Apple suite's latest upgrade puts power of publishing in easy reach

Product: Apple Computer iLife '06 Price: $590 Pros: Great tools for imaging and sound manipulation that can be shared on the Internet. Provides support for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. Cons: An expensive purchase for Apple users who do not care about the software's new sharing and iWeb features.

Designed to serve a digital lifestyle, Apple Computer's iLife '06 suite comes with major upgrades to the iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD and GarageBand applications. It also adds a key publishing tool to help create podcasts.

The first three of these applications deal with imaging - still or moving - and work better than the previous editions. All have that simple but well-designed Apple interface. These tools also handle large amounts of data with considerable ease.

When it comes to iPhoto 6, Apple apparently remains the 'king of recognition'. I have yet to meet someone who plugged in a digital camera that iPhoto did not recognise. More popular platforms have had trouble doing that.

Remember when you wanted to send that picture to Aunt Agatha in Berkshire but the resolution was so high it broke her e-mail client? Well, iPhoto 6 also allows you to send smaller files as e-mail attachments. That is wonderful for the resolution-challenged.

Users can also share images directly from within iPhoto 6 via .Mac - Apple calls this photocasting, which is like podcasting for photos.