I think you have made some fair points but your argument would have more weight if there were better alternatives to the iLife bundle's components. Personally having made the switch to the Mac last year I feel that in general for most users the package is far better than the competition both in the PC world and on the Mac.

I understand what your're saying about version 2.0 apps but in fact many of these v2.0 apps are in reality pretty much version 1.0, iPhoto v2 = iPhoto Cocoa v1, iMovie v3 = iMovie Cocoa v1. In some ways I agree with your general belief that the new versions did tread water or regress in terms of speed and stability with the carbon/cocoa transition but inevitably more features will be added in future releases which will make the apps more useful to semi power users along with improvements to the interfaces and if Jaguar is any guide increased speed as well.

Speed is not likely to be a medium to long term issue anyway as 970 based hardware is released - I think what I'm saying is although the carbon - cocoa transition has caused some problems in the short term Apple is doing the sensible thing due to the benefits which come from the change and that the disadvantages will decline with time.

New customers getting their first Mac find iPhoto quite speedy. They take their two pictures, they import them, and wow! That was sooooooo easy! It takes them quite a long time to get to 600 photos, but in the meantime, wow, that was so easy!

From what I've seen, putting Macs in the hands of hundreds of new owners, speed isn't as much of an issue as us advanced users like to think it is. I know a woman who has an iPhoto library of 3,000 images... on an iBook. A graphite iBook. She loves her machine, because she can _do_ things with it. The fact that she does those things slowly doesn't bother her in the least.

All this whining about speed, lack of features, etc. is fun and all, but who does it really come from? The advanced users who want some functionality from Final Cut brought down to iMovie because, well, it's free, and we're advanced users, dammit.

More speed would be nice, and it would be more impressive, but "new" users (and even long-time users like my mom) don't see it. They don't notice. All they notice is that they can do things they couldn't do before, and that those things are easy.

I agree with what you say here Slava. But, like anonymous say, I think it will improve over time. Not that that is any excuse, really. I do however believe that MacOS X is better value for money than for instance Windows.

The fact that most of the iApps dont have all the "pro" or "semi-pro" features are in some cases due to other "competing" products, as is the case with iMovie. iMovie is a clear somsumer app, and dont you claim that FCP is for pros - because yes, but for the semi-pros we just got FC Express.

The speed is indeed a problem. iMovie 3 is a b*tch to use, but I still use it quite so often. Its slow, yes, but has more features than v2 - even if some of the new stuff is really annoying (like applying ken-crappy-burns to all images I drag in).

iTunes is, has always been, and hopefully will stay - a very good piece of software. It has always been fast, and even the first version was packed with every feature I needed/wanted. Still they update it and add stuff all the time, and even though it is a consumer app. - I cant think of anything to add to make it more "pro".

Lets hope Panther will improve performance drastically under the hood, making the next revisions of the iApps sky-rocket!

In all cases, we do have the Haxies - they are rather speedy :) Make us a iAppNoTimeout next? ;)

I think it is interesting that the only iApp that IS to the level it should be is iTunes. From what I remember, the skeleton of iTunes was bought from another exisitng product - I can't remember the name, but it was the main mac mp3 player app at that time. Many people switched from that app to iTunes, not even knowing they were really using the same core program.

I keep thinking all of the rest of the iApps seem so far behind in comparisson, but then I remember that Apple had a huge head start with iTunes v1, because it's "parent" was much farther along than v1.

btw, I agree with your opinions completely...

More comments on Erics post.
What you refer to is likely users who "just got a Mac", and since they have always been using OSX - they are bound to love the speed of iPhoto. But us "long time Mac users" have been using OS9. We know what speed is :)

I have been using OSX fulltime for over a year now, and I have gotten used to it - I still amaze myself with the speed when booting into OS9 though. "Wow, I didnt know my Mac was THIS FAST!"

I mean people who just got their first Mac, yes. I think about OS 9 once a day, and it's usually when someone like you brings it up. OS 9 is dead, and I have the video stolen straight from the WWDC keynote funeral last year to prove it. :-)

All you referenced are the "generic" Apple bundle to start the new MAC owner on their way; my mother, who is her 70's bought a new iMac and is tickled pink with it and its software bundle. So, I believe that they do serve a basic purpose.

Apple simply hasn't made a good software package since its early days (ahhhhh, those were the days). In a way I'm glad they don't...I rather buy other software with a different approach than the "Apple way." To me that's what owning an Apple is all about.

iMovie, iPhoto and iDVD have long since left my hard drive.

It makes me a little irate to think that they are included in the cost of the OS. Especially because I have gotten little to no use out of them (and I work for an independent film company!).

But to be honest, Apple is no different that Microsoft, Dell, even Sony, Panasonic, in fact, all electronics manufacturers, really.

