My new MacBook Pro included iLife 08, which I had an opportunity to use extensively today.
Last night we had a big birthday party (including a stripper) for someone who turned 80. I took lots of pictures and video of her reaction to the stripper. I had already used iPhoto 08, which works more or less the same as iPhoto 06 other than events. The only thing I miss is pressing CTRL after enhancing a photo to see the original. Unless they added a different keystroke, I don’t see any way to compare the enhanced & unenhanced photo other than undoing.
iMovie 08, on the other hand, I found to be a big step backwards from iMovie HD. I was able to import DV video easily from my Canon ZR600, but assembling a movie from the clippings without a time line was less convenient than using iMovie HD’s editing mode. Before I could use the movie anywhere else I had to share to media browser. It would only allow me to share to medium or smaller sizes, not large size.
The first time I launched iDVD 08 it quit immediately with no crash reporter log. After I removed the preferences, it would quit only after I chose an option from the splash screen. Finally, I removed the old themes from ~/Library/Application Support/iDVD which cured the problem. Magic DVD was very easy. After sharing the movie from iDVD, I was able to drop it into Magic DVD, choose a theme, and add a slideshow from iPhoto. The event feature of iPhoto 08 made this even easier. When I view events, I simply dropped the single event rather than selecting all of the photos in that roll or event. Finally, I was able to add music by simply dragging a track from the media browser to the slide show.
I haven’t had a chance to try iWeb (and I probably won’t, since I don’t use .Mac web hosting). I briefly played with GarageBand’s “Magic GarageBand” feature. It’s a lot of fun, but doesn’t really seem useful. I didn’t connect my USB MIDI keyboard, so I couldn’t do too much with it.