that iWeb
had some new templates, but nothing extraordinary.

Where I had some problems was registration.

I bought the FAMILY PACK that can be installed on 5 computers.
Well, there aren't any registration numbers included with this
software which I found odd. It seems you can just install the software
without ever having to put in a registration number.

It did ask me if I wanted to register online which I
opted to do. However that had problems as the web page asked
for a part number and entering the serial number on
the box didn't work, nor any other number I was able to find. I
had to abort the online registration.

So, I am rather curious as to how Apple knows how many machines
the software has been installed on since there is no registration
number(s) needed as far as I can see.

 

[ErichH]

As before - no ser required for iLife. This info is not a secret

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Eric,

You mean to tell me that *technically* I could have bought the
single user pack and installed it on 5 computers instead of buying
the family pack?

 

[ErichH]

Yes Ron - That is correct. Assume you don't register all or any computers,
which works fine. At least they don't charge double.

Didn't catch you ordering, so I couldn't warn. Darn It!

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

So, the carping on the internet about how you couldn't extract audio and lay it over another clip or over stills is total nonsense -- I did it myself today. Command-shift-drag the clip with the audio you want extracted into your movie onto another movie clip -- the audio will extract itself and insert itself starting where you released it.

 

[DaveF]

There's a positive comment in MacLife Forums on the new iMovie 08 workflow. It's #67 in on this page. With this and Aaron's & Craig's comments, I'm cautiously optimistic that 08 will work well for me -- especially given the speed improvements.

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Hilarious -- that's the only guy who's used it in the whole thread, because the other user complaints are insanely unrelated to the actual product.

I love how one guy complains that you can't e-mail a photo to your .Mac web gallery without having a .Mac account -- how the hell would you have a .Mac web gallery running without a .Mac account?

This is why I don't read about this stuff on the internet. It just makes me angry how people will complain about things that they don't know anything about, and about "problems" like "I can't use .Mac without getting .Mac". And for crying out loud, doesn't anyone watch the video tutorials or read the help files? And I loved the criticism that iPhoto is more like a pro app, specifically Aperture, every upgrade, while iMovie went the other direction -- clearly, this has been said by someone who has never used Aperture or never used the new iPhoto. Want to know what's the same about them? GREY BACKGROUNDS. Oh, the humanity,

AAAAAARRRRRRGH! No more MacLife forums for me. If I went back to posting there, I'd spend all day there.

Instead, I'm going to spend a lot of today with iMovie and GarageBand.

GarageBand -- many of the tools are more detailed (especially the compressor -- not MP3 compression, but dynamic range compression), and you can add four effects per track instead of two. And it can handle playing a lot more tracks and a lot more effects at the same time than '06. A big optimization and upgrade.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I gotta get back to this issue cause I'm scratchin' my head....

Apple charges $20 for a product that you can install on up to
five computers.

Yet, there is no registration number. No way for Apple to find
out exactly how many computers it is actually installed on.

Gee, I wonder how many people are handing out copies of this
software to others?

And that iWork trial disk? What was Apple thinking?!
The serial number to make it registered is all over the Internet.

I have never seen such a blatant disregard for registration control
on software such as this. It's mind boggling!

 

[Carlo_M]

To be honest, Ron, I had the same feeling when companies started making you register online and activate their products. Adobe does this now but the guy who paved the way was Microsoft with their Windows authentication.

I guess now it's viewed as de facto and anything else is regarded as weird. I think Apple just trusts their consumers, or rather doesn't want to make their consumers feel like criminals (which both MS and Adobe do).

I think of Apple's approach as a "trust the consumer" approach. The real difference isn't the presence of a serial number, but rather the lack of making a user authenticate over the web or phone. That's the way business used to be done just a few short years ago.

I mean, what good would a serial number do anyway, without authentication? People could still hand around the discs, with the serial numbers, and if you don't have to authenticate then it's all academic anyway, hundreds of people could use a piece of software with the same serial number. So Apple is probably figuring "we're not MS, we don't make you authenticate online" so why bother with even generating serial numbers when it doesn't really add much to the security?

 

[DaveF]

Aaron - I'm looking forward to your (informed) comments / review of iLife!

The family pack licensing of Apple software is an interesting issue. I think it's got a variety of factors. First, Apple has to differentiate themselves from Microsoft. Everyone loathes MS's registration and WGA systems. So this is still an easy method.

