iLife 08: Are the ratings telling the truth?

I went to Apple.com to get a copy of iLife '08 on a student discount (a big $8 off) when I saw something I've never seen on Apple.com before. iLife '08 currently has a rating of 2 1/2 out of 5 stars!!! I couldn't believe an Apple product would have such a low rating on their own turf!

Now I'm a little worried to buy. I glanced at some of the low ratings and the few I saw seemed to be aimed at iMovie, which I probably would use very little. If that's the only issue and everything else is great, it's too bad people would give 1 and 2 ratings for the entire suite based on only one program.

So I want to hear from some users on here b/c I think we have, for the most part, a good, objective group here. What do you think of iLife '08 besides and rants about iMovie?

Check out the latest MacWorld Podcast (Aug. 15). They have some comments on the latest version of iLife, especially iMovie. I've not gone to iLife '08 yet, but I still intend to do so.

In a nutshell, the new iMovie is very consumer oriented. Got bunches of video you want to edit and put together? iMovie will get you through it quickly. Want professional grade movie editing? You need to go elsewhere. The orientation of iMovie '08 would appear to be giving consumers a way to get something done versus not doing it at all.

on the uk site its a bit better rating, but i hope its ok because thats what im getting on my mbp when it comes

Hi there guys!

This is something that has puzzled me with Imovie too. I have taken a print screen to show you what I mean. In the new Imovie you are able to move the cursor over the timeline and it will display the movie at that given time. ? Does that make sense? Haha. Anyways it all looks brilliant in the preview movie when you first install it but this is how it appears on my screen. Almost green and when it is not green its massively pixelated!

Has anyone got any ideas on this? The videos play perfectly fine in Quicktime.
Just for added info, I have a 2.33 Mac Book Pro (15) with 2Gb ram.

Regards, Richard

David Pogue condemns the new iMovie in his New York Times Column (turn cookies on). MacDailyNews picks it up here. Many of the comments at MacDailyNews slam it, as well.

If you click on the links to pages 2 and 3, scroll down under the story, where the comments pick up again.

fleurya, agreed with the others. From all I have heard some do not like the new iMovie. No Timeline and a totally different way of doing things. A lot of people like it the old way. Everything else is great I am told. Not tried it my self as yet.

i will get ilife 08 with my new mbp and i think ilife will take a bit of getting used to. but on the apple site you can download the old version - ilife 06.

On a purely aesthetic basis that new iMovie UI is gorgeous.

I think iMovie 08 is amazing. i don't need the timeline and all that other stuff. Its a new way of working with video....(of course, professionals will need to use Finatcut pro or something).

had you used imovie 06 before moving to the latest version ?

Well, from comments here and what I've read elsewhere, it seems like the all the negativity is centered on iMovie and the other apps are pretty good. I think I'll go ahead and get it since I don't plan to use iMovie.

I have '08 (we got it installed on all of our machines at work) and here's my thoughts:

- iPhoto is almost worth the asking price alone. Especially if you're a .mac subscriber, as the new .mac photo gallery integration is perfect for sharing with friends. They can even add their own pics and download zip files of entire gallery's from the published website without any work required by you!

- iMovie: You either love it or hate it - depending on how "advanced" your edits are. iMovie 06 was final cut lite. iMovie 08 lets you churn out a cool vid in 5 minutes - but let's forget about the details...

- iDVD: Meh - some new themes, other minor changes, Jobs seems to be over DVDs...

- iWeb: Cool update that allows much greater flexibility and makes iWeb a lot more "open" to the wider web. Domain name integration and snippets are cool. As a Rapidweaver 3.5 user, it's still more limited, but definitely worth considering.
I wish the integration with the .mac photo galleries was better though. It feels like the iWeb team didn't hear about the .mac feature until Jobs' presentation.

- Garageband: Some cool new editing features, but nothing ground breaking. The Magic Garageband feature feels a bit like photo booth: pointless, but fun.

Overall: If you use one or two applications extensively, it's worth getting. If you only use one app, check out the alternatives and see if they offer more features. (i.e. Rapidweaver for iWeb, Aperture for iPhoto, FCE for iMovie etc).

Aptmunich said:

- iPhoto is almost worth the asking price alone. Especially if you're a .mac subscriber, as the new .mac photo gallery integration is perfect for sharing with friends. They can even add their own pics and download zip files of entire gallery's from the published website without any work required by you!

Overall: If you use one or two applications extensively, it's worth getting. If you only use one app, check out the alternatives and see if they offer more features. (i.e. Rapidweaver for iWeb, Aperture for iPhoto, FCE for iMovie etc).

Click to expand...

