Apple iLife '11 Updated, Wants You To Make Trailers, Learn an Instrument

by Terrence O'Brien on October 20, 2010 at 02:13 PM

Apple started today's 'Back to the Mac' event by showing off the latest incarnation of its 'iLife' suite of media-creation and management apps. The upgrades are nothing game-changing, but they're nice little tweaks to an already impressive line up of products.

iPhoto

The new iPhoto adds improved fullscreen view, new slide show templates and updays to Facebook and Flickr integration. You're also finally able to e-mail photos directly from within iPhoto, making image sharing with friends and family much easier. The revamped interface looks less like a traditional Mac desktop app and more like it was designed for the iPad. You'll see many full screen views provided for browsing photos by face and location, and iPhoto 11 adds a 3-D map for additional photo exploration. You'll also be able to order letterpress cards printed with your photos on them for classy, custom greetings. You can browse those cards, photo books and other projects in a bookshelf view similar to iBooks.

iMovie

iMovie is also getting a relatively minor update that includes improved audio editing tools that allow you to adjust the level and add effects to selected segments of audio. Apple has also added what it's calling "one-step effects" -- essentially macros for applying multiple effects and making a number of other changes at once. The "people-finder" analyzes faces to identify individuals in your clips, and the "instant trailers" feature makes creating over-the-top teasers filled with dramatic scores, title cards and credits much simpler than it should be. (We expect a YouTube flood of second-rate mock trailers any day now.)

GarageBand

No 'iLife' update would be complete without an upgrade to Apple's consumer-oriented music creation tool. Groove matching toolshave been updated, and Apple has included a feature called Flextime that lets you stretch audio to lengthen individual or groups of notes. The collection of amps and effects has also been expanded. The most interesting of the new features, though, are the built-in tutorials, paired with a "how did I play" tool for tracking your performances, and hopefully keeping you from making the same mistakes. Like iPhoto, some new elements have a decidedly iOS-esque look, leading us to wonder when OS X and iOS will essentially become one product.

As usual, 'iLife '11' will be shipping free with every new Mac and will cost $49 to users who want to upgrade. You'll be able to get your copy of 'iLife' later today.