Review: iLife 06

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iLife 06 was introduced in January by Steve Jobs at MacWorld Expo and it should now be available in the UAE. IMC Apple Middle East generously provided a copy to EmiratesMac and we have now had a chance to try it out for a while. Strictly speaking iTunes is a part of iLife but it’s provided for free as a download so I don’t include it in this review.

Installation
iLife 06 comes on a double-sided DVD, summing up to almost 8Gb. That’s a whopper of a suite, I would say. Installed fully it measures up to around 7.5Gb but you can trim it by doing a customized install. By opting out of Garageband and accompanying sounds and jingles you can chop off over 3Gb from the total.

One thing that irritated me right away with iLife is that it adds six icons to your dock, one for each of the iLife apps, and it doesn’t even ask you if you want to do that or not. That’s not good Apple. All you had to do was put up a little dialog asking me if I wanted to add the icons or not.

iPhoto
The best-known and most-often-used app in the iLife suit besides iTunes is arguably iPhoto. iPhoto has kept developing nicely up through versions and iPhoto 06 is a very nice step up in functionality. Performance has increased; it’s faster and you can have more photos in the library.

To try out iPhoto I went out and shot a 1Gb compact flash card full of photos with my Nikon D70s. I shot in RAW format (Nikon’s NEF) which mean I ended up with 188 shots on the card. I imported these to iPhoto which took almost 15 minutes. This worried me a bit but I must say performance has been a positive surprise. I tested iLife on a Mac mini 1.42GHz with 1Gb RAM and booting off of the internal 80Gb notebook hard drive. This should be a fairly common setup among readers of this site, I would think.

Probably what I like most about the new iPhoto is the new fullscreen editing mode and the new effects and adjustment features. The fullscreen editing mode makes it much easier to go through a lot of shots, see which ones are good or not, touch them up some, and even make pretty advanced adjustments. There’s a Levels-adjustments a la Photoshop, and there are a number of other adjustment-options including sharpness, brightness and contrast. This should be more than most home users would need from a digital photography application and iPhoto does it beautifully. Apple sometimes uses similar features in several applications and the Effects panel bears a strong resemblance to the one found in Photobooth, both in form and function. It shows you small thumbnails of eight different effects and you can apply them repeatedly or reset just by a few clicks of the mouse.

iPhoto supports putting together your own cards, books and calendars. You pick the photos you want to include, a template, and drag and drop the photos into place, and provide some text. It’s so easy and the results look really good. I’ve used a similar technology in the US before and I would love to use it again. Unfortunately the printing is not supported in the UAE. IMC Apple Middle East informed me that this functionality is not supported in the UAE and they didn’t mention if they were working on getting something in place for the future. It would be a shame if this functionality was missing for us here in the Emirates. Others, in places where they can order printed cards, have posted their experience.

iPhoto 06 is a very nice program with some amazing new features. I was hoping for some new functionality in terms of managing multiple iPhoto libraries and backing up, but of that there was none. You’re still really stuck with libraries no larger than your largest backup media. So if you have a DVD burner you shouldn’t make your libraries larger than around 4.3Gb so they can fit on a DVD. And with today’s high-megapixel cameras it’s so easy to fill up 4Gb.

iMovie
After iPhoto I’ve probably used iMovie the most in the iLife suite (again, not counting iTunes). What I’ve done mostly is to import from a DV camcorder, edit, and output to movie DVDs to share with friends and family, and I think that’s about the same as for most iMovie users. As with Garageband, and we get to that app in a little bit, the main news in iMovie is the support for podcasts, and in the case of iMovie it’s of course video podcasts.

Besides the podcast support, the news in iMovie that’s going to affect most users is the iMovie themes and the different kinds of effects included. The themes in iMovie work kind like you would expect; they are high-quality ready-made templates in which you drag and drop your content, add and edit text, and customize some aspects of the design. Apple’s iMovie themes are great looking and they can make your home movies look like an award-winning professional production, straight out of Bollywood.

The effects Apple added to iMove are also spectacular but be ware that they require quite a powerful computer. I tested iLife 06 on a mini 1.42GHz with 1Gb RAM and iMovie effects and templates were sometimes painfully slow. There was minutes of waiting for a few seconds of transitions to be applied and there was very jerky movie-motions at times. Unfortunately I cannot say using iMovie on this computer was a pleasant experience.

