Apple iLife '05 (Mac)

I was all excited and ready to make DVDs of my grandkids..... guess what ? This iLife 05' on CD ROM does not include the iDVD program as they advertise. What a rip off. Now i am returning it to AMAZON.COM and i have now ordered the ilife 06' application on DVD, straight from Apple which does include the iDVD program.

If you have a Mac, this is a must have suite...you will never regret it.

I wanted to order the latest Mac version of iLife. Upon receiving your Email solicitation, I automaticaqlly selected the first iLife item that appeared on Amazon's page. Unfortunately, it was for iLife '05, rather than iLife '06. Since I already had iLife'05, I had to send it back and reorder iLife '06. To Amazon, I recommend you feature the latest version of the product and list the discounted older version thereafter. To us Buyers, i've learned to be more aware and detailed in my ordering. It saves everyone a lot of pain and suffering.

I got my version of iLife '05 when I purchased my new iBook in September. I am an amateur videographer, and photographer, so iLife was right up my alley.

The first thing I did when I got iLife was import some footage I had shot at First Practice of the Formula One United States Grand Prix. iMovie was a snap to use, I just had to plug in my cameras (a Sony Digital 8 and a Canon MiniDV) and iMovie recognized them instantly. After getting the footage from both cameras onto the computer I was able to add beginning and ending titles to the footage, as well as label each car that passed for later years when I forget who drove for whom. I have since done three more multi-footage projects. I even produced a three episode cooking show using iMovie, just for fun.

iTunes is an awesome product. It was my first taste of iLife when I downloaded the free version shortly after it came out. Since then I have not used anything else for music storage. The nice thing about iTunes is the fact that I can put my tunes in multiple playlists and create "smart playlists" for any situation. Especially nice at Christmas, I just put all my Christmas songs in a smart playlist (it did it automatically, I just told it to put all songs with a Holiday genre in the playlist) and let it run until the first Christmas football game. It can also burn CDs of your playlists, however, it is not able to set a gap between songs individually like Toast can, but for most people that is not a problem.

GarageBand is a program I didn't think I would use at all. I don't have a band nor can I sing very well. But, I composed every song in the three episode cooking show using GarageBand's loops. And I have played around with my Audio-Technica ATR30 microphone and it does a very good job. I have also recorded my father playing the piano and it sounded great. It has some very useful effects like those which might be found in a professional recording studio, and it has some very interesting effects like the effect "telephone lines" which would have very little use, although it is fun to use to simulate a radio call-in show. The only problem I see with GarageBand is the fact that it can't record multiple tracks at once. It can accomodate up to 255 tracks, but it can't record them all at once.

iPhoto is a good photo storage program. It really helps reduce clutter by allowing the user to put photos in "albums" like the playlists in iTunes. The editing features are good enough for casual tweaks, but for more power a editor like Adobe Photoshop is required. Other reviewers have more information, so I won't bore you by repeating what they say.

Finally, to tie it all together there is iDVD. This only works on SupeDrive equipped Macintoshes like my iBook, but my external LightScribe DVD drive claims it can work with iDVD with extra software included with it. I have not tried this, but it might be an option for those who do not have a built-in DVD drive. iDVD has some pre-defined still themes and some pre-defined motion themes, but both are very user customizable by allowing the user to replace the background music, background picture, et cetera. It has a professional feel without screaming, "I am trying to impress you!" The downside of iDVD is the fact that the forward and back buttons are not customizable nor can you move them, and there is a limit of six buttons per menu screen.

All in all this suite of programs is wonderful. It does some minor quirks, but it is still usable. It certainly is not a suite of professional quality programs, but is very good for amateurs and semi-professionals. Believe me you won't be dissapointed.

This the best product from Apple , simply easy & Powerful collection of software
you will never imagine it , good work Apple.