Day after the Apple Event: My thoughts on iLife '11

So today is Thursday, 10-21. And it is the day after
Apple announced the release the upcoming iLife '11,
its digital productivity suite of apps.

For most Apple users, iLife has been, for the last few years,
well the gateway drug if you will, to it's more enticing Pro Apps,
and before that, it was the coolest thing about owning a Macintosh.

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1999, he brought with him
the iMac. And from the iMac came this shift in "digital media
for the masses." The layers of video prouction, dvd authoring,
media asset management, and ( much later) music creation,
became a thing that hobbyists could become quite good at.
Fan films, mixtapes, and DVD bootlegs came out of this revolution
( for good or bad). Steve Jobs and Apple revolutionized
computers, made creatives out of neophytes, and made creatives
even more pretentious than ever before.

Fast forward to now: What was once revolutionary, has become
in fact quite stagnant. iLife, the once revolutionary product,
has become pretty stagnant, and this latest release proves it.

The new features in iLife seem like afterthoughts, things that
one or two people thought would be cool to include ( Full Screen
view for iPhoto, fixing or adding book and card templates,
adding more one click templates to iMovie and more tutorials
to Garageband) but don't include features that would make people
rush out with their wallets in this down economy.

for $49, this release isn't a "game changer" let alone a "must have".
For most, the lack of iWeb being updated closed their wallets.
For me, simply nothing exciting or revolutionary in what
was offered made me think twice about it. Perhaps it's becasue
I'm a "prosumer" who lives in FCP, DVD Studio Pro, and Soundtrack.
I love iPhoto, but Full Screening it and adding more overpriced
books ( I use instead) and cards
( a good photo inkjet printer like the CanonMP190
or the HP Deskjet 6940 and some good photopaper can easily do this task),
aren't enough to sway me.

Much cooler from Apple's event though: FaceTime on a Mac.
And it's Free. And I already see several uses for it ( Spy Tech type
Videos, anyone?)