At the beginning of this series of articles on the “Digital Lifestyle” we talked about Apple Computer’s unique vision of the “digital hub”, and their four milestone applications – iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. Since then Apple has significantly upgraded iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD, and packaged them under the moniker “iLife”. iTunes3 wasn’t upgraded, but a hidden feature has sprung to life – the ability to access your MP3 collection from within the other iLife applications. In turn, you can now access your iPhoto library from iMovie to put photos in your movies, or from iDVD to record them onto DVDs for storage or interactive slide shows (with music from iTunes, of course). No more searching your hard drive for the pieces to your media masterpieces. Now to the individual applications.

Just about anything you can do with a digital photo, iPhoto 2 manages for you with one or two clicks. Make a greeting card, or maybe some wallet-sized prints. Size a photo down and attach it to an email. Order prints from Kodak. Build a web page gallery. Publish your slideshow to the web. Put a picture on your desktop. Order a beautiful hardback, linen-covered tabletop picture book. Make a DVD slideshow presentation. Record your photos on a CD for safekeeping. All from within iPhoto. There are also two new tools to make your photos look better – a one-click Enhance button to brighten and sharpen, and a Retouch tool to remove unsightly blemishes or stray hairs.

iMovie 3 gets more visual Effects and Titles, the ability to access iPhoto libraries and iTunes song lists, professionally produced (at George Lucas’ Skywalker Sound) audio effects, and the “Ken Burns Effect”, named for the acclaimed documentary filmmaker. This effect pans across and zooms into still photos, making them fluid and dramatic. You can now place Chapter markers in your movie, just like Hollywood DVD movies where you can move back and forth in the film. And when you’re done editing, there’s no long wait while the movie is exported to DVD format. The moment you save the movie, it’s ready for iDVD.

iDVD 3 gets 24 new, gorgeous, professional-looking themes. Themes are the background movies, images and audio that appear on the TV screen behind the buttons that you use to select the movies and slideshows on the DVD. To see these themes in person, point your browser at: http://www.apple.com/idvd/theater/themes.html. You can also build your own themes, customizing buttons, backgrounds and music. If you make a slideshow, iDVD can also include the original, high-resolution photos on the disk, as well as other files of your choosing, so that anyone with a DVD-capable computer (even a Windows PC) can access them. Once you’re ready to record, iDVD records on a one-to-one timeline - one hour to record a one hour movie. And, you can go off and do other things on your Mac while it’s recording.

iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie are all available for free download from www.apple.com, and are bundled on all new Macs. iDVD is bundled on all new Macs with a DVD-recording drive, but due to it’s large file size, it’s not really downloadable. The only way to get the iDVD upgrade (without buying a new Mac), is to purchase the iLife package (which includes the other three applications on CD and DVD), either at a store or online, for $49. It’s well worth the price.

Although iLife works best on Mac OS X v10.2 (Jaguar), it technically requires Mac OS X v 10.1.5 or later. So, you Mac users, go out and get an iLife!

© 2003 Peter F. Zimowski