iLife '06 Review

After much anticipation, I finally got my hands on a copy of iLife '06. As soon as I got it, stumbled through the packaging, drooling all the way, and plopped it into my iBook. I got a chance to play around with each of the programs and here are the results:

GarageBand: The biggest addition is the ability to create podcasts easily within Garage Band. I plan to use this feature later to do tech demos on various hardware and software. A great addition!

iPhoto: iPhoto is MUCH better! You can now edit in Full-screen mode and compare to other photos side-by-side. It made getting red-eye out a lot easier, and man does it make the photos look good!

iMovie and iDVD: This is the part that impressed me the most! There are now some really professional looking themes in both iMovie and iDVD. I put together a home movie for my daughter, Bethany, and wound up with a very impressive DVD. The menus are improved greatly from the '05 version. My only complaint would be that it still takes a really long time to burn a DVD (it's one of those things you let the computer just run over-night on).

iWeb: This is Apple's newest addition to the family. I was really looking forward to using this, and I have to say, I was very disappointed. The program is great - if you have a .Mac account. If you don't have a .Mac account, you won't be able to do 60% of the functions in any given web page. $99 a year, I feel is still a high price to pay. Unless of course the county would like to buy me a subscription....hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge!

All-in-all, for $50, this is a steal! Run, don't walk to your nearest Apple store and snatch it up!