Customer Reviews
Nice little media package 
2005-11-26
At first I hestitated to upgrade from iLife '04. Like most people, I am only willing to spend the money on upgrades if I can see a notable need, or significant new features. I eventually sprung for it, using my student discount, and I'm glad I did.
The thing I find funny about a lot of the other reviews I see, is that the reviewers think that this is a professional product or at least review it like it is. Why? Nobody, especially not Apple, is claiming it to be so. It is, without a doubt, is an excellent product for its class, which is a suite of media tools for the novice to advanced amateur. I am a professional photographer, and I find myself using iPhoto nearly every day. iPhoto is an excellent image manager. One of the greatest new features is the ability to handle RAW files. Other nice features are the automatic card recognition, downloading, and organizing. The program has nice editing features, they are quick and easy to get to (what I call 'down and dirty'). A very nice feature is the ability to set what happens when you double click on a photo, you can aither go to the editor, open the iPhoto editor in another window, or pick an editing program of your choice- like Photoshop Elements, or my favorite Photoshop CS2, or any other program you may want to use. You also still have the ability to get to iPhoto's editor with a button at the bottom of the screen. IPhoto makes outputting your images super easy, you can email, post on the net, print, make and order books, export files, and set wallpapers and screen savers. I use the program as my main photo organizer, finding it much easier to deal with than Photoshop, or even the Adobe Bridge.
In the military, I am a videograoher, which I guess makes me Pro in that field, and I can say that Apple products far exceed the competition. We use Avid, and it absolutely sucks. It is the most counter-intuitive program, buggy, and chock full of inane error meassages that invarialby pop up on every operation. The answer is Final Cut, a fantastically easy and powerful program. But if you don't need a professional editor, than I can reccommend iMovie and iDVD. On a recent mission, we needed to cut a few DVDs, and the solution was not to use the Dells with the horrendous PC software, but to use my Powerbook and iMovie and iDVD. We banged out a nice product in no time using our finished stories from Avid. So, whereas I would never had bought these products individually, I am sure glad I had them as part of the iLife Suite.
GarageBand is also a very nice little program that I like to play with, music being a great interest of mine, though just for fun. I find GarageBand to be supercool, and all I need and more, and as usual, very easy to use.
One fo the best things about the product is that it is from Apple, running on an Apple operating system, running on an Apple computer, so compatibility is never an issue, and the Apple quality and ease of use runs throughout. Whenever Apple upgrades the OS, it immediately upgrades the iLife program if needed.
I highly recommend this product, either as a first purchase or as an upgrade, you won't be disappointed.
ok Apps EXCEPT iMovie HD!! Avoid 
2005-11-02
All works great except iMovie HD. If you try timeline editing it seems to leave some invisible footage at the end of your video. Makes editing small clips or small videos very difficult. The invisible footage does not get exported but it just feels more flaky than a fully updated iMovie 4 (as long as you remember to SAVE PROJECT before emptying trash).
Would only buy for the new iDVD, so if you don't have a superdrive, iLife5.0 will be a waste of money as iPhoto will be your only useable app.
superb! 2005-11-02
Great new features in iPhoto andd iMovie HD. Nice new themes in iDVD.
A nice upgrade 
2005-10-12
We upgraded our old iLife (`04) to `05 primarily because of the new version's ability to deal with wide screen dv. Everything is just as simple as before - there are no surprises. Garageband seems like a powerful application, but nothing that is essential to our life. iPhoto is a solid upgrade that has better editiing tools - if a bit cryptic for newcomers to video editing. I would suggest adding features like the old Metacreations Photosoap; of course that would infringe on Photoshop's area and that isn't likely to happen. I expect iDVD to be every bit as good as the previous version, though I haven't had a chance to use it yet.
All in all this is a solid upgrade. I recommend it for anyone with a newer (any G5 with DVD player) Power Mac, a digital camera, and a dv recorder.
iLife 2005-09-25
Everything is fine. If you have Tiger, you dont need iLife as it comes with it. I bought it for the easy operation for iPhoto.
