There’s a benefit to installing software well after everyone else on the planet. You get to see it in a light that no one else can see, the hype machine and marketing speak is no longer relevant. You get to spend a couple extra weeks pumping yourself to a hysteria inducing frenzy, and the moment you install it and try it out, you get to see that it’s a giant cash grab. It’s as simple as padding the bottom line, and there’s absolutely nothing in the package that warrants the update. Talk about a giant letdown. iLife 09 sucks.
Well, it doesn’t suck as in a OMG it’s broken kind of way. It sucks in a OMG I could have stuck with iLife 08 for another year kind of way. I was lucky, it only cost me ten dollars for the upgrade because I bought a brand new laptop that shipped with the 08 version on it. My wallet is thanking me at this point. Don’t get me wrong if you were using the iLife 06 package still then this would be as good of a time as any to upgrade to iLife 09, but if you have iLife 08 I would wait until iLife 10.
iPhoto 09: Faces, Places, and Maps OH MY
The faces addon is pretty cool, the places functionality is pretty hot, online sharing is something that should have been built into the package from the beginning. Sounds like features worth upgrading for? Sure. If you have extra time to tag faces in a trillion photos, if you have the patience to manually place all of your photos on a map then this by all means give the program an update. But chances are unless your a professional photographer (you’d be using better tools if you were), then the only thing this application does is take up more of your time–something I can’t afford to give my crappy pictures anyway. On a side note, what digital camera comes with GPS support? Professional cameras need not apply. Your iPhone? Pft. That barely qualifies as a camera.
Online sharing was broken for me. I couldn’t upload to flickr because I had to many “sets” and I needed to upgrade my account to a pro account. What a load of crap. I don’t want sets. I don’t need sets. What I need is to be able to upload a random photo here and a pathetic attempt at a photo there. Just upload my damn photo, don’t tell me i’m inadequate. I’ve gotten enough of that from professional educators over the years. I don’t need my software playing that role now too.
iMove 09: An actual return on investment
If you edit a lot of home movies you’ve probably slurged, or better yet pirated, one of the final cut packages by now or even some of the Adobe products. But, for most of us, we exist in a space between needing a 200-1500.00 software package and needing something to chop up my latest attempt at being Gus Van Sant. Sadly, Van Sant doesn’t do screencasts, and I don’t do epic feature films. I use iMovie and he probably uses an entire studio to edit his films. The precision editor makes it worth the price of admission for me (Remember I paid $10.00), but if you’re more of a photo person then again I say iLife 09 is a giant waste of money for you. Video stabilization is pretty cool and really helps with the gag reflex when you’re showing people small clips of video from your latest holiday, but no one wants to watch those movies anyway, with the exception of family members, so do you really need to stabilize them to begin with?
Garageband: Oh look I can take music lessons
I already play the guitar, so I don’t really need lessons, but it’s a great place to get started if you were thinking about giving it another shot. Oh wait, you have to pay for them. Never mind. It’s not added functionality, it’s more of an added revenue stream. It hasn’t added anything to make your music sound better which is what I’d think an upgrade would do. Fail.
iWeb…sucks
iWeb sucks and there’s nothing about it I care to even talk about. Now that I think about it. I don’t think they really added anything to make your site better. They should probably focus on cleaning up the terrible wysiwyg code that they leave behind.
iDVD: it’s all about the themes
You buy the update because you need new themes for your home DVDs. You buy the update because you edit an occasional wedding video and your clients are starting to get a little suspicious of the menu with the curtains flailing in the wind because every single wedding dvd they’ve seen has it. Again there isn’t really anything new to iDVD. I would really, really, really, would like to seem them give you the ability to create your own menus with ease. That would be awesome. That would be something I would be willing to pay for.
As it stands if you need any of the above features then this updates for you, but after evaluating what we actually got from this release months after everyone was hyped about it, I’m not all that convinced that everyone needs to run out and get the new copy. Evaluate your needs first, make the purchase second, you’ll thank me for it in the long run.
I agree that iMovie 09 is utter crap.
The interface is awful and, admittedly this was also true of iMove 08, the most hateful thing is the way that you can't 'save as' or 'save' and every time you open the bloody thing, the previous project is there!
Finally, the stupid way that the sound track surrounds
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Likeall iapps suck, the first reason is they are very slow, features are limited and they are buggy, and they hide your files deep deep into million of folders, everytime when i got a new mac, the first thing i do is trash all those iwhat, ithat, and install photoshop and finial cut pro.
