iLife was fantastic. It was the main selling point in convincing me to buy a Mac. When I was younger (before I could afford to buy a Mac) I would watch the iLife updates each year so jealous given the lack of comparative software on Windows at the time.
Edit: Just had a flashback to iWeb. That was really great. Such a simple way for a kid to build and publish a website before things like Wix (which are still nowhere near as easy to use).
I remember submitting countless work in school, magazines, websites etc that were all done using iLife. It was so easy to produce stuff that looked fantastic. iWeb in particular was brilliant for kids.
Even brilliant for adults: I did my entire professional website in iWeb when I started as a solo attorney back in 2011. I think at that point it had been sunsetted, but I used it for a year and it was amazing. Nothing before or since has been comparable. I wish I still had the files but they are long gone.
The cool part about iMovie and Garageband is they're basically a more approachable UI layer to Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. They share a lot of the same core code, and teach you the same concepts just without the fiddly pro bits.
I love that bifurcation because it really makes the pro apps more approachable without compromising their usefulness (pro apps require info density, consumer apps avoid it), and it allows their power be scaled down to iPhone and iPad.
As a longtime user of various pro apps in these categories - AE, Premiere, Final Cut, DVR, as well as ProTools, Digital Performer, Logic, etc, all of which share a lot of UX paradigms that make it relatively easy to switch between them, I find the type of simplification at work in iMovie and Garage Band makes them almost unrecognizable, stymieing my ability to use them at all almost every time I try.
I started in Sony Vegas back around the turn of the century and share your enjoyment of the standardized UI paradigms of professional software. It's great to be able to pick ups something like Davinci Resolve and just know what I can do and find the 10 keyboard shortcuts I want and then get to work, just because I learned Ae and Premiere a decade and a half ago.
I also share your frustration with iMovie and garageband... I can't get a damn thing done in GB and I've tried several times.
It's like the CLI: I already know exactly what I want to do, and I have an understanding of how the computer is going to deal with it. These apps feel like trying to drive a car with an iPhone app.
However, I work with a lot of non-professionals and they love these tools. So more power to them. I remember using logic back when I started 20-something years ago and had no idea baout how MIDI worked. I remember being able to actually have fun getting things done in fruity loops or rebirth. I'm glad there are tools out there which are nerf'd up for the beginners.
100% re ProTools, Logic and other DAWs that share core UX paradigms with analog tape recorders like Tascam. When GarageBand moved away from this core, I dug into Live. Amazing, powerful and complicated. “Plug in, arm track, record” is still very appealing and I sometimes miss gBand’s familiar simplicity.
I used Final Cut steadily through v7.x but still used iMovie for quick slideshows and rough edits. Final Cut X felt unrecognizable and stymieing, so I moved to Blender VSE. It’s incredibly powerful and configurable and complicated. iMovie is simple for working w mobile screencaps and I like the Storyboard concept in this new release. I’ll see where it fits in my workflows so long as I don’t completely blank the next time I’m in Blender.
It’s interesting how many iMovie defaults you have to un-check — Ken Burns, Stretch to Fit, Fit length to Soundtrack, e.g. — to produce what you want because the defaults were selected by people who know what they’re doing.
VLC logs its ffmpeg incantations which is handy for cribbing, extending
You know Aperture has been dead a long time when there is no one left to complain about how relatively poor its performance was, especially in its early years. There were of course some great ideas in there, especially in the UX and photo management stuff, but even on my (at the time!) awesome Dual G5 tower it was a mad resource hog. It never got anything like the love or investment Apple's other Pro apps did, with long gaps between relatively slim feature updates. I also forgot the price trajectory; v1 launched at 500 bucks, falling to just 80 by the final v3.
You’re thinking of the framework ProKit, which was used by a bunch of apple’s pro apps.
It didn’t dim and desaturate standard elements though - it was a framework offering a set of custom controls that had their own art. That art was drawn to look similar to desaturated versions of standard controls.
iMovie is like other Apple software in that it's great if you're on the happy path but worse than useless the moment you try to do something that Apple thinks you shouldn't.
For my basic use of stabilizing clips then putting them in sequence with transitions, DaVinci Resolve was easier and less frustrating to use (for me).
