Apple Reviews

Toner cartridges work as well as original Apple units and prints more than twice as many pages at about half the price. Slight problem with shipping, but Toner Connection answered my eMail within hours and straightened out the problem immediately. Will buy from this dealer again.

iLife '04 is the latest version of Apple's incredibly well received suite of programs for your Mac leisure time. The five applications included in iLife '04 are so tightly integrated that they almost fuse into a single program. Want to include a song from iTunes in your iMovie Project? Simply click a single button. Same if you want to burn a slideshow from iPhoto onto a DVD. No other suite of programs will give you the ease of use and powerful functionality of the iLife apps. Here's what's new in '04:

- iTunes 4 - The critically lauded "best digital music jukebox" adds the ability to share your tunes over a local network (Mac and/or PC). You can also now view the iTunes Music store in a separate window so as not to interrupt the browsing of your collection. Even better, is the ability to back up your iTunes Library onto DVD even if it takes up more than one disc.

- iPhoto 4 - Finding your pictures in iPhoto has never been easier now that iPhoto automatically stores photos in folders by year. If you looking for a photo that was taken in 2001, no need to scroll, simply click the 2001 folder and all the photos you took in 2001 will be visible. When you do need to scroll (or just want to) you'll amazed at how much faster iPhoto can scroll through large collections. Also added are Smart Albums (just like Smart Playlists in iTunes) and the ability to rate photos on a 5 star system. Finally, you can now share your photos over a local network (Mac and/or PC) just like in iTunes.

- iMovie 4 - My favorite new feature is the ability to edit multiple clips at the same time. This saves so much time, as does the incredible speed boost of iMovie's faster rendering speeds. You now also have the option of trimming clips directly in the Timeline without loosing your original footage. Another great help when creating your movie is ability to use Bookmarks to quickly jump to certain sections of your film. One very cool feature is the ability to use an iSight as a digital camcorder. Once your film is complete, you can easily post it on your .Mac hompage by clicking one button. Pretty impressive!

- iDVD 4 - More customization is the name of the game with iDVD4. 20 new themes are included as well as 5 new slideshow effects like Cube and Page Flip. Have you ever wanted your customized DVD to play a movie before the menu screen appears, well now you can with Auto Play intro movies. And probably the best innovation, you can now put up to 2 hours of video on a single DVD.

- GarageBand - New to iLife for this edition, GarageBand allows seasoned musicians as well as no-talents such as myself to create music on their Mac. Thousands of loops are included as are effects and amps. The possibilities are nearly endless. Simply click, a loop, drag it onto the soundstage and drop it. Repeat. Add some effects and you've created your very own song. These songs are instantly available in iTunes and consequently every other iLife app.

So let's see, you get five critically acclaimed, award winning programs for less than it costs to take a family of four out to the movies. And they'll be enjoying this suite long after the memory of the film has faded. This is simply one of the best deals around. Playing on your Mac doesn't get much better than this.

iLife '04 is a great suite of applications. These applications are all very intuitive, and fun to use. For me, the greatest update in this package was iPhoto 4. The previous version of iPhoto was a great program, but it lacked speed. The new iPhoto, iPhoto 4, has a lot more horsepower, and I can easily sift through my library of photos now.

I recently used iDVD for the first time, and I must say, it was very easy to use. The themes that are included with it look very nice. The DVD that I created now looks very impressive, though it was very easy to create.

iLife '04 also includes iMovie, which I have not really used yet, but I'm sure I will use it someday. It also includes the newest application, Garageband, which is a great program for musicians and fun for beginners to use also. I was impressed at how many loops were included in Garageband.

iLife '04 is a set of easy to use, and very practical applications. With all that is included in it, the price could not be better. It's a must have for any mac user who has or wants to edit digital content, such as music, movies, or photos.

Computers are wonderful tools that have greatly changed just how we do just about everything. Apple iLife software continues this tradition. I have used both Mac and PC computers. I have also used software written for both. There is nothing easier or more intuitive than Apple iLife. It is not the most powerful software. For $400-$600 you can by professional grade software that will blow the socks of iLife. However, for the average "Joe" there is nothing better. It doesn't take a lot of computer savvy. iLife does most of the work for you - and quickly. Other software we have used for loading pictures is slow, hard to manage and less desirable in many ways. I used this software at my sister-in-laws wedding. In no time at all I had a wonderful slide show set to music for everyone to watch. Doing all this work on a PowerBook G4 15" laptop allowed me to later show my father-in-law what he missed due to some health issues.

With iLife, you can edit your pictures. You can order copies with just a click of a button. With just another click, you can e-mail them to anyone in your e-mail address book. Another click you can post them on a web-sight for your friends to see. For example, we recently moved to a new state. I posted a slide show of our new home for all our old friends to see. We had over 60 different friends view the web sight. Can you image the cost of making prints for all those people? In addition, you can set your pictures, web sights to your favorite music in iTunes.

Speaking of iTunes, I love music - always have. If you like to listen to music, make your own recordings of your favorite tunes you will love iTunes. Plus, iTunes makes it easier and more affordable to buy music. I don't understand why the music industry continues to over-price their CD's but they do. And who can afford to buy an entire CD for just two or three songs. Now, with iTunes you can buy only the songs you want from a particular CD. Once down loaded, you can arrange them in any order you want, burn them on your own CD or hook your Mac to your home stereo and listen through you speakers. In addition, whatever music you have in iTunes is easily used in iPhoto, iDVD or the other applications iLife opens for you. You will not be disappointed with iLife unless you desire to spend tons of money for three or four different software programs that will not work together as seamlessly as iLife.

