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iLife

Trumps iLife 08 Ten Fold!

Written by PH from Tustin

5-Feb-2009

I got iLife 09 mainly because of the features in iMovie, or to be honest the lack of features in iMovie 08. But I was pleasantly surprised to see the great new UI on iWeb, the new features in iPhoto, and of course the changes made to iMovie, finally letting me go away from iMovie HD to a newer program. Thank you for the fix Apple!

1358 of 1632 people found this useful

iLife

Thanks Apple!!

Written by DN from Seattle

5-Feb-2009

The highlights from my vantage point so far... I love the site-specific publishing option in iWeb!! I have numerous sites and pages and previously had to switch users or computers to manage them all. I had opted to stick with iMovie HD vs iMovie '08 until now. With the latest improvements, iMovie '09 should meet most of my needs. The SHATTER slide show in iPhoto is really a lot of fun!! I am enjoying all of the features thus far and am looking forward to more time spent with Faces, Places, and Garage Band.

1338 of 1605 people found this useful

iLife

iMovie Disappointing

Written by SB from Lisle

13-Feb-2009

Apple created an amazing product a few years ago with iMovie HD. It was powerful, easy to use, and had numerous features that made near professional movies in minutes. Last year, iMovie HD was stripped of the best features like the timeline, variable audio control, and other effects into a dumbed down version that was relatively useless (iMovie 08). Unfortunately, this current version of iMovie 09 is little more than the dumbed down version, and I will continue to use the full version, which is the older iMovie HD. I was told that Apple wanted customers to use Final Cut Express if we wanted the full features that were part of iMovie HD, but after purchasing FCE, I found it was too difficult to learn (I was told i would have to pay for classes to learn it), and this defeated the easy to use format of the original iMovie HD, one of Apple's best products. I hate to say this, but iMovie 09 and Final Cut Express are the only Apple products I am really dissatisfied with. For this reason, iLife 09 is a major disappointment.

341 of 405 people found this useful

iLife

Severe downgrade from iMovie HD

Written by KH from Corvallis

10-Aug-2009

I loved the iMovie HD a lot, and when I saw the iLife '09 with new transitions and themes, I thought it is a must-to-buy one.
But I'm totally disappointed and even frustrated ever since I installed; an Intuitively hard-to-follow interface (you have to do command-a to select the clip before drag-and-drop), unsatisfactory audio edit functions (for some reasons, they just eliminated the noise reduction capability...), and no way to save the update manually!

There are several critical bugs, including the subtitles apparently suffering from amnesia; about the half of the updates I've done is almost always lost!
If you are iMovie HD user, I highly recommend not to put your hands on this.

It's not an upgrade, but more like a downgrade with a vengeance...

259 of 283 people found this useful

iLife

why I am not buying 09

Written by KH from Largo

26-Jul-2009

More feedback then a review. the newer versions of iMovie are a downgrade from iMovie 5HD - Apple completely redesigned it - and in doing so plug ins from companies like Gee Three won't work in newer versions. I -and many others still use and prefer the "old" iMovie because it is far more flexible. Out of the box iMovie is very basic - but with plug ins from others - you can have 100's of effects - transitions etc... I also run Final Cut Studio - but ALWAYS start my projects in imovie to cull footage to the basic building blocks then export the DV file - after throwing out the scrap - and take the DV file into Final Cut. ilife 09 new iDVD menus don't do much for me either - that would be the reason I'd buy it. Think I will wait for iLife 10 - I have always upgraded ilife - not this year... no point. itunes is free anyway as are upgrades. But please Apple keep up the good efforts. A mac user since Mac in the Box.

250 of 289 people found this useful

iLife

Faces is a MAJOR disappointment

Written by LD from Short HIlls

24-Feb-2009

I've only used iPhoto, so I'll only discuss this product.
I'm sure the main reason an iPhoto user would consider upgrading is for the new Faces feature. While some have had success (a loose term), I think it's far from 'ready for prime time'.
I have >2000 images. Faces fails to recognize that there is a face in the image easily 95% of the time. There are images where the face takes up 3/4 of the screen, yet Faces still fails. To add insult to injury, in many cases, it recognizes an obscure small background image as a face (such as a lamp), yet the person in the foreground is not seen as having a face.
If you want to buy iPhoto for Faces....DON'T!
You will spend a lot of time manually tagging the photos.
Wait until a new and improved version is available, but this version is beta, at best.
The rest of iPhoto is great, but many will buy this version for Faces...which will be a mistake!