LumaFusion is great. Impressive speed, even on an older iPad. I honestly didn’t think it was possible. You guys are doing great stuff. And thanks for letting me own the software, not just rent it.
Yes. You can explicitly set your project's aspect ratio, including 9:16 (which is the iPhone vertical ratio) and edit it that way. You can also include vertical video in a non-vertical project with black bars on the sides ("fit"), by cropping ("fill"), or stretching ("stretch").
Probably not considered simple, but the free tier of DaVinci Resolve is excellent and can make custom dimensioned videos. I produce a lot of videos in a variety of proportions (including 4x5 and 9x16) and it works well. Downside is that the interface is best for landscape videos; I always wish I could rearrange the interface to accommodate a larger vertical preview.
yes it’s quite bizarre that key functionalities are split between the built in Editor and iMovie. almost all videos have to be done using both. doing vertical videos + text is very awkward.
> It doesn’t look like it can make vertical videos in the iPhone app yet which is a little disappointing.
The longer we prevent vertical videos from happening as a society the better off we will all be for it. Our eyes aren't designed to watch vertical videos. Continue the good fight.
Hm. I am not sure if your comment is sarcastic. So the following may be a waste.
But I’ll follow it. Is your thesis that video should not be moving full screen on mobile devices in casual usage, i.e. Without the user rotating their device?
To expand on this, should mobile device camera apps warn users to not shoot portrait video due to being ”unergonomical”?
My thesis is that the most natural way of viewing videos is with a longer axis in the horizontal than in the vertical. Users should rotate their device to watch videos.
> To expand on this, should mobile device camera apps warn users to not shoot portrait video due to being ”unergonomical”?
Mobile phone camera apps shouldn't even understand the concept of shooting footage in a vertical direction.
The boat you are wishing for seems to have already sailed. Social apps are growing / have grown a generation that ejoys vertical video as a medium of its own. So whether vertical video is unnatural seems debatable either way at this point.
Yes you are holding it wrong because the resulting video is clearly wrong if you view the video on a TV (same aspect ratio, other orientation), a computer or if you watch movies, or if you, well, see out your eyes. If you want to capture just about any action, it's going to look better in landscape, and that is why EVERYTHING until phones were put in the hands of plebs is shot in landscape.
Now, you could argue that we've gone more mobile, and newer social media formats expect portrait, but, that doesn't change that it's risen because people take videos and never consider, "hmmm, if I turn it around, I get a better picture and it looks more like a TV! Duurrr." Just because it's more popular doesn't mean it's not stupid AF.
I know plenty of people that don't own a TV or a monitor, they only own a phone and they have a locked to portrait mode. I wouldn't be surprised if you checked the world and there were more of those people than TV owners at this point. Why should they have to make their videos for TV users?
Point-by-point: phones can (should be able to) unlock from portrait for video.
As I said, video is generally better in landscape, so it's not really about TVs, TVs are landscape because viewing video is better in landscape.
Why anyone has to even argue this OBVIOUS point just demonstrates the militant ridiculousness of people that get on the defensive because they often (not always) put no thought into their video compositions. Vertical video look stupid, get over it.
Well you can do what ya like, but I, as a viewer do have the ability to turn my phone to landscape to view landscape videos.
What are you shooting? Pile drivers in action?
“Talking head” video is better in vertical orientation for the same reason painters have been creating portraits in vertical orientation for centuries: humans are vertical. Much of TikTok and other networks’ vertical stories are indeed videos of people.
Now, I think that there is probably more vertical video made each minute than there is wide.
I really enjoy watching vertical videos on TikTok every day and it is clearly much more ergonomic to hold the phone in the vertical aspect. When I create videos I use two cameras rolling at the same time, one in each aspect. It doubles my edit time, but lets me create content for vertical and horizontal platforms at the same time. Sometimes I have to shoot twice because certain content looks goofy if you try to frame it well for both.
