iLife '11 Family Pack Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)DO NOT BUY THIS SOFTWARE UNTIL IT IS FIXED! This pains me to write this. I live in the Applesphere and have for more than 2 decades. I am proud of my Apple computers, devices and software, at least I have been up until now. This review is about iPhoto '11. I've been an iPhoto user since 2005. In 2006 it became my only photo database. I've used versions '05, '06, '07, '09 & now '11. I have almost 17,000 pictures and add over 2000 a year nowadays with a 2 year old around the house. I use iPhoto almost every day. I consider myself an iPhoto expert.
iPhoto '11 is not a good upgrade. If you already have an earlier version of iPhoto, stay with it until Apple can come out with a version of iPhoto '11 (currently iPhoto 9.1) that fixes the issues. I'm only going to mention what I've hit my head against today. I have written feedback to Apple on each of these along with a half dozen other things.
Features eliminated or changed for the worse:
Copy of Edit>Adjust settings has been eliminated
E-mail restricts photos to 8 predesigned Apple formats and restricts file size selection to 2. Text on formats only 3 lines, 74 characters each. Drag & drop to an e-mail results in full file size. Work around is time consuming.
Description area in photo info is limited to showing 2 lines. Cannot select any other size. To put more into box you must type it on outside resource like Word or Pages, then copy & paste.
Search feature now looks for any word (of a group of words) you type versus looking for EVERY word typed. This dramatically decreases it's helpfulness.
Program does not allow you to view two pictures enlarged side by side to compare! This makes editing similar pictures or choosing between several, very difficult as you have to open and then move from one to another.
Full screen view of image impossible!!!
Bugs:
Program hangs up, crashes
Adjusting date and/or time won't resort photos within an event when sorting by date. To see properly sorted after adjusting you have to exit to Events or another folder and then reenter the event.
Places sometimes won't show entries after you select them. To see them to confirm your entry you must either exit the event or quit the program and restart it.
Again, these are only what I have bumped up against today. I wish I had never up(down)graded to this version. Here is what I like, the new card selections are nice. The share, create & add to menus are better.

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iLife '11 helps you do more with photos, movies, and music than you ever thought possible. In iPhoto, you can browse, edit, and share your photos in stunning new full-screen views. Create epic Hollywood-style movie trailers from your home video in iMovie. And GarageBand gives you everything you need to make a great-sounding song—including tools for keeping your song in perfect rhythm and guitar and piano lessons.

iLife '11 Family Pack License
Install on up to five Apple computers in the same household. A single-user license is also available.


The incredible new iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand.

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iLife '11 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I'm not sure how to review this: some people could potentially be buying this to upgrade a very old version of iLife. If I review this as a standalone piece of software, it's fantastic and quite a value. For less than $50 you get a world class digital music studio, one of the best photo organizing programs, and a remarkably capable video editing package. (Oh, and passable web editing and DVD authoring programs, but nobody cares much about those, least of all Apple.) Easily five stars.
However, if I judge this as an upgrade from iLife '09, it's extremely weak. Here's what you get of any substance: the ability to better edit audio in iMovie, slightly better full screen modes in iPhoto, really impressive time warping facilities in Garage Band to fix timing, and some very nice guitar and piano lessons which actually show you where you making mistakes. All great features, to be sure. But are these worth $50 if you have '09? Probably not.
The frustrating thing is that the most major feature in this upgrade is just plain silly: they added the ability to make cutesy little fake "trailers" in iMovie. This is apparently their big innovation. You can now replace your boring home movies with one of eight or so two minute jokes that I guarantee you will get old very quickly. Very quickly. They also added a fake news program theme, and a fake sports theme. All very gaudy and over-the-top, even for iMovie standards. And not at all useful beyond just playing with them once.
It's pretty clear that Apple's focus has shifted away from Mac OS X and iLife and on to the greener pastures of iOS: the iPad and iPhone. In fact, from now on we'll likely see features come first to their consumer devices, and then later to their desktop computers. I'm afraid the days of getting truly major updates to iLife every two years is a thing of the past.
So, as an upgrade from '09, I give this one or two stars at best. If you're upgrading from '09, I hope I've saved you some money. Otherwise, this is a great software package, easily five stars, just not much of an improvement from what you could get two years ago. As such, I'll split the difference and give the package three stars.

Click Here to see more reviews about: iLife '11


iLife '11 helps you do more with photos, movies, and music than you ever thought possible. In iPhoto, you can browse, edit, and share your photos in stunning new full-screen views. Create epic Hollywood-style movie trailers from your home video in iMovie. And GarageBand gives you everything you need to make a great-sounding song—including tools for keeping your song in perfect rhythm and guitar and piano lessons.


The incredible new iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand.

Get 25% OFF

Click here for more information about iLife '11

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