Steve Jobs has just taken things back from Tim Cook, and now he’s announcing the first new product of the Back to Mac event. As predicted, it’s iLife ’11.
“I’d like to talk about iLife. It’s widely regarded as the best suite of digital lifestyle apps in the world. You can’t do this on any other computer. We improve it every year or two, coming out with new version.”
First up, he details the changes to iPhoto, which is gaining vastly expanded fullscreen support, as well as gobs of Facebook enhancements, easier emailing functionality and some new slideshows. There’s more though… and it only gets more impressive as the presentation goes on.
The new fullscreen mode looks a lot like an iPad application. Expect this to be a trend today: it has been widely rumored that OS X 10.7 is going to take a lot of design cues from iOS. The bottom tabs in particular are very iPhone-like.
The fullscreen views have floating menus that offer a full range of functionality for manipulating and working with your photos.
On the other hand, the new slideshows are snazzy, but about what you expect, and use new music and maps. You have the option of selecting your own music, if you prefer.
Apple lingers on the slideshows, which seems to set the tone for iPhoto ’11. iPhoto has always been a consumer — and not a pro — photographic software application. He wants to wow moms and dads, not Ansel Adams. Don’t expect iPhoto ’11 to replace Aperture or Lightroom.
The new email functionality composes an email in iPhoto itself, with no reason to switch to mail. The photos are set-up like a postcard. You also have the option of emailing full size photos instead of the postcard.
There’s also a new Share panel, which is straight out of iOS. The new panel keeps track of everything you’ve done with a photo, whether you’ve uploaded it to Facebook or Flickr or emailed it to a friend. You can even see what people said about a photo on Facebook.
Another new option is the ability to put together a photo book to buy. You can group similar photos, put the book together by ratings, drag the photos around, and when you’re done, click “Buy Book” to get your credit card charged and your photos mailed directly to you. You can also buy calendars, cards, etc.
Wow. Pretty impressive. At first, it seemed like an iterative version, but this is easily the prettiest and most magical iPhoto yet.
Now Steve’s back on stage. Next up? iMovie. If it’s half as good as iPhoto, I’m sold.
[via Gizmodo
