Early iLife '09 Notes and Impressions

[Undecided]

Faces

I don't know folks....faces isn't perfect, but it does seem to work pretty well. And it does seem to learn - tag a few, it does OK; tag a few more (and exclude others), and it gets better. I see it as a tool to *assist* you in tagging the faces, not automagically do it for you.

 

[shahr04360]

Seems all great esp. can publish my site to freehost10.com from iWeb. Bravo !

The only issue, I can't view maps on iPhoto even internet is always on. Keep noticed - not connected to the Internet.

 

[courtnej]

Are there any differences in versions of ilife from different regions, I mean if I got an American of version of iLife 09 and used it in the UK would it be any different to getting the UK version?

 

[macUser2007]

Are there any differences in versions of ilife from different regions, I mean if I got an American of version of iLife 09 and used it in the UK would it be any different to getting the UK version?

The American version of Faces pastes cowboy hats on photos of the Royal Family.

 

[vansouza]

Well I've just about completed tagging all the people in my iPhoto library. Seemed to work ok, but needed a lot of prompting. Very rarely did it actually put a name to a face, but most faces were detected.

However, I'm have a lot my problems with "Places". I live in England and most of the places I've taken photos in can me linked to a local town or city. Great. Except it's impossible to search for most major UK towns. They are just not found. When you do drop a pin on the map, for some bizarre reason, the location is given as a nearby village???

Most of my location tags now just have "England -> Other -> Place Name". Google maps seems fine via the website. It's a shame I can't edit some of the location tags. I wish it would include the county information, rather then just "England".

Looking forward to the next update ;-)

Daniel

How do you put a name to a face? Thanks...

 

[kdum8]

I was quite excited to try the new stabilize feature in iMovie 09 but it doesn't work as well as I would have hoped. Quite a lot of my movies are apparently too shaky to do anything with, even though they don't actually seem that bad to watch. Has anyone ever used the stabilization feature in Final Cut Pro? Is it essentially the same thing or is iMovie 09 inferior in this respect?

 

[garylapointe]

iDVD - Not updated.

I thought iDVD had the way to automagically build DVDs with the maps and stuff (zooming around like we saw in the keynote). And I thought maybe some other improvements.

ALTHOUGH, I did notice in the "About iDVD" menu it does not say iLife 09...

Gary

 

[marbles]

Well I've just about completed tagging all the people in my iPhoto library. Seemed to work ok, but needed a lot of prompting. Very rarely did it actually put a name to a face, but most faces were detected.

However, I'm have a lot my problems with "Places". I live in England and most of the places I've taken photos in can me linked to a local town or city. Great. Except it's impossible to search for most major UK towns. They are just not found. When you do drop a pin on the map, for some bizarre reason, the location is given as a nearby village???

Most of my location tags now just have "England -> Other -> Place Name". Google maps seems fine via the website. It's a shame I can't edit some of the location tags. I wish it would include the county information, rather then just "England".

Looking forward to the next update ;-)

Daniel

I don't think you (or I ) have much chance of getting English place names sorted out old chap .

Unless your in the states most places simply don't exist in my experience

 

[RyanR.]

A few thoughts...

First off I thought this was extremely funny. Because Apple has been talking about slimming down packaging for environmental and monetary purposes.

I didn't have time to read all the post , but faces works pretty well with my pictures. I have around a 1200 photos from an orphanage in Kazakhstan last summer. It pulls up a lot of the kids but it's getting smarter the more I use it.
(please give apple a break, if you don't know your pet, thats sad)

iMovie works great now I need a better camera.

Not a big garage band user, but I might be soon now. Looks great easy to use!

Overall much better than '08

 

[Russty63]

Iphoto

not happy with this it does not work as pics that was taken in the same place on i-phone with GPS are not in the right place on the map and 3 pics that was taken in the same place at xams with the iphone in a pub at lunch time are about 4 miles apart on the map? how do you get them in the right place and in the right folder also i have lost a lot of pics upgrading to this also. with the face rec side have found that have got a lot of the same pic do i delete them and loss all of them or?????