Whatever you make in iMovie can with a few clicks be turned into something you can podcast (videocast?) or make available from a web page with iWeb. This is dead easy to do but I think many users will want some more control over what happens. Arguably this has more to do with iWeb than iMovie and we’ll get back to some of these issues further down.

iDVD
In line with iMovies themes and effects, iDVD have also received a facelift. The big news is probably that you can now create widescreen DVDs. Also big news for many users is the Magic iDVD function. You basically pick your movies, a theme, and iDVD will put together a DVD, complete with menus and everything. Again Apple creates something “for the rest of us”.

Good news for some users is that iDVD now supports third-party DVD burners, i.e. you’re no longer forced to have an Apple burner. The biggest pain about iDVD, that it takes forever to complete and burn a DVD, has not changed much if any at all. It still takes forever, but that’s probably not something we can blame Apple for.

Garageband
I can honestly say that although I haven’t used Garageband much it’s a very fun application to play around with. The big news for Garageband is obviously the podcast support. Apple didn’t invent podcasting but they made it big by building podcast support in their iTunes music player. Some would say Apple has done it again by making it easier than before to produce professional-sounding audio podcasts and I would agree with that. I have already been in contact with some people who use the new Garageband for their podcasts and they sound amazingly good and they say it’s so easy to work with. When you start Garageband you can select to create a new podcast project which sets up a new project with a skeleton podcast. You can then drag and drop artwork from your iPhoto library, record interviews with your friends and guests via iChat, add sound effects and jingles, and send it all to iWeb and even the iTunes Music Store when you’re finished.

If you look at what’s new in Garageband you cannot find much that is new besides the podcast support but perhaps that doesn’t matter much. Garageband is still a very fun and capable application with which even someone who has zero musical talent – like myself – can create what sounds pretty professional pieces of music. You drag and drop different instruments to tracks on the screen, position them, add effects, etc. It’s easy to operate and it’s fun to see at least a glance at what the professionals do to compose their music.

There is also ready-made music available on the internet that you can download and work with. For example, Nine Inch Nails offers a song of theirs for download as a Garageband file.

iWeb
So last but not least we have the new addition to the iLife family, iWeb. I deal with it last because it ties together all the other iLife apps very nicely. To give you the conclusion first, I would say that iWeb is a very nice idea that feels a bit like a “1.0″ release, and perhaps iWeb was a bit rushed to market, so to speak.

The whole idea of iWeb is to tie all the other iLife apps together so you can publish media on web sites. With iWeb you pick a theme for your web site and you create individual web pages based on templates. You can drag and drop media – movies, photos, and music – from the other iLife apps. That’s basically what you do to create pretty good looking web sites, drag and drop, and replace text. You can create a blog, a photo album, a movie album, and more. The templates and themes are nice looking and very much in line with the other iLife apps. There’s almost a certain “iLife look” that we’ve come to expect, for better or for worse.

That all sounds great, doesn’t it? So what’s not so great then? At least on my system, iWeb crashed too much to be acceptable. As users we know that software crash once in a while, but iWeb crashed two times when I tried to drop a photo into a template, and once when I tried to publish a site to a folder. Publish to .Mac didn’t work at all, but that may be due to me having a bad network connection. I also experienced a few little interface-quirks that may be my system.

I think iWeb is a great idea. It makes it easy for non-techies to publish good looking web sites. As an experienced web designer and user it’s something I would consider using for some sites where I don’t want to fiddle with the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. I’m sure we will see many “iWeb-site” appear all over the place as people publish their iLife creations to the web. iWeb 06 is a great start, but it needs to grow up some before I’m really happy with it.

Update: I tested iWeb before the 1.0.1 update was released and perhaps the update fixed some of the issues I experienced.

Wrapping up
So should you go out and spend money on iLife 06 if you have a previous version? If you have iLife 05 it’s a tough choice. I guess my answer would be if you’re happy with the 05 version and you don’t think you would need iWeb, then stick with it. But then again it’s not that much money to get the brand new suite. There is no upgrade offer so you will have to pay the full price even if you have a previous version. Some argue this is unfair but I would say that iLife is a steal at the full price so it’s not a big deal that there is no upgrade path. There’s nothing else on PC or Mac that comes close to matching iLife in functionality and value, in my opinion. It’s a great suite of applications and it’s a must have for pretty much every Mac user.

IMC Apple Middle East told me that the price of iLife 06 is AED 329 and the five-copy family pack is AED 412.