I think Apple see iMovie and GarageBand as the entry point into funnelling interested users towards Final Cut and Logic Pro when they’re ready to reach for something more capable
I honestly don't understand their strategy with Final Cut and Logic Pro. These apps can't make very much money, they are a suspiciously good value and they never upsell you on anything. Logic Pro cost like $300 over a decade ago, it still costs $300 today, and all major updates in that time have been free for existing users. Compare that to a competitor like Ableton Live which has cost like $800 since Ableton Suite 8 and major upgrades have come out every 3-5 years and cost a few hundred dollars to upgrade. Or compare it to Pro Tools which now costs $300 for 1 year of a subscription license.
So it really doesn't seem like funneling Garage Band users to Logic is a very high priority for Apple. More likely Garage Band and maybe even Logic Pro are loss leaders to show that the mac is a platform for creatives.
On a related note I never understood why they killed off Aperture which was beloved by many photographers, why didn't they keep a similar upgrade path from the free Photos app -> Aperture like they did for Garage Band -> Logic Pro? Seems like another indication that they really don't like to be in the pro software business, they are only there reluctantly at this point.
Final cut pro supposedly has around 2.5 Million users. Many of them buy expensive Macs and other Apple products. The software uses the latest features from Apple's hardware, which gives users an incentive to keep upgrading.
I think they keep the software more affordable to attract new (starting out) users. Then eventually they will hopefully go for a Mac studio or something.
Another question you could ask: why not make these pro tools free? I am guessing that they are using the income as an internal development budget. Should be sufficient to afford the development I think.
I am also suspicious of this flow, it too feels very un-optimized. I think it has existed since back in the days where you had to buy software in a box to install off of a cd-rom. I think they even frame it as this add-on software will come pre-installed on your new mac, like that is a big convenience so you don't have to go out and buy it separately. But now obviously the alternative is you can just one-click purchase it later from the mac app store. They don't even bother giving you some small 10% discount or something for buying it alongside the computer. I wonder how many people do actually check that box and add it on.
The pro apps are probably paying for themselves, but their purpose is to sell hardware, both directly because you want that functionality, and to serve as a benchmark for other pro apps especially when you have shiny new silicon to take advantage of.
Yup, and I am still a bit salty Apple discontinued Aperture, which was to iPhoto as Final Cut Pro is to iMovie. I am paying for Lightroom Classic and there are still UI idiosyncrasies that makes no sense to me that just clicked in Aperture (Lightroom CC? Let's not even talk about that version...)
As someone who designed the replacement database layer (that literally improved the speed of access by an order of magnitude, after I promised the VP it would do in an off-the-cuff meeting, and my director face-palmed at hearing me say it) and then managed the new graphics engine team, I feel your pain.
Aperture was fundamentally too small a market for Apple to justify keeping a 'pro-app' team working on it. The concept was a high-cost semi-pro feature-set, and the market soon decided it cost too much and the price had to fall. Once that ball started rolling, the doom was set.
Still, I went on to do more interesting things at Apple - the latest being writing the client<-->server team bridge for 'Hide My Email' to let apps like Safari and Mail integrate into the server-side anonymous-email-mapping-to-a-known-address facility. Lots of cool tech in there, under the skin.
The reason why I love apple is exactly because the tech is there, but “under the skin”.
They are probably using ML or AI whatever to get this new Magic Movie thing working. But that’s not their press release, unlike Google which would be parroting this as a major tech thing. Apple goes for the human.
I'm using Lightroom CC, because I'd migrated away from Lightroom Classic several years before.
I can't begin to understand why things like "open selected images as layers in Photoshop" _still_ isn't possible in Lightroom CC. It works really well on my iPad Pro, though, and gives me 90%+ of the features I need for my workflow there. I just wish they provided an accessible scripting environment that I could use to automate things.
Do it. CaptureOne is the only thing I've found after Aperture that I like. Still miss Aperture, but CaptureOne is great, and they improve it frequently.
I've been dragging my feet because I Keep getting a friends and family discount on Lightroom Classic from an Adobe employee friend. But I really, really should...
If I can also move away from Illustrator for map making, I'll be set. (Read: I really need to spend some time with Affinity Designer to be sure it meets my needs, then just cut the Adobe cord.)