 

[citi]

How do you put a name to a face? Thanks...

open the pic up and look to the bottom left. There is a icon called name. Drag it to the face, name it, and click done.

 

[Russty63]

Yes the face rec side very very and very addictive was on Iphoto till very late as you start you just get on with it till you fall asleep at the computer.

but the GPS map side is not that good

 

[Nimble Cat]

Is there any way to link a person in iPhoto with a Facebook account so when I upload it the tags match the accounts of my friends?

 

[mullman]

Once one uses the wonderful I-movie, what do you do with those projects? You tube? Ipod? That's nice for personal viewing, but picture this. A holiday family gathering where you're wanting to show movies of your child's 1st steps or shots from a vacation? Get everyone to huddle around a laptop or a desktop computer? I think not. Slap in a DVD and show it on the big screen.

AppleTV is your answer.

It plays up to 720p24 perfectly and the quality is better than anything you'll DL on iTunes. QuickTime can Export your 1080i from a consumer camcorder to a great quality 540p. That way you wont be gathering the family around the laptop, but they can sit on the couch and watch it on your widescreen.

 

[lamadude]

It seems the database of cities in iPhoto "places" is very limited or US centric. Tagging some pictures I took in Brussels, iPhoto suggested "Brussels, Illionois" (population 141) but forgot the much more obvious option of Brussels, Belgium (population 1,080,790) and I had to add the pin myself.

Localisation seems pretty bad as well, seeing some spelling mistakes in Dutch which usually never happens with apple products. Feels a but rushed...

 

[johngordon]

This might have been mentioned earlier, but I had a quick play yesterday in an Apple store. Someone earlier didn't seem sure if you could add your own places, but I noticed you can add your own places, by dropping a pin in.

From a quick play, Faces looked excellent - of course its not going to be perfect, and I think it would be unreasonable to expect it to. But the way you can instantly switch between thumbs of the whole photo, and close ups of the faces is a neat touch.

 

[dxalfredo]

Damn!

Hey guys, I really want this suite, like really bad. Maybe in April I can get of hold of it.

 

[baseveer]

well looking forward to playing with this as soon as Apple updates the iMac and I get it all in one shot including iWork 09

 

[carlgo]

I put my photo up with those of Brad Pitt and a random homeless person. Let's just say that I am not happy with the matchup

 

[rtdunham]

iLife '09 was officially released yesterday and people are getting their first experiences with Apple's latest updates to iPhoto

bug? if you have a geotagged photo in iPhoto and email it to someone using the email link in iPhoto, sending via Mail, the photo arrives without geotagging (at least, if it's then imported by the recipient into iPhoto, it's not tagged).

The workaround: from iPhoto, export to the desktop (CHECKING the "show location" box). Then open a new email, and "attach" the photo, selecting it from the desktop. Send the email and when the recipient opens it in his/her iPhoto it'll show the location.

seems like an obvious bug, because when you select "email" in iPhoto there IS a "show location" box but checking it doesn't achieve the desired result)

credit to my brother RBD for working this one out.

 

[MrCubes]

iMovie '09 - one step forward, two steps back

I was really hoping that iMovie '09 would allow you to specify where projects are stored (having to use sym links in 08 sucked). I was shocked to find that they've actually made it even worse! Now you can't even store *events* on network drives or in sparse bundles.

I don't understand why they are removing such essential abilities. The "keep it simple" argument doesn't wash. Allowing you to store in more places is intuitive and doesn't add any mental overhead. Working out what unexplained yellow warning triangles on drive icons mean does!

The "it forces you to upgrade to the pro software" argument doesn't hold either because the features that make iMove 08/09 great (the instant editing, workflow and, yes, the events library) are not available in FCE/FCP. If we drop those we may as well go back to iMovie 06 (which many people do).

I just don't understand why.

I'm really losing my faith in Apple to produce high quality stuff and things that "just work". They seem to be making more questionable decisions than good ones these days.