Earlier today at Macworld Expo, Phill Schiller announced that availability of iLife '09. Not a huge surprise, as a few of us guessed we'd see an iLife update today, but it does offer some cool new features.iPhoto
iPhoto has been updated with two features called "Faces" and "Places." Faces, as you may have guessed, lets you tag photos by subjects' faces, similar to what Facebook and Picasa have done. iPhoto makes its best guess as to the identity of a subject based on previous tags and asks for confirmation. Of course, Phil called it "..the best technology we've found for face detection."
Places allows for geotagging of photos. Some cameras and the 3G iPhone will use GPS information to tag photos on longitude and latitude. iPhoto then organizes those photos by location, or "place." Also, Flickr and Facebook support are built-in. Those without GPS access can retro-tag photos by hand.
iMovie
Ah, iMovie '08. You either love it or you hate it. In any case, it's been replaced. Phil started his presentation of iMovie '09 by admitting that the '08 version wasn't very popular ... kind of. "Not every feature was there for every customer... some people missed the features," he said. That's as much of an admission of wrongdoing as you're going to get from Apple, folks.
iMovie '09 includes a few new tricks, like animated travel maps (think "Indiana Jones") and auto stabilization for shaky video. More impressive features include drag-and-drop editing, which lets you drop a clip between others. The skimming that was introduced in iMovie '08 is still intact, while "Precision Editing" is new. Now you can move audio from one clip onto another. Not exactly the "extract audio" option from iMovie 06, but still slick. They've also added some cute effects like cartoon, x-ray and aged film, as well as sweet dynamic themes.
GarageBand
My favorite podcast recording tool, GarageBand, also received a nice update with iLife '09. This time around, GarageBand goes beyond letting you drag and drop tracks into the timeline and actually teaches you how to play an instrument with the new "Learn to play" feature. Watch the HD video of the instructor has he moves you through different aspects of learning two bundled instruments -- guitar and piano.
If you really want a fun experience, check out the artist lessons from celebrities like John Fogerty, Sting and more. Cool! They can be purchased for $4.99US via a built-in store. Along with the lesson, the artists share the stories behind some of their most popular songs. Wow, GaragBand as a new, ongoing income stream for Apple
iLife '09 will be available in late January as a $79 upgrade while family pack will cost $99. iLife '09 ships on all new Macs.
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