Louise von Randow: Thinking ICT

Where Is The Love?

August 29th, 2007

Recently Apple released iLife08. I’ve been a bit slack about searching out the new stuff. What’s wrong with me?! Most of you will know how much I like Mac stuff and iLife06. I’ve expounded the benefits of using such a student/teacher friendly package and yet I just hadn’t been motivated to go search out the new version. Maybe I was just too happy with the status quo?

I’ve finally thought it was time to go and have a look at it… So, what’s new in iLife08?
- iPhoto: organise photos by event, some new editing tools, and some fluffy stuff (more themes for books, calendars etc)
- Garageband: multi-take recording, customisation of the mix, arrangements, and some fluffy stuff (new vocals jam pack, magic garageband)
- iWeb: theme switching (finally!), my album pages, Google AdSense and Maps and some fluffy stuff (widgets, personal domain names with .mac)
- iDVD: new themes, more customisation, better performance and pro-quality encoding
- iMovie: has been completely rebuilt.

The new version of Garageband sounds cool. I really enjoy using Garageband. I am no musician but it’s been great to create movie soundtracks (and integrates so well with iMovie but does anyone else have the problem where new songs don’t always appear in the Garageband list in the Audio window in iMovie? Sometimes I need to save, quit and reopen iMovie before my new song will show up), recording podcasts etc. I’ve also used it to create beats with students and then get them to rap over the top. This is a great way to integrate poetry, music and ICT. Plus, it’s super motivating for those “reluctant” writers.

I’m also interested to get stuck into iWeb a bit more. I had originally found it quite frustrating. I’d been used to using Dreamweaver and being able to flick between design view and the code. The version of Dreamweaver we have is getting on a bit now and by being able to paste in some code it was quite easy to insert movies etc. I know that Apple wanted iWeb to be super easy, drag’n'drop, but that was exactly what I found frustrating. The templates are very easily manipulated but their very existence annoyed me. It was frustrating to see various websites in last year’s Netguide Webchallenge winning using templates provided by the software. It’s also one of the things I didn’t like about FrontPage i.e. it’s not cool when you can tell what students have used it to create their webpage (clipart, ugh!).

However, I am suspending all my hang-ups about iWeb and reassessing it. It’s not frustrating for those people who haven’t made their own websites before. In fact, the teachers that I’ve worked with on iWeb have been really excited about the possibility of producing their own class website. The only tricky part now is organising hosting and FTP access. Neither of those are particularly difficult. So, it’s okay. I might even use it for some personal stuff soon. Maybe a photo album or some video work. We’ll see.

Which brings me to iMovie. It’s been rebuilt from the ground up. I loved the iLife06 version of iMovie. I’ve taught so many people to use it. They’ve all been delighted, especially those ones that have struggled with MovieMaker and come over to the Mac platform. I particularly enjoyed how it integrated the other iLife software so seamlessly, asides from aforementioned Garageband weirdness. I’ve heard two theories about why Apple have rebuilt iMovie:
1. To make it even easier to use for home consumers: there hasn’t yet been an explosion in digital video such as there was with digital photography.
2. To differentiate more from Final Cut Pro i.e. they didn’t want to keep adding more features to iMovie and make it closer to the pro sofware.

I watched the video on the Apple site to see what it looked like. Apparently you can run both the 06 version and the 08 version. The 08 version looks a bit like a mix betwen iPhoto and Garageband. Gone is the brushed metal interface. There’s some neat ideas, like highlighting the selection of video and placing it in sequence but there is no timeline anymore. I don’t know what you’d call the place where you put the video selections anymore. Maybe it’s the Clip Viewer?

Another thing that seems interesting is the inability to mix/add audio like you could in the previous version. Previously you could use two audio tracks, adjust the volume, extract audio, add fade-in and fade-out etc. It certainly was handy being able to manipulate voice-overs and different soundtracks. Now there is only one audio track available. I wonder if maybe the way to get around this is by recording and mixing in Garageband? Maybe that becomes your one audio track?

In conclusion then, it seems to be worth spending the $109 at the Apple Store to upgrade. If iMovie is rubbish, I’m happy running the old version for a bit more. Has anyone out there had any experience with iLife08 and prepared to comment on their experiences?

Entry Filed under: Netguide Webchallenge, New Technology, Software