The Macintosh iLife 08

This visual guidebook grabbed and held my interest with the book's color photos and graphics. The table of contents gives you insight into iLife, iTunes and iPhoto,iMovies, iDVD, Garageband and iWeb.

Pages Worth Bookmarking

Pages viii-xx. Read me first includes how the book works and the website www.maclife.com for video tutorial links. The author,Jim Heid developed the videos at www.apple.com/life.

Pages 2-3. Computers get personal with a spreadsheet of audio, imaging, video and storage information. Period covered is from 1960s to 2007.

Page 10. iLife keeps you connected. Audio and video podcasts, YouTube and blogs. Also, mentioned are RSS feeds in Safari and net newswire.

Pages 12-13. This has a good illustration of iMac G5 and how to use the iMac G5's rear connections.

Page 22. Audio formats explained. The different encoder options: aac, mp3, Apple Lossless, wav and aiff. Note: The iTunes store delivers music tracks in Apple's aac format and becomes distorted when changed to mp3 and aiff and burned to a CD.

Page 66. Coverflow and Art matter. Using advanced tab to get Album Artwork when using Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) in screensaver with the iTunes visualizer.

Pages 74-75. Learn how you can import old tapes and albums' audio tracks using Griffin Technology's iMic and Final Vinyl. Also, you can use Roxio's CD Spin Doctor.

Note: the new Quicktime 7 Pro allows you to import audio. Impressed with information on Griffin Technology's iMic, I purchased an iMic. I attached an external microphone in the iMic's audio port for voiceovers in both the iMovie HD and Final Vinyl programs. The iMic works quite well on my Mac G4 and iMac G5's 20 inch screen.

Pages 80-81. Excellent tips on using cross fading songs, sounds enhancer and how to crop songs in iTunes.

Page 90. Included are iTunes, applescripts, visualizer plugins and iTunes videos.

Pages 96-97. Give you information on the full-sized iPods: first to second generations. Also, detailed Information on first to fifth generation full-sized iPods.

Pages 290-291. iDVD at a glance with illustrations showing the icons and their various uses.

Pages 296-297. Learn how you can add movies to your DVD using Jim Heid's step-by-step procedures. Also, learn tips for DVD Movies with encoder settings: The very best to the fastest.

Pages 301-302. Refining a slide show with icons fully explained. Also, slide show tips with TV-Safe area so you can avoid cutting off the outer edges of your photos.

Pages 314-315. Burning DVD tips. Learn how to create a disc image to your DVD and how to use Roxio's Toast software.

Pro Reaction

This is a wonderful book for beginners and intermediate iLife users. There are excellent teaching graphics and photos throughout the book. Also included are sidebars and glossaries to help you learn how to use iLife programs. The book has two-page spreads with concise illustrations. This is an excellent way to quickly learn The Mac iLife `08 programs.

Con Reaction

Missing in the index are keyboard commands for the iLife programs. The index print size is small and major sections are not boldfaced. My wish is for a separate iMovie HD and iDVD book by author Jim Heid.

Final Reaction I highly recommend Jim Heid's Mac iLife `08 Book. This is a very good book for learning how to use iLife `08 programs.

Clear, concise and assuming no prior knowledge, this is a fantastic book for both beginners and those wishing to familiarise themselves with new features of iLife 08.

This is a "tips and tricks" book but it is unusually well organized, so that you feel you are following a coherent path instead of being barraged with random facts. The format is something like an illustrated encyclopedia and something like a very thick computer magazine. The index is good and makes it easy to look up things. There's an accompanying web site that has a little bit of additional content but primarily serves as a collection of links to other sites.

The level is beginning to intermediate. There are no really advanced or obscure techniques, and it does not go into depth on anything. Coverage is good. The most heavily used programs, iTunes and iPhoto, get the lion's share of attention. The iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand programs get a reasonable amount of coverage. I thought the section on iWeb was flimsy. It focuses on publishing your photos and albums, and has a little bit about blogs. This matches how Apple is positioning the product, but there is really much more to it - it is the web version of the Pages program from iWork.

Very Good Feature: the book calls out other useful programs and services that can be used with iLife and shows you (briefly) how to use them. These include Photoshop (integration with iPhoto), TubeTV and TubeSock (for YouTube capture), and Flickr (photo sharing). It also has useful digressions on related subjects, for example there are two pages of digital camera tips and two pages of MIDI keyboard tips.

I've been so happy with Jim Heid's previous iLife books that I didn't check to see if this one included a tutorial DVD. To me, that was the really great resouce - with the actual book being a good reference/bonus.

Unfortunately, the DVD is gone. For those of us who pick up information a lot faster when we're watching how something is done, it's a real loss. I'm sure that the book's content will be excellent (as usual) but I can't recommend it as highly as I have previous volumes (especially as there doesn't seem to have been a corresponding price drop for the disk-less package).

When I first got this book I thought I may have wasted my money. Such a large portion of the volume is devoted to iTunes and iTunes easy enough to use that it doesn't need instructions, right? I'm glad to say that I was mistaken. There are lots of features and settings that aren't immediately obvious and I'm now using an old iBook connected to my stereo system as a remote media server accessible from the other three computers on the network.

My original reason for getting the book was to learn Garage Band and I'm not disappointed. I'm still learning but I'm now able to set up background music to practice my guitar to as well as make some decent sounding home recordings. Any problem is not Garage Band but my non-compliant fingers. Oh well.

iMovie coverage seems good, though I've only played with a couple of videos, as does iDVD. There's a nice section on iPhoto, too, though I'm now using Adobe Bridge and Photoshop instead.

I enjoy the format that is heavy on pictures and offers a nicely digestible amount of information per page. Highly recommended.