Yes, this is one of the ways Apple succeeds -- by being able to make management decisions like spending money on GarageBand and iMovie that would get cut in any other type of typical Corporate America VP structure.
Not just Final Cut and Logic Pro, but the Apple ecosystem itself. I've long lusted after Google Pixel's camera quality but the three reasons I will never switch are iMessage, GarageBand, and iMovie. My literal 4 year old son can use iMovie on the iPad and it is a great way for us to construct family memories (I load in the clips and then he decides the order, the music, and the editing)
Apps like iMovie, pages, numbers etc are ‘required’ to have people switch to the mac, so you don’t have to pay for thirdparty apps to do basic stuff with all your media. It’s really nice that these apps are also quite powerful to the average user. It ties the whole experience together.
I suspect that iMovie still sells Macs. Maybe not singlehandedly, but it's an important factor.
I don't want to say "there's nothing like iMovie available for PC's", because I frankly suspect there is these days—but I don't think there's anything normal people know about in the numbers that know about iMovie.
They briefly offered Windows Movie Maker and then Windows Live Movie Maker as a free download with Windows Live Essentials.
Recently, they acquired Clipchamp and attempted to extract a subscription fee for it if you wanted to export in anything above 480p. It also placed watermarks on the free tier. The resulting outrage forced them to walk it back.
I love how Apple just releases these things out of the blue. If it was Microsoft they’d be crowing about it loudly on blogs for 6 months before then underdeliver a broken pile of crap.
I don't get this unnecessary flak against MS? Like what's the point? Totally not relevant, they don't even have a similar product on the level of iMovie
This has been on Windows since like Windows 8. Probably before that since I haven't been tracking it. But I remmember I used to make these types of movies with storyboards years ago.
> Availability
iMovie 3.0, including the new Storyboards and Magic Movie features, is available today as a free update on the App Store for devices running iOS 15.2 or later and iPadOS 15.2 or later.
Anyone have any experience or anecdotes on the extent to which Apple has Product Managers working on its in-house software? And what sort of overlap or collaboration happens between products and teams? Is it a fun gig?
As a PM, I would love to work at Apple. If I were looking at open job descriptions, should I expect them to call out specific apps I’d be working on?
It mostly did. It can open image sequences, trim, cut, export, merge, remove audio or video tracks, display the timecode track.
Cutting a piece of a movie is a bit cumbersome, but it can be done (move to the first time, edit -> split clip, move to a second time and split again, and then delete the clip in the "show clip" mode).
Apple has been always about empowering creatives. They have world-class camera hardware and editing software. It always made sense to me that at some point they would close the circle and try to compete against YouTube. They instead went with Apple TV+ that feels more like yet another streaming platform and doesn't leverage many of other Apple's strengths and costumer base. Apple seems to have low tolerance for content they cannot tightly control. YouTube reactive style curation and permission-less publication probably feels alien and scary to them.
Apple stands for a tightly curated user experience overall. Want that weird app? No. Want user-generated content? No. Want to isntall some weird software to make your home screen swipe up-and-down rather than left-to-right? No.
For desktop computing I would find it frustrating (and use a Windows box with a ton of malware/weirdware on it) but for my phone I prefer it this way.
I don't think Apple has any interest in social networks (and that's effectively what YouTube is these days)
The risk to reward ratio for the brand itself is not something they'd want to undertake.
You see it all the time with other tech stories. If Apple does something bad or is even associated with something bad, that is standard across other tech companies too, the news articles will focus on Apple.
Imagine that with user posted comments. Google can get away with it because they have YouTube under a separate brand, and they've established that it's looser. Apple would never want to do it as a separate brand if they can help it (beats and FileMaker not withstanding because they existed prior) and the amount of vitriol that the brand would receive over any contentious content would negate any benefit.
> YouTube reactive style curation and permission-less publication probably feels alien and scary to them.
Now that you put it this way, I'd bet no established enterprise would have what it takes to start something like YouTube now. Heck I doubt even Google would be able to given the amount of "doing things by the book" these kinds of orgs require.
FYI: iPhone/iPad only, not MacOS. I have tried editing movies on my mobile devices in the past but the experience was never great. Even just trimming a clip in Photos is difficult with the touch interface.
