The apple of your i

Experiencing the digital lifestyle can be a little like wearing a straight-jacket at an orgy: while everyone else is pressing the right buttons, you can’t even get started.

Brain-boiling applications are everywhere, but who understands these apart from laptop kids raised by desktop parents? As supernova as they might be, mastering the likes of Photoshop, Excel or Cubase is the stuff of college courses. HTML my arse. Let’s leave that to the professionals.
In an age when we’re weighed down with a mobile phone in one pocket, an MP3 player in another, and a digital camera hanging around your neck, we want a software package that’s not only easy to use, but also does everything short of taking your dog for a walk and getting rid of unwanted facial hair. Cue Apple, the name that was once spoken of in hushed tones amongst graphic designers, until the iPod did for MP3 players what Hoover did for vacuum cleaners.
Apple’s iLife 06 suite of applications is the Swiss army knife of lifestyle software. It’s got the lot, incorporating a multi-track recorder and sequencer, a photo editor and organiser, a non-linear video editor, a web-publishing application, and DVD recording software. We can’t say we’ve used it yet, but somewhere in iLife’s nether-regions, almost certainly lurks a kitchen sink. What’s more, even if you are profoundly technophobic you will still find iLife a breeze. It’s Forrest Gump, George W. Bush, ABC easy. How come it's so good as well?
iLife’s 06’s applications work together like a well-oiled machine. Connect your video camera to a Mac, compile clips in iMovie, chuck ‘em into GarageBand, add some 70’s funk music and sheep noises, drag a few photos in from iPhoto, then upload the lot onto the Net with iWeb. Bingo! A cinematic masterpiece (perhaps) that can be downloaded by friends, family or yourself onto a mobile phone or iPod. Now watch PC owners turn green with jealousy…
“iLife has been around for ages,” Mac owners might opine. That’s true, but past incarnations are merely gluggable stuff compared to 06’s Dom Perignon, which commands an army of exciting new upgrades.
For starters, iPhoto 6 has a capacity for 250,000 photos. And if even the thought of a quarter of a million shots is daunting, fact is that scrolling through photos is now incredibly fast, each pic’s file structure containing embedded dates for easy organisation. Meanwhile, full-screen editing means an end, if that’s what you intend, to facial blemishes: for better or worse, the digital nip and tuck era is about to leap from the pages of Cosmopolitan into family photo albums across Ireland.
Fancy different takes on the same photo? Eight enhancements can be previewed on a floating palette with the original in the centre. Albums, greeting cards and calendars are easily created by dragging pictures onto layouts. And, if you want to get into the personal printing game, at the mere click of a button, connected to Apple Central, the images can be printed, and delivered to your gaff, by the worker beavers at Apple… for a fee, naturally. Exhibitionists can also upload photos on i.mac to create a photocast (“podcasting for photos”).
There are a few small caveats. Users of iLife 06 are restricted to a set number of themed backgrounds: iMovie HD 6 is a case in point. But it offers such a fast and easy way of turning your home videos into slick TV-quality presentations that you instantly forget about any gripes. Begin by choosing the background, titles and effects. Peek at chosen themes by clicking the “Show Preview” button; when you’re happy, drag video clips, photos, and audio (voice-recorded or music) into the “drop zones”. iMovie does the rest: it realy is marvellous.
HD 6 lets you edit footage and access your iTunes and iPhoto folders for easy drag and drop. Hoorah for the freedom to open several iMovie projects in one session, comparing cuts or swapping clips between projects. Oh, and lest we forget – new audio FX shape your soundtrack in real-time, adding reverb, delay, noise reduction, or pitch change (just in case you’re out of helium). It’s all a piece of piss to operate: just don’t expect that you’re automatically on your way to becoming the next Tarantino if you make something that looks the biz.
iMovie’s cinematic fruits can be uploaded with iWeb, creating a video podcast in a few easy steps, or can be harnessed to your iPod (via iTunes).
iWeb is the new kid on the iLife block and a contender to “make your own site” services like My Space. Users are restricted to a choice of 12 templates, but it’s important to remember that iWeb is all about ease of use, and therefore less about creating a unique web page. Besides, the finished product looks like you blackmailed a top designer to do the job for you.
With a few drags from other iLife apps you can create the following Mac-ro site: “Welcome” (your home page), “About Me”, “Photos”, “Movies”, “Blog” and “Podcast”. Not a single line of code or formatting is required, neither when creating the site nor managing it on-line. If you know of any other publishing software that’s as simple as this, send Dick Cheney around to shoot me in the head.
Onto Garageband 3, the Mac’s home recording studio. It may be an aspiring Noddy compared to the Big Ears of programmes like Sound Forge, but its capabilities shouldn’t be underestimated. Compose an original music score for your iMovie project, using loops, synths, and personal recordings. Full podcast support is built in, with new toys like ducking (which automatically lowers background sound when primary tracks like vocals are recognised) and 200 sound-effects, ranging from radio style stingers to people, animal and machine FX.
Finally, iDVD. This allows the user to create DVD’s with main menus, scene selection menus, video and slideshows; once again, drop zones are autofilled with your content. 06 offers widescreen HDTV compatible themes, so you can choose between grizzly old 4:3 or vibrant 16:9; with a single click, content is burned onto disk (and iDVD 6 supports third-party burners).
If all this sounds too good to be true, then you probably own an old Mac. With iLife 6’s steep hardware requirements – 733MHZ or faster for iDVD, 10GB of installation space, etc – anything purchased before 2001 will be impossible (near 'nough!). But if you’re up-to-date with Apple hardware, then there’s no reason why you can’t join the digital lifestyle with a vengeance. What was previously the remit of professionals is now open season for the unwashed masses. Now that’s iFricking Fabulous.