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 - Make your personal computer be a personal compter!Computers are wonderful tools that have greatly changed just how we do just about everything. Apple iLife software continues this tradition. I have used both Mac and PC computers. I have also used software written for both. There is nothing easier or more intuitive than Apple iLife. It is not the most powerful software. For $400-$600 you can by professional grade software that will blow the socks of iLife. However, for the average "Joe" there is nothing better. It doesn't take a lot of computer savvy. iLife does most of the work for you - and quickly. Other software we have used for loading pictures is slow, hard to manage and less desirable in many ways. I used this software at my sister-in-laws wedding. In no time at all I had a wonderful slide show set to music for everyone to watch. Doing all this work on a PowerBook G4 15" laptop allowed me to later show my father-in-law what he missed due to some health issues. With iLife, you can edit your pictures. You can order copies with just a click of a button. With just another click, you can e-mail them to anyone in your e-mail address book. Another click you can post them on a web-sight for your friends to see. For example, we recently moved to a new state. I posted a slide show of our new home for all our old friends to see. We had over 60 different friends view the web sight. Can you image the cost of making prints for all those people? In addition, you can set your pictures, web sights to your favorite music in iTunes. Speaking of iTunes, I love music - always have. If you like to listen to music, make your own recordings of your favorite tunes you will love iTunes. Plus, iTunes makes it easier and more affordable to buy music. I don't understand why the music industry continues to over-price their CD's but they do. And who can afford to buy an entire CD for just two or three songs. Now, with iTunes you can buy only the songs you want from a particular CD. Once down loaded, you can arrange them in any order you want, burn them on your own CD or hook your Mac to your home stereo and listen through you speakers. In addition, whatever music you have in iTunes is easily used in iPhoto, iDVD or the other applications iLife opens for you. You will not be disappointed with iLife unless you desire to spend tons of money for three or four different software programs that will not work together as seamlessly as iLife. Rating: - ...what you've all been waiting for...Face it. Most of those interested really want Garageband above all. That being the main program I use from iLife, I'll review it. Garageband is the Final Cut Pro of Music. It's excellent for musically talented and musically challenged. No need to worry about beats or anythin', because Garageband makes any and all set loops go together with ease. Disregard the review by a fellow who claims it is a program for kids and idiots who want to show everyone else their noise. It IS a very sophisticated music editor while remaining simplistic and fun to use. I spent hours mixing and matching endlessly. The possibilities are infinite. The "drag and drop" style of operating masks movie-editor Final Cut Pro, also available here at Amazon. It's an easy to learn, easy to use tool that most people will love. I recommend, that, if you planned on buying iLife '04 solely for Garageband, then by all means, do so. I really think that if you love music and you love making it, regardless of playing an instrument, that you will adore this product. Rating: - Another Apple hit... well worth the price.The iLife suite has been completely revised for the new iLife '04 release. In this review, I'll list some of the improved features. iDVD received a nice update with some new themes and other small features. I wasn't incredibly impressed by this particular update, but that's because I rarely use the application. Not a major interface overhaul, but some nice updates. iMovie has been significantly sped up along with an improved interface and new transitions, effects, and more. You'll quickly notice all the new features in this update if you use iMovie frequently. iTunes has been updated, but you can simply download the update... you don't need to buy the suite to get the newest version of iTunes. iPhoto previously suffered from extreme performance issues before this revision... if you had a large amount of images in the database there would be a large slowdown, but this revision fixes that issue. It allows you to rate photos 1-5 stars, which is handy but not a necessary feature. Another nice new feature is the ability to create "smart albums" like "smart playlists" on iTunes... you can make albums that only contain, say, five-star pictures containing the phrases "Katie" and "1st Birthday" with little effort. And, finally, the application that almost everyone is buying this for... GarageBand. GarageBand is Apple's new music editing program. It's a music mixing application that allows you to record songs on your Mac. GarageBand has a nice variety of realistic-sounding musical instruments which can be played using a MIDI keyboard or guitar plugged into your Macintosh. You can then add effects, use amplifiers, and so much more. If you don't know how to play any instruments, GarageBand also includes a wide variety of amazing-sounding loops for use in your songs. Not only are they nice for people who can't play any instruments, but they're nice if you're in a band and you want to hear how a song sounds but your drummer isn't there to play a drum track. GarageBand lacks a few features that would make it a professional music creation title... the ability to change the tempo throughout the song instead of using just one for the whole song would be nice; but one could even run a small professional band on this program if they had to. I can count the number of times I've completely crashed my Mac on one hand, but it did crash (not a kernel panic, just a crash) during the install. After a restart, all worked well again. Another thing to note with this software title is that while it does work on *most* Macs, GarageBand and iDVD require a G4 or better, at *least* 256MB of RAM, and a DVD player to use the install DVD. Actually, you can install GarageBand on a 600MHz (or higher) Mac with a DVD drive, but you can't use software instruments then. All in all, a nice package, and worth the price. Rating:  - Garageband should be called "i-casiotones"This is a review of the garageband application in ilife. It is a big disappointment. Modern music is suffering from a surplus of hooks, loops, and grooves and a dearth of melodies. Here comes Apple with a software program that allows any tone deaf and musical illiterate to pile samples and loops one on top of another and put a beat to the mess. Change chords? Nope. Melody? Nope. Modulate? Nope. Hey! This is music that requires no instrumental playing ability. Think of it as an audio collage tool. The result is mind numbing. Now anyone can be Philip Glass and have endlessly repetitive cells of notes. There is an onscreen keyboard (laughingly called "grand piano") that will let you hunt and peck whole notes (if you can see the keyboard - the keys are so small you will need great fine motor control to hit the right key). Remember those annoying keyboards that allow you to add endless rhythmn and background arpeggios to whatever you are playing? Here is one for your computer. DO NOT buy this thinking you are getting a sophisticated mixer and tracker. You aren't. This is for kids only or idiots who want to inflict their noise on everyone around them. Next to this, cleaning spam our of your inbox seems like a worthy use of one's time. Rating: - A Great Suite of Applications for a Great PriceiLife '04 is a great suite of applications. These applications are all very intuitive, and fun to use. For me, the greatest update in this package was iPhoto 4. The previous version of iPhoto was a great program, but it lacked speed. The new iPhoto, iPhoto 4, has a lot more horsepower, and I can easily sift through my library of photos now. I recently used iDVD for the first time, and I must say, it was very easy to use. The themes that are included with it look very nice. The DVD that I created now looks very impressive, though it was very easy to create. iLife '04 also includes iMovie, which I have not really used yet, but I'm sure I will use it someday. It also includes the newest application, Garageband, which is a great program for musicians and fun for beginners to use also. I was impressed at how many loops were included in Garageband. iLife '04 is a set of easy to use, and very practical applications. With all that is included in it, the price could not be better. It's a must have for any mac user who has or wants to edit digital content, such as music, movies, or photos.
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