iLife ‘09

iLife ‘09 makes it easier than ever to get the most out of the photos, movies, and music on your Mac. In iPhoto ‘09, you can organize and find your photos in two new ways: Faces, based on who is in your photos, and Places, based on where they were taken. iMovie ‘09 lets you make the movie you want in the time you have. With new themes, you can give your movie a professional look in seconds. Or use the new Precision Editor to fine-tune your masterpiece. With Basic Lessons in GarageBand ‘09, you can learn to play piano and guitar. And you can compose and record your own songs with new guitar amps and stompbox effects.

iLife ‘09 Reviews:
FACE RECOGNITION: My iPhoto library is relatively small at 14,000 photos, most of which feature friends and family. Because I’m a bit OCD, with iPhoto ‘08, I took the time to label all the photos with the names of the people contained in each picture. I did this by writing the person’s name in the “Key Words” field of each photo. For a variety of reasons, my iPhoto library is much more valuable and useful to me when they are properly labeled with people’s names. As such, I was intrigued by the face recognition feature of iPhoto ‘09. After allowing iPhoto ‘09 to scan my library of photos for faces (which took about 3 hours), I spent a handful of hours training iPhoto to know what everyone’s faces look like. This process (if you know how to do it) is indeed easier than the old way (of me typing in people’s names in the “key words” field under each photo). The facial recognition is pretty good, or maybe very good. The problem I’ve discovered is that facial recognition is never going to be perfect. Indeed some of the best photos have friends or family with their backs turned to the camera, or whatever, so facial recognition doesn’t notice them. If I were to rely solely on the facial recognition in iPhoto ‘09, I would fail to properly label all my pictures … I’d miss some really really good pictures. Then, months later, when I’m looking for a photo with my friend Sam, I won’t be able to find certain photos, because it was never properly labeled with his name. Long story short, I won’t be using the facial recognition feature. Instead, I’m going to continue to mark all my photos with names in the “key words” field of each photo. Note also, the facial recognition feature cannot find the face of my parents’ Dalmatian dog.

I think the purpose for a review is to get a sense for the product being reviewd. Unfortunately user submitted online reviews can and do end up becoming bully pulpits where people who feel slighted launch invective towards a product. Let me say that this will not be that type of review.

I own a Mac mini 1.66Ghz Core Duo with 2GB of RAM that shipped with iLife 06 (I skipped the 08 upgrade) . Even by the standards of 2007 it wasn’t a barn burner. I have become aquainted with iLife 09 (hereafter IL9) and here are my thoughts.

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