On iPhoto what's the folder structure like? My issue with iPhoto has always been where and how your photos are kept. I use Bridge which lets you choose your own folders where pics are kept and it doesn't claim your pics and subdivide into it's own folder structure.

I think your overall point is good one.

All the guff Apple is getting about it is over the new iMovie.
All the other apps seem to be worth the price of admission.
I think iMovie was dumbed down to make it easier for first timers delving into the realm of making their own movies with a nice simple interface and not too many options. They probably thought most who were using the type of interface of iMovie 06 had probably moved on to FCE or other software. Little did they know that iMovie 06 had it's own fan base that was expecting it to be upgraded. Well, the upgrade is FCE. Not really much they could do with it except integrate FCE into iLife.
Apple to their credit heard the crowd and restored iMovie 06 to those that want it. Even the new boxed sets install iMovie 08 and keep iMovie 06 (renamed as 'previous version') for those that want it. Meanwhile, 08 gives newbs a very nice looking interface and possibly a more intuitive way of creating a movie.

bobtomay said:

Apple to their credit heard the crowd and restored iMovie 06 to those that want it. Even the new boxed sets install iMovie 08 and keep iMovie 06 (renamed as 'previous version') for those that want it. Meanwhile, 08 gives newbs a very nice looking interface and possibly a more intuitive way of creating a movie.

Click to expand...

Just another way Apple rocks! They listen to their customers and quickly respond, if not anticipate issues and make solutions before there's a problem.

From what I'm hearing about iMovie 06 and 08, it sounds like 06 was a little complicated and didn't exactly fall in line with the easy to use theme of iLife whereas 08 fits that profile much better. So, it seems like 2 steps forward for novices and 1 step back for experienced users. At least the experienced users have FCE to move to instead of being left in the cold.

nice some up Aptmunich. i reckon that it will take me a bit of getting used to with the imovie 08 but the rest seems great.

cjay said:

On iPhoto what's the folder structure like? My issue with iPhoto has always been where and how your photos are kept. I use Bridge which lets you choose your own folders where pics are kept and it doesn't claim your pics and subdivide into it's own folder structure.

I think your overall point is good one.

Click to expand...

It's a bit of a mixed bag if you're into folder-based sorting.

The bad:

iPhoto '08 stores your images in a package file. So you can't actually easily browse through the photo library via the finder any more, unless you right click and select 'show package content'.



In the package there's the usual mess of files and sub-folders we've come to admire ( I suppose they know why they hid it from us!).

The good:

The actual storage of your pictures has been simplified!

There are now two folders: Original & Modified.
They contain an easy to navigate structure that let's you find your pictures:
"Originals > Year (aka "2007") > Event Title (aka "Holiday in croatia") > file name ("DSC0001").

So you can easily find your picture manually as well. The rest of the files (thumbnails, etc) are still there, but stored separately from your full-sized images.

External Storage
You can still enable the option to NOT copy the original files into iPhoto. So if you sort them yourself, they can stay outside of the iPhoto library file. However, that will only apply to images you don't edit. As soon as a file is edited, a copy is placed in the iPhoto library folder in a 'modified' folder.

Oddities:

If you view the library in the regular finder, it looks like this:


But if you select to view the original file from within iPhoto, the finder view looks like this:


You can also view modified file from within iPhoto, in which case the finder view will look like this:


So it seems as though Apple is hiding the mumbo-jumbo of the iPhoto library package, depending on which command you select in iPhoto. When viewed directly in Finder, you see the .xml files etc. But when selecting to see the file from within iPhoto, it shows a cleaner Finder view.

Wow, that's a lot of headache! Thanks for the info, though! I don't care for rolls or organizing by date or "event" so I organized my pictures into folders manually (major folders like family, friends, work, travel and then by events or however I decided) and then just drag and dropped the folders into iPhoto directly so they were in there the way I wanted. I hope I can still do that with the new iPhoto.

Even after 10 months of OS X use, I still like to organize and find things through folder trees and hate the concept of this "magic box" package organizations style. I guess it makes it easier for people who don't know much about computers and would get confused, but it's really debilitating to someone who's used to just walking through folder paths to get what they want.

Someone should write a pref pane that automagically makes packages naviagatable as folders. No stupid right click - show contents - open new window in icon view - change to column view - close the first window - stupidity. Yeah I just said 'stupid' twice twice. I think that was redundant I think. But that's how stupid stupid I think it is!

ANYHOW... I used iMovie HD for a little bit and didn't.... 'get it'.
I was expecting someting more lik iPhoto. I just want to import my camera's video and export a FLV or AVI.
So basically I'm not 'set in my ways' so I can look at iMovie8 with almost fresh eyes and open mind. We'll see!

Can I use imovie o6 and 08 or do I have to choose 1?