Review: iWork 06

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Steve Jobs introduced the latest version of Apple’s productivity suite iWork 06 at MacWorld Expo in early January. It has arrived in the Emirates and IMC Apple Middle East has generously provided a copy for EmiratesMac to take a look at.

Update: According to IMC Apple Middle East the price for iWork 06 is 329AED and you get the familypack (five copies) for 412AED.

iWork consist of Pages, a word processor/layout program, and Keynote, a presentation program. KeyNote is now up to version 3 and also comes across as the more mature of the two, while Pages is now at version 2. This is actually the first update of iWork since it was introduced last year when Apple released the first version of Pages and packaged it with Keynote which had existed as an application on its own before that.

The suite
Although iWork is sold as a kind of suite, it’s two stand-alone applications that could very well be used without the other. In fact, there’s nothing really tying them together to form a whole. Most news in iWork 06 are in place in both applications.

Perhaps the most noticeable new function in iWork 06 is the new 3D graphs. You can create different kind of graphs, twist and turn them to get just the right viewing angle, and put patterns and colors on them. For anyone creating graphs for print or screen, this new tool will truly make the graphs stand out.

As you would expect the new version also comes with a number of new templates for creating print publications in Pages and presentations in Keynote. We all know about the “Powerpoint-effect” when we sit and watch different presentations looking exactly the same because they were created with the same Powerpoint templates. That’s not a risk with iWork since there are a lot fewer iWork users than Office users. This means you can more easily impress your friends and colleagues with your creations.

Document export seems to have been improved in both applications. For many it’s important to know that iWork can co-exist to some degree with Office applications. Pages imports and exports Microsoft Word files, and Keynote imports and exports Microsoft Powerpoint files.

Another significant new feature in iWork 06 is comments. Many users are used to comments from Microsoft Office and now you can find this feature in iWork as well, which is a very welcome addition.

Pages
Now we’ll move on to Pages, the word processor. In my view, Pages has been underestimated as a word processor. Sure it contains templates for creating good-looking documents but it also has some real good features for actually writing and styling text. Pages has style-functions similar to those of Office, meaning you can define styles for a document and then apply them throughout.

Something new in Pages 06 is the Image Adjustment feature a la iPhoto. It makes it real easy to adjust pictures you’ve included in your Pages document and make them look good.

Also new is the Auto Correction feature which lets Pages automatically correct text you write. This is similar to the feature in Microsoft Word. This is something you either love or hate, it seems. Personally I like the feature and welcome it warmly to Pages.

The table tool has got a welcome update and you can now do some simple spreadsheet functionality with it. You’re limited in the number of formulas you can use, but what’s available is probably enough for most users.

There are some updates to the drawing tools in iWork. Pages, for example, certainly isn’t a match for something like Adobe Illustrator but it has some pretty neat drawing features. You can quickly draw basic shapes and alter their look and features. Photos can easily be “put inside” shapes whereby shapes “mask” the photo inside, which means you can accomplish some pretty neat effects.

Keynote
Overall it feels like Keynote got less of an update than Pages. Perhaps this is to be expected since Keynote is an older application and with age updates of applications tends to become less spectacular. Much of the new features of Pages also apply to KeyNote so I won’t go over all them again.

Keynote has received some new effects and themes. Most anything you would need, from a slideshow of a new baby to a corporate strategy presentation is available. And in true Apple tradition all themes and affects are really cool looking. Why is it that Apple can make things look so awesome when most other companies just make it look dull and boring?

A strange limitation in earlier Keynote versions was that you could only add bullets to one box of text on a single slide. You couldn’t for example create two lists next to one another on one slide and let them both have bullets. That’s been remedied in the new version.

The Light Table function is a welcome addition to Keynote. It lets you see thumbnails of all your slides on one screen and you can drag and drop them into the order you desire. This has been available in Powerpoint for a long time and it’s good that Apple has included it in Keynote.

Wrapping up
What’s not to like about iWork 06? Not much actually. The 3D graph functions are nice but I wish they were a bit easier to work with and the graph function should work together with the table functions. Document compatibility with Microsoft Word is improved but it could still be better. There seem to be issues with comments translating back and forth, for example. It’s easy to make stunning looking presentations with Keynote but styling text is still a bit too awkward. Styles are available in Pages, so why not in Keynote as well?

