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By Bob LeVitus
I’ve been so fascinated with Apple’s new GarageBand
that I have barely said a word about the other
iLife ’04 offerings—iPhoto 4, iMovie 4, iDVD
4, and iTunes 4—in my last two columns. All
four are new and improved (some more than others), and now
that I’ve finally been able to tear myself away from
GarageBand for a few minutes, here’s the scoop.
Let’s start with iPhoto,
which impressed me the most. I take a lot of digital photos
and currently have more than 6,000 of ‘em stored in
iPhoto 3. Alas, performance on my fastest Mac (a dual 1GHz
G4 with 1.5GB of RAM) was pathetic and it was almost unusable
on our other (slower) Macs. I was on the lookout for a better
solution at Macworld Expo when the announcement of iPhoto
4 stopped me in my tracks.
Now that I’ve given it a try, I’m happy to report
that it is at least a zillion times faster than version
3, even on our slower Macs, and maybe even two zillion times
faster. In version 3, when I clicked the scroll bar, I could
expect an extended encounter with the dreaded spinning rainbow
cursor. In iPhoto 4, scrolling happens instantly, usually
without even a glimpse of the spinning rainbow. It’s
like a miracle.
But wait, there’s more! Smart Albums are another new
iPhoto 4 feature, which let you
organize photo albums based on date, keyword, or rating
(much like iTunes 4’s Smart Playlists). And new Rendezvous
photo sharing lets our family share photos effortlessly
among the four Macs on our home network.
iMovie 4 now lets you edit directly
in the timeline, which makes using it even easier and faster.
New graphical audio waveforms and live audio scrubbing make
it easier to find specific edit points in audio tracks.
You can now import video directly from an iSight camera.
Plus, the “Star Wars” title generator, which
my wife has already used to great effect in her latest opus,
Basketball Wars: The Rockets (my son’s basketball
team) Strike Back.
As for iDVD, version 4 includes
20 new high-quality theme templates and a new Map view that
makes it easier than ever to construct multi-menu DVDs,
and new professional-quality encoding that lets you burn
over two hours of video on a single DVD-R disc.
If you are into digital photography, iLife ’04 is
worth buying just for the speed improvements in iPhoto 4.
But the bottom line is that if you’re a heavy user
of any of the iLife applications, this upgrade is well worth
$50. Heck, in my humble opinion, any of the five programs
alone would be worth $50; iLife ’04 is a steal at
$49 for all five applications.
iLife requires Mac OS X v10.2.6 or later, QuickTime 6.4
or later, a Macintosh with a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor,
256MB or more physical RAM and a 1024x768 or larger display.
A 600 MHz G3 processor or faster is required for GarageBand
and a G4 or G5 processor is required for GarageBand software
instruments.
The iLife ‘04 applications are included with all new
Macs. An iLife Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to
all customers who purchase a new Mac on or after January
6 that does not include iLife ‘04. The iLife Up-To-Date
package is available for a shipping and handling fee of
$19.95. iTunes version 4.2 is currently available as a free
download atwww.apple.com.
iLife ’04.
S.R.P. $49
Apple Computer, Inc. Cupertino, California
www.apple.com/ilife/
Bob LeVitus
is a leading authority on Mac OS and the author of 41 books,
including The
Little iTunes Book and
Mac OS X for Dummies, 2nd Edition. E-mail comments to
doctormac@boblevitus.com.
Copyright © 2003 Bob LeVitus
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