Macworld: Apple intros new iPhoto and iMovie, gets Sting to give guitar lessons

Jordan Golson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:58:02 -0800

Apple today introduced an updated version of its lifestyle suite of software applications, iLife. Included are new versions of iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand. All received heavy billing at today's "SchillNote" (by Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing chief) at Macworld.

iPhoto now has a facial recognition feature called "Faces", which recognizes individuals in Mac owners' photo collections and uses a Facebook-like tagging system to find all photos of a particular person. Also added was "Places", which uses geotagging data from high-end cameras and some smartphones ("like the iPhone," said Schiller) to assign photos to the locations where they were taken.

Both Faces and Places, along with the Events category introduced last year, will make it easier for users to organize their ever-growing digital photo collections.

iMovie received a complete overhaul in 2008, much to the dismay of some users who preferred the old iMovie. This upgrade doesn't quite alleviate those concerns, but does introduce some nifty new features that "users asked for," said Schiller.

The most exciting addition to iMovie is a video stabilization feature that should help the legions of jittery Flip camera users. iMovie now analyzes videos frame by frame, and greatly reduces camera jitter. Judging by the reaction of the audience to the in-person demo, the results are surprisingly impressive for a consumer-grade product.

Users can also speed up or slow down clips (like animals or sports) for effect and grab audio from one clip and use it as an overlay on another, which restores functionality that used to be present in iMovie before 2008. Also included are a number of new themes and transitions which, according to gadget blog Gizmodo, can "give your video the gimmicky look you were wanting."

Built into the latest version of music-creation software GarageBand is a feature that fledgling musicians will love. Called "Learn to Play", GarageBand will help teach Mac owners how to play guitar or piano. Interactive lessons with a helpful on-screen instructor (in HD!) let users learn at their own pace and eventually play with a full band right in the app.

But that's not all. Leveraging the company's massive fanbase in the music industry, Apple has gotten a number of major artists to explain how to play some of their hits. Sting, Norah Jones, Colbie Caillat, John Fogerty -- these are household names teaching their own songs. How cool is that? Plus, at $4.99 per lesson, Apple (and the artists) will make some nice coin on the side.

For those who already know how to play the guitar, there's a feature that lets them plug electric guitars into GarageBand and play them through a software emulator that can reproduce the sound of more than 30 guitar rigs.

iLife '09 also includes updated versions of iDVD and iWeb. Schiller didn't describe the new functionality, but this is hardly a surprise -- does anyone really care about either app?

The new iLife suite will be available in late January for the standard price of $79 -- or free on every new Mac.

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Macworld: Apple intros new iPhoto and iMovie, gets Sting to give guitar lessons