I’ve always liked iLife. Since I migrated my office base to Macs, I’ve been using it a lot: managing photos in iPhoto, editing small videos in iMovie, making some quick recordings in Garage Band and writing this website in iWeb. Now Apple has a new version out, introduced during the Back To The Mac event a couple weeks ago.
This brought some updates to iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band. Missing something? Yup, iWeb was left out. Although the package ships iWeb, it’s still version 3.0.2, the same one which came with iLife ’09. A pity, since that’s a nice tool for writing quick websites like this one. Anyway, let’s start with the tool I use the most: iPhoto.
iPhoto ’11 has drastically improved from the past version. The first thing users will notice is the ‘Full Screen’ button on the lower left corner of the window. Now we can do everything in full screen, which is neat. And it’s real full screen, not a maximized window. Remember the Mac OS X Lion preview in October? That’s probably the way all Mac apps will go from now on.
Click the button and you’ll see a new full-screen interface to manipulate your photos. And it runs very smoothly, even in my old 2008 MacBook Pro.
Back to the main screen, you’ll also notice that Places has now options for Satellite and Hybrid views, which is very cool. Here’s a fullscreen view of Midtown Manhattan and all my pins on the map:
Sharing photos is now much better as well. There are great improvements in Facebook and Flickr integration and also a new option to create e-mails within iPhoto.
Facebook/Flickr integration allows album visualization in iPhoto and also quick import/export of photos between iPhoto and the social networks.
If you ever used an iPad, you’ll also notice a lot of familiar interface bits here. Just don’t try pinch to expand. It won’t work 🙂
E-mailing is also very nice, with a lot of cool templates available. Sending photos will never be boring again:
Another feature that has improved a lot is Slideshows: better templates and way smoother. The Places theme, which shows the photos on a map is awesome! Another one I like is the Vintage Prints theme:
Creating books and cards is now extremely easy, although I found it a bit sluggish in less powerful Macs. The templates are excellent and it’s very easy to customize your own books.
And the iOS users will find the bookshelf interface very familiar – it’s identical to the one in the iBooks app for iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch.
And that’s iPhoto. Its improvements in this version is enough to justify the update from iLife ’09.
Next is iMovie.