Beware !! This CD DOES NOT INCLUDE iDVD as advertised !! 
2008-06-26
I was all excited and ready to make DVDs of my grandkids..... guess what ? This iLife 05' on CD ROM does not include the iDVD program as they advertise. What a rip off. Now i am returning it to AMAZON.COM and i have now ordered the ilife 06' application on DVD, straight from Apple which does include the iDVD program.
Excellent. 2007-05-14
If you have a Mac, this is a must have suite...you will never regret it.
Ordered wrong item 
2006-02-24
I wanted to order the latest Mac version of iLife. Upon receiving your Email solicitation, I automaticaqlly selected the first iLife item that appeared on Amazon's page. Unfortunately, it was for iLife '05, rather than iLife '06. Since I already had iLife'05, I had to send it back and reorder iLife '06. To Amazon, I recommend you feature the latest version of the product and list the discounted older version thereafter. To us Buyers, i've learned to be more aware and detailed in my ordering. It saves everyone a lot of pain and suffering.
Solid Program Suite 2006-02-11
I got my version of iLife '05 when I purchased my new iBook in September. I am an amateur videographer, and photographer, so iLife was right up my alley.
The first thing I did when I got iLife was import some footage I had shot at First Practice of the Formula One United States Grand Prix. iMovie was a snap to use, I just had to plug in my cameras (a Sony Digital 8 and a Canon MiniDV) and iMovie recognized them instantly. After getting the footage from both cameras onto the computer I was able to add beginning and ending titles to the footage, as well as label each car that passed for later years when I forget who drove for whom. I have since done three more multi-footage projects. I even produced a three episode cooking show using iMovie, just for fun.
iTunes is an awesome product. It was my first taste of iLife when I downloaded the free version shortly after it came out. Since then I have not used anything else for music storage. The nice thing about iTunes is the fact that I can put my tunes in multiple playlists and create "smart playlists" for any situation. Especially nice at Christmas, I just put all my Christmas songs in a smart playlist (it did it automatically, I just told it to put all songs with a Holiday genre in the playlist) and let it run until the first Christmas football game. It can also burn CDs of your playlists, however, it is not able to set a gap between songs individually like Toast can, but for most people that is not a problem.
GarageBand is a program I didn't think I would use at all. I don't have a band nor can I sing very well. But, I composed every song in the three episode cooking show using GarageBand's loops. And I have played around with my Audio-Technica ATR30 microphone and it does a very good job. I have also recorded my father playing the piano and it sounded great. It has some very useful effects like those which might be found in a professional recording studio, and it has some very interesting effects like the effect "telephone lines" which would have very little use, although it is fun to use to simulate a radio call-in show. The only problem I see with GarageBand is the fact that it can't record multiple tracks at once. It can accomodate up to 255 tracks, but it can't record them all at once.
iPhoto is a good photo storage program. It really helps reduce clutter by allowing the user to put photos in "albums" like the playlists in iTunes. The editing features are good enough for casual tweaks, but for more power a editor like Adobe Photoshop is required. Other reviewers have more information, so I won't bore you by repeating what they say.
Finally, to tie it all together there is iDVD. This only works on SupeDrive equipped Macintoshes like my iBook, but my external LightScribe DVD drive claims it can work with iDVD with extra software included with it. I have not tried this, but it might be an option for those who do not have a built-in DVD drive. iDVD has some pre-defined still themes and some pre-defined motion themes, but both are very user customizable by allowing the user to replace the background music, background picture, et cetera. It has a professional feel without screaming, "I am trying to impress you!" The downside of iDVD is the fact that the forward and back buttons are not customizable nor can you move them, and there is a limit of six buttons per menu screen.
All in all this suite of programs is wonderful. It does some minor quirks, but it is still usable. It certainly is not a suite of professional quality programs, but is very good for amateurs and semi-professionals. Believe me you won't be dissapointed.
Superior!!! 2006-01-17
This the best product from Apple , simply easy & Powerful collection of software
you will never imagine it , good work Apple.
