Jim Heid's Mac iLife 05 Site: iTunes, iPod, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand

This site is the online companion to my book/DVD, "The Macintosh iLife '05", published by Peachpit Press and Avondale Media. If you like this site, you'll love the book and its nearly three-hour DVD-Video disc. Learn more.

Have news, tips, comments, or links?
Send them along! How to contact me.

Get an iLife. Get your own copy of "The Macintosh iLife '05". Patronize your local bookstore or buy from Amazon for just $23.09 (34 percent off).

Learn more about the book and DVD. Find out what all the buzz is about: view samples of this beautiful book and watch QuickTime excerpts from the DVD.

Upcoming Appearances
June 21. Apple Store, San Francisco, 6 pm
June 25. Northeast Ohio Apple Corps, 9 am
July 23. iLife seminar, Santa Rosa, CA

Photo gallery. I love the Flickr photo sharing service; here are some recent shots. (Newsreader users: To subscribe to my photostream, drag this link into your newsreader.)

Friday, January 21, 2005
Posted 9:13 AM

Andy Hertzfeld Radio Interview Available for Downloading

On last Wednesday's edition of Point & Click Radio, my friend Bob Laughton and I interviewed Andy Hertfeld, one of the original members of the Mac development team, creator of the Folklore Web site, and author of Revolution in the Valley, a fascinating and beautifully designed look at the Mac's development, as told by those who were there.

If you missed the show, you can download a copy of the interview (49 minute AAC file, 6MB download). We talk about the Mac's early days, about Steve Jobs' influence on the industry, and much, much more.

Take a listen!

Posted 8:55 AM

Flickr Exporter Doesn't Work in iPhoto 5 (UPDATED)

One of the things that makes the Flickr service so enjoyable for me is the ability to upload photos directly within iPhoto.

This capability is due to the efforts of Fraser Speirs, the creator of FlickrExport, an iPhoto plug-in that adds a Flickr tab to iPhoto's Export dialog box. (See an annotated screen shot of the plug-in.)

Unfortunately, FlickrExport doesn't work in iPhoto 5. In fact, it breaks exporting entirely -- you have to uninstall FlickrExport to get the Export dialog box back again.

In the Macintosh group at Flickr, Spiers reports that his copy of iLife '05 won't be arriving for at least a week. Until then, Flickr users should either postpone upgrading to iPhoto 5 (horrors!) or use Flickr's standalone Mac uploader.

Note to Apple: You should send Fraser a copy of iLife '05 as soon as possible. The Macintosh group is one of the most active groups on Flickr, and that's due in part to his heroic efforts.

UPDATE! Wow, things move quickly in this biz. Less than an hour after I wrote this post, Fraser had updated FlickrExport to work with iPhoto 5. I just tested version 1.2b2 (see the flower conservatory photo at right), and indeed, it purrs. Grab it, and show Fraser a little PayPal love while you're at it. It's a Good Day.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Posted 1:32 PM

Big Radio Night: "Your Mac Life," and Interviewing Andy Hertzfeld

It's all Heid, all the time.

Tonight at about 6:30 pm Pacific time, I'll be a guest on Shawn King's Your Mac Life. I'll talk about iLife '05 and the Macworld Expo in general.

Then, at 7:00 pm Pacific time, I'll hang up the phone in favor of the microphone -- and another edition of Point & Click Radio, the weekly computer show that I co-host with my friend Bob Laughton. Tonight, we'll be recapping the highlights from the Macworld Expo and interviewing Mac pioneer Andy Hertzfeld, the author of the new book, Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made.

Our show is simulcast on the Internet; you'll need the RealOne player to listen. (If you aren't a fan of the Real player, don't fret -- I plan to post an audio transcript of the show later this week.)

Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Posted 9:19 AM

Suite Harmony: iWork and iLife

I've also been playing with Apple's newly announced iWork '05, and it's worth noting how well it works with iLife.

Both Keynote 2 and Pages 1 provide a media browser that puts your music, photos, and movies at your fingertips. Want to add a photo to a Pages publication? Just drag it in and then resize it as desired. Pages doesn't automatically update the photo if you edit it in iPhoto, but it's easy enough to simply drag and drop the edited version into place.

And don't get me started on Pages -- I was a Compugraphic and AlphaType typesetter operator in the late 1970s, and in the 80s, I used to write about publishing programs for Macworld, Publish, and others. Pages is no word processor -- it's a layout program with a degree of interactivity that InDesign and QuarkXpress can't match. If you want to see goosebumps on a former typesetter, drag a photo around and watch text reflow in real time. You kids have no idea how hard creating text wraps used to be. (Begin old man voice.) Why, in my day...

I digress. The point of this post is that Apple is extending iLife's reach. That isn't a first -- Apple's DVD Studio Pro also provides media browsers for photos, music, and movies. But it is a first for mainstream productivity software, and it's an advantage that Microsoft Office doesn't provide.