Think about it. MS Windows comes with all these extra features (they still haven't learned from their past mistakes...all these extra features are still ON by default...).

PCs come with just as many "freebies" as Apples do, from consumer DVD-authoring software to little sketchpads built into the trackpad on laptops.

Think about your favorite camcorder. Just how recently have you used its titling feature? The in-camera editing functions? Those cheesy digital picture effects (stretch/shrink, mosaic, pastel, etc.)?

Even stuff like a powerstrip...the kind that come with the phone jacks built-in. Who uses those? But somewhere in that price tag, you're paying for it.

Ok, maybe people do use those things. But I think you get my point. Apple's no different than pretty much everyone else in this respect.

They're providing basic stuff for normal people. If you want high-end, you buy the high-end apps. If you don't need the high end, you've got basic capability right there. I think it's pretty great. Well, except for the stupid "brushed metal" crap. Metallifizer is the Savior.

And normal people don't notice the speed thing. Really.

If I could have any wish it would be for all of Apple's iCrap to be loaded onto a rocket and shot into the sun. Imagine if all the development funds and money going into iApps was diverted into the OS? Why, we might even have a Finder that can walk and chew gum at the same time!

Barring that, I think the iApps should be completely divorced from the OS. It annoys me to no end to fork over $129 for an "OS Upgrade" that still has mediocre performance, a plethora of bugs ... and many many pretty shiny objects.

If people want iTunes, let them pay for iTunes. I would. But don't make me pay for iPhoto, iCal, iMovie, iAdnauseam when I don't want it. If the iApps can't make enough money to support themselves, well, then maybe they weren't such a good idea after all.

I don't want iCandy. Give me $129 worth of OS UPGRADE instead.

Isn't the whole idea behind charging $50 for iLife that the iApps are now going to be paid applications?

I just wish they would fix the Finder. :(

As it stands now, iDVD3 is the only iApp you still can't download for free. So the $50 iLife is really just a smoke-and-mirrors way of saying iDVD costs $50.

If all the other iApps are still included with 10.3, then it would seem that they're still being at least partially subsidized by OS purchases.

Of all the iApps, iTunes does the least. It is handling inherently linear content in a read-only [play-only] fashion where the content is not what is being organized. That content is totally exclusive except for the crossfades; that is, you never play two tracks at once!

What is being organized is the meta info for that content. The meta info for a big bunch of MP3s is NOTHING BUT TEXT.

I have 12,000 songs in iTunes (all from my own CDs, thanks)-- at the most, 12MB of pure text information for iTunes to organize. Virtually nothing on a system with 768MB of RAM -- I regularly chew through databases in the 1GB range on the same system.

Even given the total layup of a job that iTunes has in comparison to the other iApps-- even iCal-- iTunes is dog freakin' slow! Searches take seconds to refine the lists... there is a noticeable delay when sorting....

And iTunes is broken in many ways!

It is still the best music playback app around and you certainly can't beat the price, but to claim that iTunes is a good example of how to do an app right is completely bogus! And to claim it is somehow a better performer than the other iApps when iTunes has to do orders of magnitude less work is silly!

You say "its broken" and "fix it" and yet have no details or explanation. How is that helpful to anyone (even the random Apple people who may be reading this)?

I am working on a project, nothing insignificant if it works, and based on my work so far I better understand the issues with the Finder than most mere-mortal users.

I see that the Finder lags in certain areas for unknown (to the public) reasons - especially when I can duplicate its functionality much quicker in many cases. I see that the Finder is actually looking *inside* bundled Apps for the icon to display instead of asking Launch Services (which Open/Save windows uses) which is strange and could be time consuming.

I also understand that the Finder is extracting a LOT of info out of every file and putting it into the System for later use. Bundled applications may simplify the user's life but they immensely increase the complexity of the System just to manage the launching of an app (is it a Bundle or CFM, Classic or Native?).

I think many of the problems lay with the switch to a different ABI (thank you NeXTies!) and compiler and the rest are simply the new way of doing things. Face it the Finder is not simply a ported Mac OS 9 Finder - its largely a completely new app that is doing way more with more data than on Classic Mac OS (two friggin kinds of alias files, numerous hidden UNIX files, tons of XML all over the place instead of easy to load/use binary data types in resources).

If Mac OS X bugs you so much get a $499 PeeCee from DELL and use Windoze XP. Yeah you will get a snappier responsive OS and whizzy features that no one understands, you just have to put up with endless email viruses, locked out digital media files, and incompatibilities with third-party software that MS doesn't like.

Maybe we should have just stuck with the transitional OS Copland (at least we would not have had to run legacy apps in a virtual machine) for all the grief OS X has thrown on the Mac crowd.