If they're not planning on unifying much of their desktop/mobile dual-platform stuff as soon as the M1 is sufficiently widespread (so, another 5ish years, when the last of the x86 machines are aging out of active support?), I'd be pretty surprised.
Totally agree. In fact, iMovie for OSX is really struggling these days. I have a 16" MBP from 2020 with 16GB RAM and it struggles with editing video taken on my iPhone. I had to move to Davinci resolve which runs just fine but is a lot more complex than I would like (honestly, though I'm probably better off just buying a new computer as I have a feeling Apple are going to deprioritise making their Intel software work as well).
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve used iMovie for years for simple movie editing on my iPad but recently I found myself needing something just a tiny bit more sophisticated.
I just bought Luma Fusion ($40) and so far it feels intuitive but I can already tell it has more controls than iMovie — the ones I wished iMovie had (like quick audio fixes and equalizer). This is super useful because I can’t run Audacity on an iPad and sometimes I just need quick audio fixes done.
I'm an engineer on LumaFusion, and one of my specialities is audio. If you run into things that could be better, let us know. support@luma-touch.com (real humans read every email, we're a small team).
I personally use apple keynotes to produce videos.
It’s a powerful tool, and just yesterday i was wondering why imovie was lacking so much features.
And that is what i like about apple, they target consumers, not professionals
Is there a good way to blend in your face during a slideshow? I am using a third-party app for that now, and then use QuickTime Player to record the screen. It works, but it is a little bit more convoluted than I expected.
iMovie is impossible to figure out (it was easy many years ago then they ruined it). How about a simple app to let me trim and splice video and add audio? And a simple way to export, but not so simple that the choices are youtube and something else. Just export at whatever resolution I choose. And don't put stupid intros, outros, and transitions unless I ask for them.
> how about a simple app to let me trim and splice video and add audio? And a simple way to export, but not so simple that the choices are youtube and something else. Just export at whatever resolution I choose. And don't put stupid intros, outros, and transitions unless I ask for them.
Mostly learning curve and time to render optimized previews (considerable).
My needs are very lightweight and perfect for the iMovie use case beyond it's inability to handle what I consider not uncommon quality with today's rise of higher resolutions and frame rates.
Why not just Buy Final Cut Pro or screenflow? I’d rather pay $149 (screenflow) for for a product that just works vs wasting hours of my time trying to get something setup.
The claim you are responding to is that Resolve is used "at some step" in the vast majority of films, not that it is used specifically for cutting the vast majority of films. For example, Resolve might be used on a DIT cart for on-set color work, or it could be used for color grading in post—even if the film is actually cut on e.g. Avid or Final Cut.
Resolve's editing features are newer and less established, but I personally really like them.
For anyone interested in trying Resolve, I strongly suggest taking a look at Blackmagic Design's own oft-overlooked training material, which is put together by professional trainers and does a great job of working in useful concepts, workflow tips, and keyboard shortcuts at just the right times. The free video tutorials are a good place to start, and the free PDF books offer more of a deep dive. Project files to follow along are also included.
You are of course completely wrong. I have friends at Company 3 (one of the best colourist companies in the world) and they use Resolve for DIT and dailies all the time, including for such small films as Not Time to Die, Wonder Woman 1984 and the next Jurassic Park.
But of course this is the typical HN attitude of “I know better”.
I literally said I work in the industry, and your first claim is “there is no way that’s true”.
edit it’s also revealing that you think there are post pipelines set up around Final Cut. In my experience, there is no Final Cut at the high end (with extremely rare exceptions).
Just in time for a video project I’ve been considering. Oh, wait… for iPad and iPhone. Not at all how I want to cut together ~100 video files stored on my Mac and NAS. C’mon, Apple…
When people diagnose Apple’s software business as wilting, that’s no joke.
Well, you could just do a YT tutorial and do it with DaVinci Resolve.
Apple is clearly thinking about the kind of user here who doesn’t know what a “Mac with NAS” is. Someone who maybe doesn’t even know how to get video files from their iOS device into their Mac.
Even makes me forget, for a second, that they still run a monopoly on kid casino in form of an App Store.