|
OK look, regarding this whole thing about iPhoto not being "pro" enough: it's not supposed to be! The whole point is that it's a very simple app made for people who are very casual photographers. Yes, Apple could make a more "pro" version, but then that would really piss off Adobe. Apple's pissed off enough developers with making replacements to their apps that are either better or a lot cheaper. Apple really doesn't want to piss off Adobe so much that they stop developing Photoshop or something. In general, Apple has been very annoying recently with taking great ideas from 3rd party apps and incorporating them into a better and/or cheaper app than the apps from 3rd parties, and then bundling it with all new Macs. This was especially ridiculous with the whole Sherlock 3/Watson thing. I mean, come ON, they completely stole Watson, and made it into a far worse app, but since it was free with Jaguar, the developer of Watson lost a lot of potential customers, and he was going to stop developing it for awhile until the loyal Watson users emailed him and told him how bad Sherlock was compared to Watson. BTW, I do use Sherlock; I love Watson, but I just can't justify paying $30 for an app which I don't even really use all that much (usually cause I forget it's there).
Anyway, I digress. I think Apple should just leave the pro photo apps to the 3rd parties, and just keep iPhoto the way it is, which isn't really competing with anything except iView. Now, I don't actually use iPhoto much at all. We have a digital camera, but I never use it (it's really my brother's camera.) I've seen others use it, and I've used it a little to organize photos taken by my brother. It seems like the main problem before was performance, and they seem to have completely fixed that. And the new features are really nice; the Smart Albums and ratings, the yearly organization and the on-screen controls in the Slideshow are just great.
Now, it is debatable whether iPhoto is actually worth $49.95. Every other iLife app is definitely worth $50 on its own. It's just that iPhoto is a bit iffy. I think if you really use it a lot, it is. Yes, iView is $30, and I've never used it, but it seems it's not nearly as good as iPhoto. Right now, we're actually kind of using a friend's copy of iLife (obtained legitimately), but we will most likely buy it ourselves, especially since our family is entitled to the educational discount, and $30 is an amazing deal. We don't use iMovie or iDVD, but iPhoto is such an improvement, and GarageBand is just SO AWESOME, and we will definitely be playing around with that quite a bit. :) $30 is an incredible deal for iPhoto and GarageBand. We don't yet have a MIDI keyboard, but even without that it's really fun to just play with the loops and software instruments using the on-screen keyboard, and for $50 we can get a MIDI keyboard and have a whole lot more fun with it. :)
So yeah, I think iLife '04 is just awesome. It's a great deal even if you only use iMovie, iDVD or GarageBand. If you only use iPhoto, it's slightly pricey, but not horrible, but if you use 2 or more of the apps, it's an incredible deal.
|
RE: iPhoto 4 rocks
[Reply | View]
As for iPhoto 4 itself, I want to be clear that this is my digital shoebox of choice. I don't think it needs to compete with Adobe products or anyone else's software. But I do want iPhoto to reach its potential. Apple has done much to evolve its flagship digital photo offering, and I think thanks to conversations like the one we're having here in this forum, it will continue to grow in directions that its user base wants.