Apple gives creativity a new iLife, but at a suprise added cost

Apple's iLife applications get a major upgrade each year, as is evident from the suite's names. Apple traditionally launches the latest versions at Macworld. Steve Jobs, in his keynote speech, brags - and with reason - about the latest improvements and new empowerment capabilities each year's version brings.

This year, Apple enthusiasts, though delighted with the newest upgrade, were furious there was no special upgrade price.

The group rant was half-hearted, though. Users wanted the upgrade badly - they just did not want to pay for a suite they had got for free at one time or another. The fact is the latest iLife version's price (US$79) is the upgrade price.

If you own a computer on which this suite will run, you already have a copy of an earlier version of iLife and are addicted to its empowering features.

Even if you use only one of the applications in this package, you will find the price of the upgrade reasonable. At US$49, it would empower many more in the world.

The iLife '06 suite contains iPhoto for image editing, managing and sharing; iMovie for home movie editing; iDVD for creating professional quality portfolios of creative endeavours anyone can view; and GarageBand, which allows anyone to create original music and share it.

These applications help you create things you could not make before and share them with people you could not share with earlier. This model has been so successful that these applications are responsible for a dramatic increase in the popularity of the technologies they represent. For example, video camera sales boomed when people discovered iMovie could turn them into talented videographers almost instantly.