Drop, charge, and lose the cordsAt the Macworld 2009 keynote presentation this morning given by Phill Schiller (Steve Jobs was absent this year due to widely reported health issues), one of the more exciting new software developments was to the iLife suite of software for Mac.
(Credit:
Apple)
Long touted as the comprehensive suite from Apple to manage your digital lifestyle, iLife includes the popular Mac apps iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iDVD, and iWeb. Over the course of the speech, several enhancements to each software were given screen time, and many of the new features were those long requested by fans as well as innovative new features from Apple's developers.
New enhancements to iPhoto included two new ways to organize photos. Faces, which includes face recognition technology, lets users search across folders of photos by matching with the face of a friend or family member to get all the images that include a specific person. Places uses the location technology now available in iPhone 3G and in some digital cameras to organize where your pictures were taken. Along with the new search and organization capabilities, iPhoto now lets you quickly post to Flickr and Facebook, offers more advanced image-editing tools, and lets you illustrate your vacation photos using a slick-looking feature called Travel Maps. The Travel maps can also be used to make photo books using Apple's previously announced paid photo album making features.
iMovie also received several new features and enhancement tweaks including more themes to give your movies a different, elegant feel and a precision editor for more professional-looking digital movies. One of the more amazing parts of the keynote speech was the demonstration of iMovie's new video stabilization features which takes a user's shaky handheld video recording and makes it a almost as smooth as if the camera were riding on a rail. New title fonts and transition effects will delight iMovie hobbyists and a new browser makes it easy to find the recordings you want for your movie.
One of the more interesting feature enhancements involved GarageBand's new learn-to-play instrument features. Interactive piano and guitar lessons let you learn at your own pace, showing finger positions and HD videos of instructions so you can practice playing along. But the more interesting addition was the ability to learn songs from the actual artists who played them. Artist lessons (sold separately) lets you learn songs by watching videos of the artists themselves as they take you through the process of playing some of their songs. Famous artists like Nora Jones, Sting, Ben Folds, Sarah McLachlan, and others take you through each step. New sounds and amps were also included in the update to give you more variety in your music.
The iWeb application added better drag-and-drop Web design capabilities and several dynamic widgets you could include on your Web site. Improved features included easier page management and publishing options as well as fun additions like the ability to notify your Facebook friends when your site has been updated.
Overall, we think the expanded feature list for each program and usability tweaks make this updated suite worth looking into if you have interest in this project- and hobbyist-based suite. Single users who already own iLife '08 will be able to update for $79, and if you want to be able to install it on up to five computers, you can get the family pack for $99. iLife '09 will only work if you have Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard installed, so those with older systems might like the Mac Box Set, which includes iLife '09, Leopard, and iWork '09 all in one box for $169. iLife '09 will become available at the end of January.
With its launch of iPhoto 09, Apple has begun showing some reasons why it's worth enduring the hassle of geotagging your photos.
It's generally not easy right now to label your photos with information about where you took the pictures--the process usually is done with special software to marry the photos with location data taken from a separate GPS receiver.
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, demonstrated geotagging in iPhoto 09 at Macworld 2009.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, demonstrated what you can do with iPhoto at the Macworld 2009 keynote Tuesday.
iPhoto 09 works best with photos that already have been tagged. That's getting more common, as GPS hardware support becomes less of a rarity. For example, Nikon's Coolpix P6000 has a built-in GPS receiver, and Nikon has begun selling its GP-1 GPS receiver, which can plug into its SLR's flash mount so location data is embedded in the photo. Apple's iPhone can geotag its own photos, and camera manufacturers say GPS support in cameras has become a matter of when, not if.
But the software also can help you tag your own images. Clicking a photo flips it over, letting you type in a location, then showing the spot using a map. (Google supplies back-end mapping services). Helpfully, iPhoto then can spread that location data to other photos with similar time stamps, and they can be bundled together into a group called an event.
OK, but what can you do?
Once you have geotagged photos, what can you do with them?
For one thing, sift through them geographically using iPhotos' new Places interface. Viewing an iPhoto event can show an associated collection of pushpins on a map, and clicking each pin shows the photo.
For another, you can search for photos based on where you took them, not on whatever filing system you might use. iPhoto can handle geographic hierarchies, so if you labeled a photo with "Eiffel Tower," it'll find it with a search for "France" or "Paris."
... Read more
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
In some great news from Mac Mojo, the Office for Mac team blog, it looks like Windows Live Messenger for Mac will receive a major update sometime early next year. The biggest new feature update will be AV support for the personal client, which means users will be able to participate in cross-platform audio and video chat using the personal version of Microsoft Messenger for Mac. They are also working on additional features for the personal Windows Live Messenger client and are on track to preview some of the new implementations at Macworld in January at the MacBU booth. The new Windows Live Messenger for Mac with AV support should be available as a beta sometime early next year.
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