iLife '09 user reviews

Pros Pro level quality yet easy to use. Great Price!

Cons I could not find any cons.

Summary Very well organized software package. iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD. Garage Band They work together seamlessly. Recently I worked on a dvd project using old family pictures creating Pro grade result. I was very happy with the result. Another excellent product from Apple

Pros Garage band is perfect for making ringtones and sending them to itunes for free. Garage band is also good for editing music. iphoto is pretty and integrates easily to facebook and mobileme. Geotagging is cool and accurate most of the time

Cons Several issues with iphoto that will be explained below. imovie didn't not allow me to edit a movie and export it with a non-imovie format. I couldn't figure out how to record my voice in garage band without that annoying ticking sound

Summary I've had to start a new iphoto library 5 times in less than 7 months because iphoto either would show a big exclamation mark when I try enlarging a photo (which means iphoto can lo longer find the file) or have several duplicates of one photo thus taking up extra space on my hard drive. I've always had to start a new library thinking I've fixed a problem but some how those exclamation marks creep back in to iphoto. And I'm not moving photos around or renaming. Now, speaking of renaming, if I import photos directly from my iphone to iphoto, I can rename the title of the photo in iphoto to whatever I want but the original name of the photo will still be the name it had from the camera. For example, when the camera takes the photo, the original name of it might be "image001", I can rename it to "tarheel 23" in iphoto but the original name of the photo will still be image001. I want the original file name to match the name in iphoto. One of the several reasons is the following: I have signatures set up in my "mail" accounts. If I use iphoto to email any photos, then the signatures are not on the email. Therefore, I would have the drag the photo from iphoto to the desktop and wala, the name of the photo has reverted back to the original name of the photo. It may sound small but I don't like that fact that only iphoto recognizes name changes when you change the name of a photo file in iphoto. Another thing that annoyed me today was that I have my photos on my iphone synced with iphoto and somehow today all the preview thumbnails on the iphone would show. I spent literally two hours with a customer service rep and nobody could help. Finally, I decided to start a new iphoto library and sync the phone then. And it worked. So somehow the library got corrupted or something. I think Apple subcontracted iphoto because this is so reminiscent of PC problems. Also, I still haven't figured out how some photos mysteriously disappear resulting in the big exclamation mark while other photos will show up as multiple duplicates. No matter how many times I go through and clean up my photos, one of these two problems arise. It's horrible. My major problem is with iphoto and after today decided I am going to try using another photo managing program. Oh, another thing. I had to buy photoshop elements just to be able to do some of the simple editing. If I use iphoto, iphoto keeps a copy of the original file I edited and also the edited photo thus taking up more hard drive space. I need another advanced degree to understand more of garage band other than making ringtones. The same goes with imovie. What's the purpose if imovie if I can't edit and save a movie in a non-imovie format. Maybe I can and just don't know how to do it. I love my iphone and Macbook Pro but hate iphoto.

Pros A plenty of transitions and good looking themes

Cons Lack of noise reduction functionality and poor sound edit capability (you can play only with the total sound volume and fade-out effect which allows only up to 5s)
No way to save updates manually
Not all of the updates on the subtitles saved (bug?)

Summary The iMovie is eye-catchy, but not practical at all.
I've been so frustrated with the messed-up interface and incapability in sound edit that I almost make a big crack on the LCD screen.
Stabilization does not work good for the one recorded with a usual digital camera.
The software seems to detect the shaky part but does not fix it at all.
There is no way to turn up or down your music volume of the BGM. All you can do is increase/decrease the main volume and how it fades in or out (which is also limited up to 5 sec).
But the most critical mistake Apple made for iMovie '09 is the auto-saving function, which does not work as it ought to.
Making things even worse, there's no way to save the data manually, so once your software crashes, all your tweaked adjustment and updates are gone!

Overall, I conclude this as a waste of money and highly recommend not to buy one.

I think iMovie HD (or '06) had better in almost all aspects except for the variety of themes and transitions so you had better stick to it if you have one.

Pros It ads some nice functionality, and it does make some things easier. Also it seems that the suite has become more user centric.

Cons I was on the phone with apple support for an hour because when I tried to open the title browser in iMovie it would quit. I had to reinstall the operating system to get it to work properly.

Summary Stability 3
Ease of Use 3
Functionality 4
Appearance 5
Compatibility 4
Total Average 3.8
I gave this software a 3.8 because it does improve in the realm of functionality, but after I installed it on my computer, the title browser wouldn't open. I do think that iMovie 09 made some major improvements in video quality as well. All in all I would recommend the upgrade, though you may experience some bugs. This is software, and there will never be any software that is perfect.