Apple to start shipping iLife ‘09 tomorrow

The eagerly awaited update to Apple’s creativity software suite, iLife, will start shipping tomorrow with new versions of iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand. Among the biggest changes, highlighted at Macworld earlier this month, are new features in iPhoto called Faces and Places, which add both face recognition and geo tagging support for organizing photos in more creative ways than file names and folders. iPhoto ‘09 also adds integration with Flickr and Facebook.


iMovie will also get an update, with a new Precision Editor, video stabilization, advanced drag and drop, and animated travel maps. Meanwhile the latest version of Apple’s music-composition software, GarageBand, will get a new Learn to Play feature that gives users the chance to learn songs from the artists that made them famous – some of the downloadable video tutorials include piano and guitar lessons from Norah Jones and Sting.

The complete suite also includes updates to other applications such as iDVD and iWeb and is priced at $79.99. Customers who purchased a new Mac on or after January 6 of this year, however, are eligible for a $9.95 upgrade to the new version.