iLife - First Impressions

iPhoto 4

iPhoto's been mis-named. This is iPhoto 2.1. No 'outstanding' functionality that shouldn't have already been there such as the much touted faster scrolling and faster action on renaming rolls.

Haven't been around anyone yet to share photos (My younger sister's laptop is with her at my older sister's house), so i can't comment on that, yet.

I'm not really impressed with the 'upgrade'. In edit mode, you still get the a substantial pause when you go from photo to photo. Scrolling is still a little jerky, but admittedly, faster. So is renaming rolls. Adding keywords to photos is a first for me, i don't recall if this was available in the previous version. I never used it till tonight. Obvious negative: you can't assign a keyword with a right click on a photo. You have to have your 'keyword pallette' open and you can't just double click a keyword to apply it; you have to highlight the keyword and then click another button to assign the keyword. Kinda tedious. I wish there was an easier way.

iTunes 4.2

Aside from supporting AAC....same thing.

iMovie 4

Definately faster performance, but the startup is still sluggish and it still opens up the last project you were working on by default. I wish this would change. It took a 45 sec count for iMovie 4 to open my current file, which does have a good amount of footage...

GarageBand



This is the coolest application that I know i'll never have time to truly use well. It's not as intimidating and aloof as say Flash, but it is a pretty robust program! In goofing around with it this evening I realized quickly that one NEEDS that keyboard to really use it effectively. I mean, you could play around with looping and stuff, but if you wanted to make a real song (and belive me, you could very very easily) it would be too tedious without a keyboard.

I read a lot about performance issues, with this app. I had none. Ran as smooth and killito's butt. Not a single hickup, but then again, I didn't have any other apps running.

for your enjoyment