258 of 305 people found this useful

iLife

iphoto

Written by SH from Brooklyn

19-Apr-2009

i love iphoto as it has allowed me to organize and categorize my images....

i just wish there were water mark tools in Iphoto.... i know is else where... but everything else is in here.... by not THAT...

but over all iphoto is great!

234 of 259 people found this useful

iLife

iMovie users, avoid!

Written by AZ from Redwood City

12-Mar-2009

iMovie HD was an awesome simple video editor, easy to use, intuitive, powerful. Party's over. iMovie '09 lost it all.

Timeline view is gone (precision view doesn't replace it), frame numbers are gone, extract audio is gone, waveforms for imported clips are gone. Projects created with iMovie HD do not import properly (shame!).

They might have added some "cool" effects, but the main effect this software is having on me is it is cooling off my attitudes towards Apple.

237 of 275 people found this useful

iLife

iMovie Still Worthless

Written by JS

27-Feb-2009

For those of us who have owned every release of iLife since it first came out, you know the downgrade Apple made in iMovie when it abandoned a full feature version (iMovie HD) last year to a dumbed down, limited version last year. Unfortunately, in iMovie 09, Apple stuck with this limited fluff version that is missing the best features of iMovie HD; namely, the timeline, multiple audio mixing and controls, and special effects. The current version might be fine for a quick rip and post to YouTube or a home movie, but iMovie HD was so good that many of us could use it for professional works and in the classroom at college. While the much more expensive (and too hard to use) Final Cut Express has many of the iMovie HD features, having to buy it and sign up for classes makes this a bog step backwards. The rest of iLife 09 is OK, but iMovie was once a superb software program. This current version is insulting.

195 of 214 people found this useful

iLife

iPhoto '09 Alone

Written by SH from Colorado Springs

3-Sep-2009

iPhoto '09 alone is worth the upgrade for the Faces feature. It's not perfect, but it is sure a lot faster at getting close than I am.

191 of 210 people found this useful

iLife

iPhoto Faces shortcomings

Written by LG from BRIDGETON

24-Feb-2009

After importing 40,000+ photos and having Faces indexing my library I found following shortcomings:

1.It is not possible to search for all unrecognized faces.

2.When assigning new faces to a person, you cannot re-assign a wrongly detected face to a different person.

3.It is not possible to split a recognized face into more faces. It would be great if you could split your kids faces by age range (ie. 1-3, 3-5, 5-10,...).

4.There is no way to group or sort your faces – I have 72 recognized faces only sorted by description.

5.You cannot choose the images used to recognize people in your photos. It would be very handy if you exclude images (such as sunglasses, hats, ...)for the detection process!

Other than the above, faces is a really good addition to iPhoto.

175 of 193 people found this useful

iLife

iMovie 09 Very Disappointed

Written by NM from North Vancouver

3-Mar-2009

I'm very disappointed with this version. I was horrified with '08 and was excited when I heard '09 would be released with upgrades. I was sadly mistaken. This program still has issues importing the basic movie files (.avi, mpeg4, etc). Files that iMovie HD handled with ease. I have tried converting to different codecs but have had moderate success and generally the raw video quality is lost. It says it can import HD's projects but have had no success with that either. I just get the title of the project, no clips, no music, nothing. The precision editor is laughable. Precise is using the arrow keys to move Frame by Frame to do actual Cuts! Not this sliding with my mouse, yes I can go to 1/2 a second but when cutting video 1/2 second can still mess up the timing. What happened to Save Project As? I keep files on my computer only when I'm working with it. I'm never quite sure if all the files are fully removed or not and what actually is being deleted (one of the reasons why I also stopped using iPhoto). The New Event is not useful at all, I don't like the way all my projects are contained like Albums within the program.
I liked iMovie HD because it was an easy editing program to learn, it made sense with its linear timeline, flexible codec support, precise cutting feature, separate file saves and affordable price tag. iMovie 09 does have some nice features like the cropping tool, video stabilizer, and some stunning titles but due to the short falls of the program as a whole I'm finding I can't take advantage of them. Sorry Apple you had a good idea with 09 but it still fails miserably in my opinion. You should have improved off of HD not trashed it. As the saying goes "Why fix something that's not broken?"

