Apple sees its iLife 08 digital lifestyle package as another incentive for PC users to switch to Mac, and gives Mac faithful more reasons to love their machines. It expects to gain further the digital lifestyle application with a new version of iPhoto and a reinvented iMovie application.
The new movie-making software iMovie ’08 speeds the process of both creating and sharing movies. It can import video from the latest AVCHD, HDV and DV camcorders, as well as from digital cameras, and displays a user’s entire video library whether it’s stored on internal or external drives.
Videos can be created by dragging the selected video into a project, then easily add a soundtrack from iTunes, voiceovers, and elegant effects and cinematic titles. They can also be quickly ported across to filesharing websites like YouTube or uploaded to tools like the iPod or Apple TV.
Acknowledging users’ rapidly growing electronic photo libraries, iPhoto 08 organises photo libraries into Events categories, and both iPhoto and iMovie integrate Apple’s new .Mac web hosting facility for photos and videos. A unified search also allows users to search photos by rating, date and keywords.
iLife ’08 also features iWeb ’08, with live web widgets such as Google Maps that let users create even more dynamic websites. It also includes a music recording feature for the musically talented and not-so-talented, through its GarageBand 08 and Magic GarageBand tools.
Users can pick from nine musical genres and interact with a band of “players” on a virtual stage by selecting an instrument and musical part for each player to create thousands of possible song combinations. Users can play along with a built-in software instrument or record their voice to sing along to their own music, and for more advanced musicians there is multi-take recording to capture the best performance, arrangements to cut, copy and paste intros, verses and choruses, and support for 24-bit audio interfaces.
The new iWeb also includes a range of new, customisable Apple-designed themes that can be paired with different web page designs.
Apple is also introducing the.Mac Web Gallery, fully integrated with iPhoto ’08 and iMovie ’08 to enable web sharing of photos and movies. It automatically builds a website containing photo galleries and movies that can be viewed on any modern computer. Photos can be downloaded to print at sizes up to 40.5 x 50.8 cm, and movies can be viewed at higher-than-DVD resolution.
Pricing & Availability
iLife ’08 is now available for a RRP $99 through the Apple Store www.apple.com/au/store and Apple Authorised Resellers, and will be included with all new Macs beginning today.
