Product Reviews

A new iLife suite has become one of the highlights of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' annual January keynote speech. Every year brings new features and improvements to existing applications, and every now and again there's a new addition to the suite. This year's features centre around podcasting and video blogging. No surprise, given the success of the iPod, and iTunes'

ADVERTISEMENT

support for podcasting.

GarageBand has evolved into a podcasting studio, iMovie has new podcasting and video blogging features, while iPhoto now allows you to share your photos using RSS feeds. Tying the whole lot together is the newest addition to the suite, iWeb, which allows you to publish your creations from iMovie, iPhoto and GarageBand on your .Mac site.

Perhaps the best thing about iLife is it comes free with every new Mac. The likes of iMovie, GarageBand and iDVD are so good that they're a compelling reason for anyone to buy a Mac rather than a PC.

So much for the new additions, but how do they perform? The MacUser team put each element of the iLife suite through its paces to find out whether iLife '06 is really as good as Apple would have us believe. Will iMovie and GarageBand turn us all into video bloggers and podcasters, and is iWeb the web design tool we've all been waiting for? Read on and find out.