iLife '09 Review and Unboxing

It's been about a month since iLife '09 came out, and I've had it for about 3 weeks out of that month. So far, I love it. It is pretty much identical to iLife '08 in the interfaces of the apps, but a lot of great functionality was added. Now I'll break it down, app by app and go through my favorite parts.

iPhoto '09
iPhoto '09 adds a couple new fun features, but nothing too big. The face tracking is pretty good, but the face recognition doesn't work quite as well as it did in Apple's demo during the keynote. Places is a nice feature too, but since I don't have a camera with a built in GPS, I've been having to select my locations by hand for all my events.

iMovie '09
iMovie '09 is by far, my favorite update in iLife '09. It takes the interface of iLife '08, which unlike most people, I actually liked, and added in a ton of functionality. It really feels more like a sophisticated video editing tool now. There are some awesome new features that make it so much more fun to use like video filter effects, world maps, new titles and transitions, picture in picture, and chroma keying. I'm kind of disappointed that the chroma key feature only works with green, however.

GarageBand '09
GarageBand '09 really only added two things, other than a new color scheme. The first and most notable is the "Learn to Play" feature. The lessons in the lesson store are really top notch. I've downloaded all the free ones, and two artist lessons so far, and they're great for learning and improving your skills. The other new feature is the new electric guitar recording interface. It uses "stompboxes" and amp models for effects rather than just drop down menus like before. Right away I didn't think I'd like this feature much, but it works great. The stompbox models are well done and sound just like real effects pedals.

iWeb '09
iWeb '09 only added widgets. There's nothing wrong with them and they work fine, but I would have liked to see a bit more functionality added in this upgrade.

NickMOC: iLife '09 Unboxing

iWork '08 Unboxing and Review

You may remember from my previous post about the new MacBooks that I mentioned that I had purchased a copy of iWork '08 for school. I recorded an unboxing video, but I went through a lot of issues with it before I finally called in good ol' LegoShark for editing assistance. I lost all the audio for some reason, but it's fine.



I really love iWork. Every since I tried the free trial about a month ago, I've been in love with how awesome it is. Keynote is so much better than Powerpoint. It has very elegant slide templates that really set it apart from it's competition. Pages is nice. There's not really that much that I look for in a word processing application, but Pages' elegant layout and rich set of features really makes it great. I like it a whole lot more than Microsoft Word 2007. I don't really do much with spreadsheets ever, so it's kind of hard to give my impression on Numbers, but so far it seems like it works. I tried making a simple spreadsheet with equasions and a graph, and I really love the graphing features. The charts are so beautiful, it's hard to even describe without showing them.

Hands on Review: New MacBooks

Yesterday I was at Best Buy to pick up a copy of iWork 08 for school, and the new MacBooks caught my eye. I played with one of them for quite a while. I found that I really like the no button trackpad. I actually prefer it to a trackpad with a physical button. The glass trackpad is wonderful. My fingers just glided across it. I think the glossy display is very nice, and it's reflectiveness is overexaggerated by many people. When the machine is turned on, it looks just fine, but turned off, it's insanely reflective. It's quite a beautiful notebook, and if I had the money and a need for a notebook, I'd totally buy it.