It's a Wonderful iLife

Instead of writing something for my blog this weekend, I tinkered with Apple iLife ’06, which was a gift from my friend Jaime (this would be Jaime the Computer Girl, not to be confused with Jaimé the Burrito Guy). While I’ve had, and liked, previous versions of iLife (’04 and ’05), they always seemed to underdeliver in terms of stability (lots of crashes) and speed (lots of spinning beach balls from hell), making me weary of investing much time in using them. While it’s still early, I’m thinking they got it all right in the ’06 edition.


Jaime the Computer Girl likes fried crustaceans.

For the unfamiliar, iLife is a suite of fairly powerful yet easy-to-use creativity tools for the Mac…kind of like a Microsoft Office for the mathematically impaired (i.e. me). Other than being a grouping of related programs, iLife has thankfully little in common with the more ubiquitous Office. With Office you write proposal thingys, make number thingys and get pissed off trying to get presentation thingys to work right. In iLife you make photo albums, edit videos, create web pages, and make songs and podcasts…and get pissed off that it took you ‘til 3 a.m. to finish a two minute production.

The result of my first 3 a.m.’s worth is available here—you can either experience it online or subscribe and download it as a podcast. I’ve always thought it would be cool to meld the old school country sounds of say a Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff or Willie Nelson with glitch poppy electronic beats. My efforts are nothing short of a train wreck, and the country influence is completely absent from this attempt. Even so, I’ve created the alter ego of Cowboy Electron. Consider him the beacon of my utter and complete dearth of talent.