191 of 229 people found this useful

iLife

great except for imovie

Written by BL from GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE

9-Feb-2009

I am very happy with the suite of applications (especially the new iphoto). However iMovie has a fatal flaw. when you import your movies from iMovie HD, it corrupts the dates so they no longer show when the movie was taken, rather they only show when it was imported. as such, all of my daughter's baby movies have the wrong associated dates. I will stick with the old imovie until they fix this.

175 of 198 people found this useful

iLife

iWeb

Written by CS from Fairfield

12-Feb-2009

This review is for iWeb only.

This version of iWeb is unusable except with MobileMe. You cannot load the website to a file for an FTP upload. I am gravely disappointed. I purchased iLife, in a large part because of this application and I cannot use it at all to upload a website to the location of my choosing. Worthless Application. How can Apple maintain it's credibility when it makes newer versions of it's software worse than previous versions. The only answer it to look outside of Apple for Mac software.

205 of 270 people found this useful

iLife

iphoto-Places and Faces the most noticeable new fetures

Written by HS from salt lake city

23-Jul-2009

Faces:
faces is one of the most amazing fetures ever with facial reconighction and face detection faces is so fun!

Plalces:

the most amazing feture ever

187 of 235 people found this useful

iLife

Extreme Disapointment

Written by ML from New York

2-Jun-2009

The latest version of iMovie does not seem like an Apple product. Not only have they removed some of the features from previous versions, they redesigned the entire interface, this new product is so cumbersome and non-intuitive it is next to unusable. I'll point to one "feature": the Precision Editor... Why do we need to enter an entirely different mode to make fine tuned edits? shouldn't we just be able to zoom in, drag this way and that?

Suggestsion:
1. Bring back the timeline
2. Bring back Chapter Markers (or let me add custom chapters in iDVD... every X minutes aint cutt'n it.)
3. Bring back audio effects (not to be confused with sound effects)

160 of 189 people found this useful

iLife

All good, except iMovie 09- still really lame

Written by SB

6-Mar-2009

Apple usually has a good idea as to providing easy to use products that are very helpful and yet, powerful. One of the best software Apple programs that we still use (one of the best of all time) is iMovie HD, which was replaced last year by the light version, iMovie 08 (which is but a mere shadow of the full version features in iMovie HD). Unfortunately, Apple has stuck with this bare bones version of iMovie in the new version that is part of iLife. It has a few more features, but is still fairly useless for creating a more professional movie. Do not believe those who say to upgrade to Final Cut Express if you want the full features that were part of iMovie HD. Final Cut Express is VERY hard to learn and not at all like iMovie HD. After trying to figure out how to use Final Cut Express, we gave up went back to iMovie HD, which we still use. I just wish Apple would offer a new version of iMovie HD; I would buy it in a second.

172 of 213 people found this useful

iLife

Great except for iMovie 9

Written by AW from Peoria

9-May-2009

ILife is more than worth the price, but download iMovie HD 6 instead of iMovie 9-- it is far better. iMovie 9 has some nice features and seems to be a little bit more stable than iMovie HD 6, but the drawbacks completely outweigh any of the positives. iMovie 9 doesn't allow near as much creativity as iMovie 6 -- it is supposed to be easier to use, but it doesn't seem that way to me. I LOVE Apple -- but they also screwed over several companies that made incredible plugins that added tremendous and amazing effects to iMovie -- try and find a 3rd party plugin for iMovie 9 -- good luck in your search.

I have learned to use Final Cut Express -- FCE is a more professional program - allowing for subtle color changes, overlapping clips etc and once you get the idea behind it - you can use it fairly easily. I bought a green screen and FCE was awesome for that -- however, for most things I still use iMovie HD - it's very sad that Apple will not update the old iMovie format -- I actually sold people on Macs based on iMovie projects I made -- even people who did video editing on PC. iMovie 9 is nice, but kind of boring, limited and not as intuitive as iMovie 6 -- oh well.

155 of 183 people found this useful