I’ve been using iLife, mostly iPhoto, iMovie, Garage Band and iDVD, for the last 7 years. While there was many improvement in the products in the last few years, there is still stuff that do not scale to my needs.
I’m not a professional photographer nor a film maker. But sine I bought a DSLR camera, my current is a Nikon D90, I figure out that iPhoto did not fit my needs anymore. So I jumped to Aperture 2 last May/June, and my photography workflow have improved to something I would not have expected.
Now, for my personal videos and video assignment that I’m requested for, I thing I’m ready to go to Final Cut Express. In fact, I would like Final Cut Studio, but the price is overkill for my occasional needs. But there’s one missing elements in Final cut Express: there is no DVD authoring software included. To get DVD Studio Pro, we absolutely need to buy Final Cut Studio, because the product is no longer sold as a separate application. And in Final Cut Studio, I do not need Motion, Compressor or Colors. Those are great apps, but they are part of a more professional workflow that I do not need to use for my needs.
There may be a need to either include DVD Studio Pro in the Final Cut Express bundle, or maybe even better, make a new bundle priced in between the Final Cut Studio price and the Pro single apps prices that would be some kind of iLife Pro Bundle. This could include something like:
- Final Cut Express
- Aperture
- LiveFont
- DVD Studio Pro
- And maybe Soundtrack Pro and/or Logic Express, while in my case Garage Band fits most of my need for soundtracks editions of my movies and photo slideshows.
As for the iWeb component, I personally think that Aperture Web publishing feature is great, and with MobileMe gallery, we can do most of what we have to do without a web authoring software included in such a bundle. For such a bundle, I may be willing to pay, say, 400-500$ for it. That would be awesome as it will improve my production features by such a great amount.
I hope Apple will come out with something like this in a near future. Not everyone needs to pay the full price of Final Cut Studio plus Aperture to get in some kind of acceptable production. But some prosumer, like me, may need a bit more than what is offered in iLife 09, but we’re not ready to get to the high price of real pro suite.
Let’s hope 2010 will offer us something like this to buy. My money is already ready to get out.