And Microsoft Windows? It's still back in the cut-and-paste era. Memo to Bill: we've gone beyond the Clipboard over here.

Monday, January 17, 2005
Posted 10:25 AM

A Few of My Favorite iPhoto 5 Things, and a Call for Feedback

I'm back from the Macworld Expo, and my voice is returning to its normal state of hoarseness. It was a good show. Even though the news had leaked -- heck, gushed -- there was still a lot of buzz over Apple's announcements. Lines were long at the Apple Store in nearby Union Square, with people snapping up iPod shuffles (memo to Apple: embrace the Shift key!) as quickly as they could shuffle up to the cashiers.

As for me, I always get a kick out of meeting readers and viewers. The kind words are tremendously gratifying, and make the long hours and sore wrists worthwhile. Thank you.

I was also thoroughly buzzed to see people grabbing my exclusive iLife '05 "first look" booklet at the Peachpit Press booth. Peachpit Press printed 10,000 of those babies, and I suspect there weren't many left by the end of the week. (If you didn't get yours, see the post below to get a PDF.)

The booklet's 16 pages summarize what's new in iLife '05, and on Friday, we'll be launching iLifeTV, a series of short, once-a-week movies that show iLife '05 in action. Now, though, I want to share a few iPhoto 5 observations and also get your feedback on what you'd like to see in the next edition of the top-selling book on iLife.

iPhoto 5 is the Star
There are wonders to behold across the iLife '05 programs, but from my perspective, iPhoto 5 is the star of the show. It's simple: if you use a digital camera, you'll want this upgrade.

What's hot? Here's a short list.

You can create folders in the Source list to organize albums, slide shows, and books. Organization freaks, rejoice.

Slide shows and books are now separate entities, detached from the albums on which they're based. After you create a slide show or book, you can change the underlying album -- adding or removing photos, for instance -- without worrying about your change rippling through the slide show or book. This scheme also makes it easy to create several variations of an album or book.

Slide shows are spectacular. Check the Automatic Ken Burns effect box to get pans and zooms, or take the reins and set up Ken Burns moves yourself. Add effects to images without having to alter the master images in your library. Specify different durations for each slide -- and different transitions, if you want to be tacky. And create 16:9 widescreen slide shows that do justice to your Cinema Display.

You can also export your slide shows as QuickTime movies, and with more options than before. You can export in a few different sizes, including 720 by 480 (ready to import into iMovie HD). And if you used Ken Burns in your slide show, iPhoto renders those pans and zooms into your QuickTime movie. Dreamy.

As for editing, iPhoto 5 is still a long way from Photoshop Elements, but the new Adjust panel provides the tonal correction features most photos need: levels adjustments; exposure, saturation, and color controls; and sharpening (it's unsharp masking, by the way). The Straighten slider is sheer brilliance, straightening and cropping a photo in real time, as you drag the slider. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Is there something special in Cupertino's water?

(Why I'll still use Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS for particularly problematic pictures: shadow and highlight recovery, the clone stamp tool, the healing brush tool, perspective correction. iPhoto 5 can't touch these features. But it's still quite happy to hand off your photos to a different image editor, should you choose. If I worked in marketing at Adobe, I'd be pushing Photoshop Elements as the ultimate iPhoto plug-in.)

And then there are iPhoto books. If you weren't a book publisher before, you'll become one now.

For starters, laying out a book is much easier than in earlier iPhoto versions. Deleting a photo from one page doesn't cause a nightmarish reflowing of photos in subsequent pages -- it simply leaves an empty drop zone, ready to accommodate a new photo. A new manual-layout mode lets you drag photos onto pages by hand from the new photo browser area at the top of the window.

The new book designs are spectacular, too -- richer and far more elegant than the bland designs from earlier iPhoto versions. The ability to print on facing pages to create true, two-page spreads is also magnificent. I can't wait to try splitting a panoramic photo into two photos, and then positioning them opposite each other on a spread.

What else is hot? The real-time search box. The calendar pane. The ability to store raw files and camera movies. (And contrary to what other reports have said, iPhoto isn't limited to just MPEG-4 movies. It can store any QuickTime-compatible format. I've even thrown a couple of QuickTime VR movies into my library, just for fun.)

Over to You, Chet
There's so much more to talk about in iPhoto 5, but I want to turn things over to you now -- specifically, to those of you who you have bought previous editions of my book/DVD. What would you like to see in the next edition? What kinds of video tutorials do you want on the DVD? Where did I miss the boat in the last edition? What did I get wrong? How can I make The Macintosh iLife '05 a must-buy update?

I've been working with iLife '05 for a while now, and revisions are well underway. But there's still time for you to influence the next edition. Tell me what you want.