Apple CEO Steve Jobs also used his
Macworld Conference & Expo keynote to announce a new version of iLife, dubbed
iLife ’04, that will be available on January 16 for US$49. It will be free with every new Mac sold on or after January 6; anyone who buys a new Mac on or after that date that doesn’t have the new suite installed can order an iLife Up-To-Date upgrade package for a $19.95 shipping and handling fee. He said it was “like Microsoft Office for the rest of your life” and explained that it features new versions of iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD, along with a brand new fifth application, GarageBand, that allows you to compose and record music on your Mac.
iTunes 4.2 includes Billboard charts in the iTunes Music Store so that you can look at — and download for purchase — the hits of yesteryear. The online store also recently added 12,000 classical tracks, and Jobs announced a promotion with Pepsi during which 100 million songs will be given away. Kicking off February 1 with an ad during the Super Bowl and running for 60 days, the promotion will feature yellow caps on all Pepsi bottles, with 1 in 3 redeemable for a free $0.99 song on the iTunes Music Store.
iPhoto 4 features support for up to 25,000 photos, image organization based on when shots were taken, “smart albums” — similar to iTunes’ smart playlists — that can automatically collect all photos snapped during certain time periods, picture ratings, easier and faster preview scrolling, and Rendezvous photo sharing.
iMovie 4 includes alignment guides like the ones found in Keynote, editing right in the timeline, audio scrubbing, new and enhanced titles, video import directly from an iSight camera, and easier movie sharing that requires just a few clicks to publish your movie on your .Mac home page.
iDVD 4 allows you to create DVDs that are even closer to the ones produced by professionals, thanks to 20 new themes, including drive-in and mosaic, enhanced menus that feature such transitions as wipes and page flips, better slideshows that allow you to insert new transitions and play more songs under your images, a navigation map similar to the one found in DVD Studio Pro, video encoding that’s straight from Final Cut Pro, and support for up to two hours of footage on one DVD.
The new iApp, GarageBand, is what Jobs called “a pro music tool for everyone.” Citing a statistic that one-half of all U.S. households have at least one person who’s currently a musician, he noted that the application turns your Mac into a musical instrument and recording studio. You can mix up to 64 tracks simultaneously, play over 50 software instruments — including a Yamaha grand piano that sells for $50,000 — with a USB or MIDI keyboard, use 1,000 pro audio loops that adjust their tempo and pitch according to the type of music you’re creating, choose from 200 effects to insert, record live performances, plug in a guitar and select one of over 20 vintage amps, and export your original recordings into iTunes.
Jobs also announced the GarageBand JamPack, which includes more than 2,000 new loops, 15 guitar amps, and extra presets and instruments, as well as Apple’s introductory M-Audio 49-key keyboard. Both will be available on January 16 for $99 each.