But Apple makes it affordable to be honest: What is it, $20 more for four more computers? Many people want to be honest and feel good about themselves. $20 is a small price for a clean conscience. Especially when you're getting high quality apps at $16 each! Seriously, a $16 video editing app! A $16 WYSIWYG web editor! etc. This is a good deal.

People pirate Office because they feel have little choice and it's more easily justified. Everyone's got it, and has got to have it. But it's $500 brand new (for the full suite with PowerPoint)! So they copy from the office, rationalize it as, well the company already bought a gazillion licenses, and I gotta have it for when I work at home, so I'm covered. And here's iWork now, offering Office-like apps for $80* ($27 each!). Not a bad price for good software and a good night's sleep.

(*see DaringFireball for cogent commentary on iWork)

Finally I'll suggest, based on years of knowing Mac fanatics, that Mac users want to pay money for their software and hardware. They pride themselves on "paying for a Ferrari" as it's said around here. And they know that if they all pirated everything, vendors would go out of business, and their small Apple ecosystem would be ruined.

So I've got to buy at least one $79 copy of iLife and iWork, and $129(?) for Leopard. (I'm not savvy to the websites with reg codes.) I might as well pay the extra $20 each so my wife's versions are legit as well. Besides, my wife requires me to be honest...

 

[Craig S]

You don't even need the trial disk - just download the trial from Apple's site. Not to mention that every Mac sold has the iWork demo preloaded.

I'm in agreement with what Dave said. The delta to license multiple machines is so reasonable that I don't mind paying it even though it seems like you really don't have to. Microsoft has priced Vista & Office too high, there are WAY too many options for both, and the multi-license options are just too limited. I'm happy to pay the extra $20 to Apple for top-notch, sensibly-licensed, and reasonably-priced software. Not to mention not being treated like a criminal. I think of it as as supporting sanity in this crazy industry.

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

I spent about an hour with iMovie '08 today, and it's genius. I spent a fair amount of time with iMovie '06 and never really got comfortable with the interface or where things were. I spent a lot of time looking stuff up. To this day, I don't remember how to shorten clips without splitting them.

iMovie '08 makes perfect sense to me and I have not yet bothered to read much in the way of documentation. It's hard to explain just how easy it is, or how scrubbing works. I think you just need to go do it.

I played with iWeb a bit and it's dead easy to integrate .Mac web galleries into it -- they're in the Web Widget menu, and they look great on the page. I'm going to move aaronreynolds.ca to .Mac (I tried to today, but my registrar doesn't have a self-serve option for changing CNAME), but in the meantime I stuck up a test-page on my wife's .Mac account since it turns out the DVD ROM drive in my old tower has given up, so I can't install iLife '08 on it for a few days. She's irritated that I've kidnapped her MacBook.

http://web.mac.com/drvanessa

Click on the cardboard box to see how .Mac web galleries display on a webpage. I LOVE THEM!

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Aaron,

That's f--ing amazing! How did you get the pictures to change like that?

I have never seen anything like that. Very, very impressive indeed.

I tell yuh, I am so impressed by Mac software and the ease of using it.

 

[Craig S]

That's called "skimming", and it's built-in to the new .Mac Web Galleries, along with all the different views. Here's another example - pics from my recent post-EMA trip to the Grand Canyon, published with a single click in iPhoto:

http://gallery.mac.com/cseanor#gallery

Skimming is also built-in to the Events view in the new iPhoto.

 

[Eric M Jones]

Late to the game here but I visited the Apple store yesterday and checked out the new iMac and played with iLife for a few minutes. I was mostly concerned with iMovie because of all the bad things I have heard. I've been using iMovie regularly since version 1. Definitely the most comprehensive rewrite of an iLife app. yet. Looks there will be a bit of a learning curve over the past updates but what I found surprising is it has more of a Apple pro app. look to it than an iLife app. I've dabbled with Final Cut and looks similar. Didn't have much time to check out the usability. One thing to note: all of the demo clips provided were high def. and the videos looked sweet on the new glossy iMac screens.

I have a question for you new 08 users. What does iphoto do with the existing library as far as organizing into events? This is still a bit confusing to me. Just trying to decided if I want to do the upgrade.

-EJ