iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08

I finally picked up iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 this weekend after Apple’s announcement last week. I’ve been waiting for iLife ‘08 since Macworld as I use iPhoto on a daily basis and Garageband when I record my podcast. iDVD and iWeb are pretty useless to me but iMovie was something I always wanted to get into but never did. Mostly due to not having a video camera. iWork on the other hand i rarely use and really have no idea why I picked it up but I did anyways.

First thing I did was try out iPhoto for obvious reasons. Now mind you, I never really “got” iPhoto but in the past 8 months I’ve gotten use to it. The first thing you notice is that Events now replace rolls. I think this will actually work out for me in the long run. My favorite upgrade so far is the keyword, no more drag and dropping. It has a more traditional tagging interface now which i love. I’ve only really played with the new iPhoto for a little bit so far and its mostly due to the fact it now runs like shit on my Macbook. As I write this I am rebuilding all the thumbnails, database and permissions hoping it will help. When scrolling and editing pictures, the CPU jumps to 100% and everything crawls. Anyone else having the same issues?

The other iLife apps I haven’t played with too much yet. iWork I’ll probably almost never use due to Google Apps but I have it if i need it.