“Every year, Apple issues a new iLife upgrade, and every year, I stare in wonder at my Mac’s monitor, noting the improvements and wondering why Microsoft and the PC industry can’t create something as impressive as iLife for the Windows realm. Three years after the initial iLife release, iLife ’06 is now available, and it’s better than ever. Quite simply, there’s nothing on the Windows side of the fence that approaches the quality of iLife ’06,” Paul Thurrott writes for Connected Home Media. “If you’re unfamiliar with iLife, it’s basically a complete and integrated suite of digital media tools that’s available only for Mac OS X. In most cases, these applications are best-of-breed, meaning that there are no alternatives that come even close to combining the power, ease of use, and integration that the iLife applications provide.”

“What you can’t get from this short overview is how well these applications integrate. If you want to make a movie from your photo collection, your iPhoto-based photos appear in iMovie. Likewise, you can do something similar from iDVD. Each of these applications can reach into the other applications’ databases and extract content, as needed, in a similar and integrated fashion,” Thurrott writes. “Best of all, iLife ’06 is cheap. It comes free with any new Mac, but if you have a previous version, the full retail version is just $79, while a Family Pack, which lets you install the suite on as many as five Macs, is a bargain at $99. Why Microsoft can’t duplicate this functionality—along with the low-ball pricing—is beyond me.”

Full article here.

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Related articles:
Thurrott: ‘I highly recommend Apple’s new Intel-based iMac’ – January 31, 2006
Personal Computer World: Apple iLife ’06 ‘a must have for any Mac user’ – January 31, 2006
Review: Apple’s iWeb software perfect for publishing photos, movies, podcasting, simple blogging – January 28, 2006
First look at Apple’s new iWeb application – January 17, 2006
Apple announces iLife ’06 with new versions of iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, GarageBand and new iWeb – January 10, 2006
Paul Thurrott reviews Apple iLife ’04; calls for ‘iLife for Windows’ – February 04, 2004