ioinc said:
Do you really use ALL these things? Half of them? Do you use ALL of them to the extent that you can really justify paying $129 for them?
You bet. I don't use them all, but I use iPhoto extensively, GarageBand a little, and am just starting to use iMovie and iDVD. I think they're so valuable, I was willing to pay a good sum for just an upgrade to them (iLife 04).
ioinc said:
Are the programs really so much better than 3rd party alternatives? (how much more can you get from a mail client anyway?)
Oh heck yeah! Every time I show iPhoto to a Winderz user, they start to think that maybe they should get a Mac. I don't know if I'd really use my digital camera if it weren't for iPhoto.
GarageBand... that's worth a heck of a lot more than $129. Spend another $100 on a USB music keyboard, and you have the value of a $1,000+ synthesizer. I've never seen another app with that much functionality for so little.
iMovie and iDVD? The third party alternatives simply do not compare.
iCal I use throughout my company for its excellent calendar sharing. I could use Up-To-Date if I were willing to pay a chunk of cash for each user for it instead. Or I could use Palm for free, but not be able to share calendars.
I'm really looking forward to Automator. The only 3rd party app I know of that's similar is QuickKeys, and it ain't close to free.
There are plenty of free alternatives to iChat, but in the Windows world, they are full of viruses. And iChat AV has stayed ahead of the competition in its feature set.
Yeah, I think that's a heck of a lot of value for $130 (not to mention the killer improvements to the OS itself... the
Mobile Home Directories feature in Tiger/Tiger Server is going to really revolutionize the way my company works). And no, I don't think 3rd party alternatives come close (in the above cases... you can however make a good case for alts to Safari and Mail).