I can’t get away from feeling disappointed that Apple still has not made a spreadsheet application. Without it, as good as iWork may be, it will never be a real alternative for the masses of Microsoft Office users out there who rely on Excel compatibility in their jobs. I’d love to see what Apple could do with a spreadsheet and they certainly have some experience from AppleWorks.

That said, iWork is an excellent package which most Mac users will find both fun and easy to use and pretty advanced in functionality. It can produce stunning documents and you can easily impress friends and co-workers with your good-looking documents. With Pages you can write your letters as well as design brochures, and with Keynote you can create photo slideshows for export to DVDs as well as lectures and presentations. There is no upgrade-path from the previous iWork so you will have to buy a new copy, but it’s well worth the money.

[posted with ecto]

Review: Tribal Trouble

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Tribal Trouble (TT) is a rare gem of a game which I’ve enjoyed playing too much for a while now. It’s a realtime strategy (RTS) game where you take charge of either a tribe of Vikings or Natives, build a village and fight your way toward taking over a fantasy island world. The story starts “Once upon a time, a gang of Viking raiders got so drunk celebrating their latest pillaging that they got lost on the high sea and stranded on a remote group of tropical islands. Here they chose to stay for a while, much to the annoyance of the local Natives…”

If you’ve seen Age of Empires, Age of Mythology or similar games you know pretty much how TT works. You see a world from above and with the mouse you control a number of characters, where they go to and what they do. You command them to build buildings, collect resources, and fight the enemy. That’s pretty much it, and if it sounds simple and easy, it is in some respects. And this is certainly not as complex a game as Civilization for example where you have to keep track of intricate webs of interconnected factors in order to make the best possible decisions. There are combinations of characters, resources, buildings, etc. that you need to consider in TT as well but it’s much more straightforward than in some other games. And therein lies perhaps the only complaint I have with TT, that there are not more types of tribes, characters, buildings, etc. But that’s a complaint only if TT is directly compared to some of the commercial games I’ve mentioned before, and that’s not really a fair comparison. For the size of the game (it’s only a 24Mb download) and the price ($29.95, around 110 AED), this is a great game.

Your typical game starts with a number of Peons (your basic working character) stranded on an island somewhere. The Peons have to be directed to gather resources (wood, rock, iron, or chicken) and build buildings (Quarters, Armories, and Watch towers). In the Quarters you create more Peons and with the Armory you can turn Peons into Warriors with different weapons and eventually also the most powerful being in TT, the Chieftain. In most games you have to build up your little civilization as quickly as you can in order to fight off an invading enemy and eventually invade and destroy your adversary. If you’re playing a campaign you have to accomplish a mission on an island before you can move on to the next and tackle another mission. Unfortunately there is no way in TT to save a game in progress. It saves automatically but only when you complete a level. Perhaps this is a small thing but it’s inconvenient if nothing else to have to give up a game in progress without any way of saving the progress.

A unique and pretty cool feature of TT is that you can create your own game scenario complete with map and other game characteristics. Your created scenario comes with a unique code that you can distribute to others who would want to try the same scenario. So you can create a scenario with some particular characteristics and email the code to your friends. TT is also an online game where arguably the most enjoyable aspect of this game lies. Often even the most simple games become intensely enjoyable once you play against other human players.

There are many things to like about TT, and some of them concerning the game play I’ve laid out above. Something else that’s impressive about TT is the performance. I’ve played it on a Mac mini 1.42Ghz 1Gb RAM running Mac OS X 10.4.4 at 800×600 as well as 1024×768 and it runs “smooth as butter” to borrow an expression from Steve Jobs. It’s a cross-platform game (Linux, Windows and Mac) which usually doesn’t bode well for performance but I’m happy to report you can run this on relatively unimpressive hardware which is really nice. TT seems to be a fully 3D-realized game. By that I mean it doesn’t look like it’s flat 2D sprites wrapped onto 3D spaces. You can zoom in and out (and a nice feature is that the sound “zooms” along with the view), scroll around, change the viewing angle, and more. Basically you can look around everywhere and anywhere in the game to make sure you get the best possible view.

In conclusion this is a rather remarkable game considering the graphics, game play, performance, and price. It’s simple to get going with but offer plenty of challenges that will keep you glued to your computer for a long time. As a Mac user it’s really nice to see a good-looking game that runs on relatively simple hardware that is also cross-platform. Go download the game, get your Peons building and collecting, and take your Warriors into the next village. I am off to another round of TT, and I know that when I’m finished playing, I will wish there was more and that’s pretty good for a game I think.