All great ideas, but way too many glitches in simple situations. THe new variable speed option is a wonderful concept... but a simple slow motion effect is difficult to achieve now. There are lots of things that do not make sense. I hope there is an upgrade soon.

I received FCP4 before it was released, and I've just used it enough to feel that I can give a review of it. And I do like the new program. And it is worth the upgrade. But you might want to wait to upgrade until they release a fix for a few bugs. I can't think of a single program that when first released was bug free. Apple will fix the bugs, but they haven't yet.

What do I like about the program? The features are amazing! I was pleased with FCP3, but I thought there was a lot they could do to make it better. And they did, in FCP4. Editing is basically the same as in FCP3, but you have much more control over everything you do. This includes making a custom keyboard (You decide which keys preform which actions).
But... FCP4 alone hasn't changed a great deal since FCP3, and if it were just that program alone, I don't know if it would be worth it.

However, not only do you get FCP4... You get Compressor, LiveType, Soundtrack, Cinema Tools, and Peak Express 3.3

Compressor, I like this feature a lot. It allows you to control what you export. I mean if you want to make a DVD, and want it formatted for a DVD, you have control over that, more so than in any previous version of FCP. Not only that, but it takes any guess work out of the equation. It allows you to preview the setting you're about to export. Which is good, so you hopefully won't end up spending 3 hours exporting something only to find it wasn't what you wanted. There are bugs in Compressor, something with being connected to a network won't allow it to work. I had this problem, but I unplugged my ethernet cord, and it worked like it should. Apple will likely make a fix for this soon.

LiveType. One of the things I didn't like about FCP3 was you didn't really have a great title maker. But that's all changed with LiveType. Now you have the most control I've ever seen out of a title program. If you want one letter to do something different (I can't think of why), well, you can.

Soundtrack. How great is it that they include tons (And I'm not kidding about the tons part) of loops that are royalty free? Unlike other looping programs, the loops in Soundtrack actually sound good. Sure it isn't going to give everyone what they want, but I've already used it for a few effects in this project I'm working on

Cinema Tools. Well I can't review this really, I haven't worked with film before. But what I do like is that it's now included with FCP, where as before, it was it's own program (Which would cost you [a lot more money] alone).

Peak Express 3.3. It isn't the best audio editor I've used, but it's still good. I believe this program costs [money] if you buy it individually, but it comes with FCP4, which is a nice thing. I've used this only a little, it can't really do what I want it to do, but I use it as a backup audio editor.

So in conclusion, FCP4 is packed with features. It does take a lot of space (About 15GB for everything), so if you're low on space, you've been warned. And it requires a DVD drive. Most of you probably have one, but if you don't, you're not going to be able to use this. I was concerned about the ...price tag on the upgrade, and I didn't think it was going to be able to deliver. But it did, and I'm glad I now have this great program.

Unfortunately, several time-saving, creativity-enhancing features that I was accoustomed to in FCP 3 were removed for FCP 4. Functional draft renders, my favorite (albeit flawed) feature from FCP 3 no longer exist. This is quite an area of debate, but experienced editors should see why the new (largely useless) rendering system is far inferior to the previous one. The life-saving Shift-F function is also gone, the new "automatic" capturing system makes file management horribly inconvenient, and the online help file has been replaced with a cumbersome .pdf document. Support for Adobe Photoshop files is still poorly implemented. The bundled LiveType program is also much more awkward to use than one might expect from how it's been marketed. (LiveType is not an integrated extension of FCP, but a completely separate--and SLOW--application.) At this point, I feel I am a less efficient editor for having made this upgrade. Why Apple could not build on what they had instead of dropping helpful features is beyond me.

I have been editing for 20 years. FCP on a Dual 2.0 Ghz G5 is the best editing solution for the money I have ever seen. It blows away the $75k+ systems that I have used for less than a tenth of the price. FCP at less than $1,000 and a G5 at $$$$$$$ is all you need other than a camera. You can make broadcast quality video with this simple setup. $$$$$$$ for computer and software plus $$$$$$ for a camera that will hold up to a $$$$$$$Betacam... give me a break!!

Apple is quickly loosing market share to Avid and vegas ,and this is a quickly produced solution. Final cut follows with the standard Apple policy of falling several years behind the competition and then jumping 6 months ahead only to fall behind with no upgrades for years. After spending several weeks using this program I have gone back to Avid

My recommendation is to stay away from final cut and all apple products. For the same price as this you could buy a PC and Vegas 4.0

It works like a charm. With much higher density of media, the competibility of DVD-R (and/or DVD-RW,DVD+R,DVD+RW,DVD-RAM) media can cause much trouble with home DVD player as well as the standard DVD Drivers for computers. With Apple DVD-R media I never experienced such troble. I am a home video maniac and I have burned tons of DVDs for my friends and relatives. Using name brand media such as Sony and TDK reduces rate of serious trouble significantly, but with Apple media, you can always be sure the result will be trouble free with similar price.

The most reliable media I have used in my DVD-R drive. Zero problems with the disks - they play in every DVD player I have tried them in. No coasters.