iLife 09 released today (iPhoto 09, iMovie 09, GarageBand 09, iWeb 09, iDVD 09)

Apple today released iLife'09, which is a software package that includes the updated iPhoto '09, GarageBand '09, iWeb '09, iDVD '09 and iMovie '09. I'll take an in-depth look at iPhoto '09 as soon as I put it through its paces, but for now, take a look at what's new.



'iLife continues to be one of the biggest reasons our customers choose to get a Mac,' said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, before he went for a long lie down.

'With iLife ’09, we’ve made working with photos, making movies and learning to play music a lot more fun, and iMovie users are especially going to love the advanced but easy-to-use new features.'

iPhoto ’09 adds face detection. This looks like one of those novelty features that will waste away hours of your time as you help iPhoto to recognise who is who in your iPhoto album. It also adds GPS geo-tagging.

iMovie ’09 adds a Precision Editor, video stabilisation, advanced drag and drop, and animated travel maps.

GarageBand ’09 introduces a new way to help you learn to play piano and guitar with 18 basic lessons and optional lessons from top musicians such as Sara Bareilles, John Fogerty, Norah Jones and Sting.

iWeb ’09 adds new iWeb Widgets, such as iSight video and photos, a countdown timer, YouTube video and RSS feeds. It also has its standard easy templates for whipping up websites.

New integrated FTP publishing allows you to publish your website to virtually any hosting service and updates to your site can now be automatically added to your Facebook profile. (Check out some other great Mac Facebook plugins in our reviews.)

iLife ’09 is yours for $79/£69 or free if you buy a new Mac from today.

If you bought a Mac on or after January 6, 2009 you can get an iLife ’09 upgrade for a $9.99/£7.95 delivery fee.

iLife ’09 requires Mac OS X version 10.5.6 or later.

Take a look at the iLife ’09 video tutorials. There are 70 of them and they really give you a good idea of whether iLife '09 is a worthwhile upgrade.