What is the crowd's opinion of iLife?

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Might as well post the infamous and mildly historic Jim Allchin letter here:

To: Bill Gates & Steve Ballmer

"This is a rant. I’m sorry.

I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems [our] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn’t translate onto great products.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to basically all Windows application software (although not the hardware). Apple did not lose their way. You must watch this new video below. I know this doesn’t show anything for businesses, but my point is about the philosophy that Apple uses. They think scenario. They think simple. They think fast. I know there is nothing hugely deep in this.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/video/ilife04_32C.html [Note: link no longer works]

I must tell you everything in my soul tells me that we should do what I called plan (b) yesterday We need a simple fast storage system. LH is a pig and I don’t see any solution to this problem. If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of “scenario, simple, fast” to heart.

jim"

Although iPhoto is bundled with every new Mac, it is not considered a "stock" application; a fresh install of Mac OS X on a blank hard drive will not include iPhoto. It is instead part of Apple's iLife suite of personal media apps. iLife was last updated in October of 2010 when Apple released iLife '11. Since the last release was prior to Lion's launch, it is logical that iPhoto and its sister iLife apps (iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and iWeb) would not leverage any Lion-specific features or UI until either a.) Apple releases a major content patch for those apps or b.) a new version of iLife is launched.

It took me three days. (Of winter coolness.) Working for about 5 hours a day. Mixing something well is incredibly time consuming!

Program used is Garage Band.

The lessons in Garageband are really great! The best part is after a lesson, they have an exercise that's usually backed by a band, so instead of something dull, you've got something to play along with.

Check out the lessons info and videos

In the latest version, it'll even tell you how accurate you were. Pretty neat stuff...

A few friends have used Apple for both print and digital prints. Not necessarily the cheapest option, but I have see the end results first hand and the print books are pretty incredible.

I am not usually an Apple apologist but your complaints are not, IMO, justified:

1. Your macbook likely takes longer to "wake up" after opening because it now handles external displays in a more complex manner and that requires detecting what's connected

2. PPC apps: there is a point when cutting the cord with legacy apps has to happen, otherwise the time spent making sure these old apps work well it taken away from polishing newer apps

3. This iDvd?

Apple's GarageBand:

Pros:

• Real lessons designed for beginners
• MIDI Keyboard integration

Cons:

• Mac only. Of course.
• The lessons I have seen are very basic
• You need to buy the lessons on the iTunes store

I really recommend Synthesia and youtube as your main source of piano and music lessons in general.