I just can't believe people actually using those buggy iapps
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LikeI happen to like ilife 09. I must add the disclaimer that I am a windows convert and the current ilife suite is the only one I have ever been exposed to. With that being said. I have never expeirenced crashes with iDVD or any of the othe ilife applications. I am looking foward to what the next ilife will offer.
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LikeGarageband 09 is a baffling mess, and here I am a musician who has 30 years recording experience. How is it that by moving one region to a different point on the track, or by pasting a new region at an insertion point, a pre-existing region is completely wiped out. There is no corollary in tape recording/editing, except maybe accidentally recording over your precious material. Someone please help me out of this nightmare. If there is a solution, please tell me. Whatever silly mindless geek made this the default in Garageband was surely NOT a musician.
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LikeWow, what a piece of crap. I don't even know how to describe the problems i've had with it! '08 was awesome compared to this! '09 crashes, and crashes, my music seems to have un-sinced, wouldn't load, mouse not working, scroll not working, I'd like to ram it down someone's throat. I used to make great stuff in "08, can't get '09 to even load!!!
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LikeI couldn't agree more. I bought it specifically for garageband. silly me to believe the apple sales pitch and actually go with it BEFORE reading any reviews! I'm the stupid one here. so the "new and improved" garageband is trash really. what a gimmick. and since I have no clue how to back out of the decision, I'm stuck with it. guess I'll have to buy a monster pc and install pro tools to up my music producing game...
sincererly,
artificially high hopes for gb 09
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LikeI have tried and tried iMovie 09 and have found it to the biggest disappointment from Apple that I have ever seen.
Makes the iBook G3 500 look like a speed daemon with a 67 MGz system bus.
I can use it about 15 minutes at a time before I have to quit or I would throw the Mac across the room.
iPhoto I like and iDVD works OK for me, Garage band is a time wasting toy unless you know how to make music to start with.
iTunes is totally separate and apart from iLife so doesn't enter here.
All told I would say keep iPhoto and iDVD then toss the rest.
I sure hope that iMovie 10 is an improvement.
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LikeAbsolutely sucks! Add stabilization to imovie 08 and I would never open iMovie 09 again... Apple completely missed the ball on this one sort of like the first apple laptop or the newton....
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LikeiLife 09 definitely sucks.
iMovie 09 is probably the biggest disappointment for me. The thing is a giant pain in the ass compared to 08, and while I can't be positive (because I can't seem to FIND everything), the buttload of effects 08 had are gone in 09.
Oh and that video stabilization? Total lie. It doesn't stabilize anything but already stable video.
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LikeThanks Otto,I'm still frustrated by it. Garageband keeps getting worse daily for me. I now refuse to record our audio podcast with it... it's that BAD.
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LikeYou're wrong about one thing. For me anyway, iDVD did bring with it a new function. It crashes constantly. Thirty minutes in to encoding the video, and iDVD unexpectedly quits. Like an idiot, I try again and again hoping for a different result. No dice. I reinstall iDVD '08 and everything works out great.You're right though in that iLife '09 sucks. I have had nothing but buyer's remorse since I installed it. The problem is that so many features have been added to these applications, that the simple program they once were is now gone. I call it iPod Syndrome. Remember when the iPod did one thing and did it really well? i.e. it played music? Remember when iPhoto was an intuitive and semi-powerful way to look at and simply edit your photos? Or when iMovie was a simple way to edit home movies? I was a professional video editor for a number of years, and the new iMovie still confounds me. I guess the problem with that was the old iMovie HD was getting to the point where if they made it any better, they were cannibalizing FC Express sales (not that anyone has bought FCE in years). Good article though. It helps knowing that I'm not the only one out there who thinks this was a worthless release, and if anything, was a step back.
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LikeThanks Otto,I'm still frustrated by it. Garageband keeps getting worse daily for me. I now refuse to record our audio podcast with it... it's that BAD.
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LikeI really have to disagree with your thoughts on iLife 09. I think it is definitely worth upgrading too. iPhoto I spend about 15 minutes tagging faces and got through about 150 photo's. It now recognizes every one in new photo's that I sync, unless they are a new person. Or have drastically changed their appearance. iMovie is what 08 should have been. I have been using it a lot more than Final Cut these days, But that is because I am not a fan of timeline editing. If I have some hardcore editing that needs to be done then I use Final Cut. But I have been having a blast with iMovie 09. I wish garage band had more podcasting tools. They changed some of the podcast features around and that screwed me up at first, But now we are friends again.iDVD has always been garbage. iWeb is for your average user. I think if you are wanting to build and brand yourself you are going to code yourself or use wordpress. I use iWeb on my wrestling site and that is it. Though finally being able to upload directly to your own server is a huge plus.
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