iLife '06
impressive, but I don't know if it is for
me
Many other blogs will be talking about the
introduction of the first mactel devices. Maybe because I just got a new Mac I'm
not interested, or maybe because none of my software will run natively on them.
The announcement that really got me interested yesterday was the new iLife
announcement.
Now, I've got all the
high-end versions of their apps (or equivalents). However, sometimes, it is just
easier to toss a project into iDVD, rather than DVD Studio Pro. There certainly
isn't anything more useful than iPhoto. Even iMovie has its
uses.
It really seems like the iLife
suite is coming into its own now. The integration is getting really amazing, now
that the iApps are finally taking advantage of CoreVideo and CoreImage plug-ins,
I can see a lot more possibilities for the
future.
The problem: podcasting. With
the addition of iWeb and adding the podcasting mode to GarageBand as well as the
photo-casting stuff they've added, the goal of this rev is obvious: make it easy
for everyone to do blogging/podcasting/vidcasting/etc... Now, I think that is a
pretty good goal with one exception: it is all based around .Mac. Now the iLife
suite has always been trying to push people towards subscribing to .Mac before,
but now they are ramming it down people throats. Why isn't there a 1-step
publish in iWeb to another website? Do iWeb pages require server-side components
running on the .Mac servers?
I think
that the podcasting features are very cool and very well done, but I don't need
them or want them. iWeb would be cool for an occasional web page, but I don't
need or want a .Mac account. The rest of the features are also very cool, but I
don't know if they are worth upgrading the software. Then I remember that the
price is $79 which is the equivalent of going to a couple movies with my wife
and I realize that the few features that are really interesting to me might be
worth it...
Posted: Wed - January 11, 2006 at 09:24 AM
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