This is the sixth, and mecifully, the last in a series of articles reviewing Apple’s iLife 06 software suite. Applications were reviewed in this order: iPhoto, GarageBand, iWeb, iMovie, and iDVD. (Not iTunes, because iTunes 6 has been out for a while, and it’s ubiquitous. Besides, a seven-part review is one part more than I feel like writing.) The score below applies to the suite is a whole.

Well, we finally made it to the end of this review, and while it pales in comparison to John Siracusa’s complete deconstructions of OS X (read his Mac OS X Tiger review), six parts still equates to rougly one term paper.

Let’s take a quick look at iLife 06’s box. It’s tiny. Apple must have taken the smaller-is-better concept of the iPod nano to heart. Here is a photo of iLife 06’s box compared to iLife 05’s:

...a CD jewel case:

...a Jason Kendall bobblehead:

I think I’ll start a new feature for Deep Thought: “iLife 06 box vs. random household objects.” Or not.

The iLife suite itself is very good overall. Each application has received a substantial upgrade. iLife has been fleshed out with tighter integration between applications and the addition of iWeb. The whole thing screams “Apple”: easy to use, polished, flat-out cool. The biggest drawback to iLife 06 is the absurd disk space requirements: a full installation of iLife 06 will eat over 7 GB of disk space. I feel bad for those out there stuck with iBook G4s with 30 GB hard drives. Oh, wait. I’m one of those. Never mind. Also, iLife 06 requires at least a G4 processor, which leaves owners of G3 machines like the venerable CRT iMac out in the cold. Oh wait. I’m one of those too. And you’ll have to purchase an external DVD drive if your Mac doesn’t have a DVD drive to install the software, as iLife 06 comes on a DVD and there is no media exchange program.

If you meet the requirements, however, I recommend upgrading to iLife 06. If you use any of the iLife apps for mission-critical tasks, you may want to wait until the beta testers--er, early adopters help Apple weed out the bugs. There are indeed a few annoying bugs; par for the course for a major update. Anyway, whether you jump on board now or hold out a while, iLife 06 is worth every penny of its $79 retail price. I can’t wait to see what iLife 07 will bring.

Articles in this series

1. iLife 06 Review Part 1: iPhoto
2. iLife 06 Review Part 2: Garageband
3. iLife 06 Review Part 3: iWeb
4. iLife 06 Review Part 4: iMovie
5. iLife 06 Review Part 5: iDVD

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.