Roughly every two-years, like clockwork, Apple updates its digital media management and creation suite, iLife… and today the trend continues. At the company’s “Back to the Mac” event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, with help from several executives and product managers, detailed and demoed the latest iterations of, iMovie, iPhoto, and Garageband included in the new iLife ’11 software bundle. Hit the jump to see what’s new.
iPhoto ’11
- New full screen mode with Core Graphics enhancements
- Full screen places, albums, location views
- Facebook enhancements; with comments
- Sharing panel lets to know who you’ve sent photo to and what friends on social networks (Flickr, Facebook) are commenting
- Emailing photos from within the iPhoto application itself
- New email templates
- New slideshow themes are included
- Improved book creation
- New themes and book layout
- Addition of letterpress cards
- High-quality pressed cards
iMovie ’11
- Better audio editing
- Sophisticated editing made simple
- Live, wave-form audio editing right from the timeline
- One-step effects
- People finder
- News and sports themes
- The ability to construct movie trailers
- Pre-bundled movie trails will allow users to custom-build a movie trailer intro, trailer, and credits.
- Easy, wizard-like interface for simple operation
Garageband
- Flex time
- Allows users to stretch-out or shorten recorded tracks
- Example given was a musician who forget to hold a long chord as the end of a track; flex time can stretch out that tracks last chord.
- Groove Matching
- Allows users to set a master track and have Garageband align off-beat tracks to the master
- “Automatic spell checker for bad rhythm.”
- More effects
- New ways to learn instruments
- Animated instruments, practice lessons, more songs
As always, iLife is free with every new Mac and $49 for those who would like to purchase the software separately starting today.
