Apple iLife suite updated

'08 version of creative package gets web and Google focus

7 August 2007 19:07 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Apple has announced that it is updating its creative iLife package, which includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, iTunes and GarageBand at its Town Hall event in California.

All the packages within the iLife '08 suite get an update with a heavy embrace of Google technologies and support built directly in.

iPhoto, sees Apple add a feature called Events that allow you to quickly arrange new pictures into events like birthday parties rather than just albums.

Building on this feature, Apple has also announced a new feature called .Mac Web Gallery.

Building on an update of the .Mac service, which now includes 10GB of storage for $99.95 for a 1-year subscription, the application moves to combat problems in the past of sharing photos with other users on the web.

The new app, which will also be integrated into the iPhone will allow you to automatically upload images to your .Mac account that can then be shared online. iPhone users will also be able to sync photos will sync to your iPhoto library, too.

Elsewhere in the iLife 08 suite, iMovie has been updated to make it easier, according to Jobs, to make movies.

Sporting a new interface, iMovie '08 will be able to take video from DV camcorders or even the newer AVCHD camcorders and offers one click encoding to publish to YouTube.

In addition to making the end footage suitable for YouTube, users will also be able to choose a host of other formats including the company's mobile phone and something Steve Jobs called "Better than DVD", however the CEO fell short of saying that it was HD quality.

It also allows you to create a library for all you video that you can scroll through as if it were photos.

Jobs claims the new application can "add polish quickly" by letting users add music, sound effects, can drag photos and all sorts of other effects and comes after its own engineers failed to be able to make a home movie in under 30 minutes.

As with iPhoto, users will be able to share video via the new .Mac Web Gallery service.

As predicted other apps within the iLife suite have been updated; iWeb launched last year gets live web widgets, GoogleMaps support and the option of revunue streams via Google AdSense support from within. There will also be a range of new Themes.

iDVD gets pro encoding and new themes.

iLife '08 will sell for $79 in the US and will be £55 in the UK.