I have to admit that I’ve grown out of iLife suite. It was fun to play with it after buying a Mac but now most applications became unsatisfying compared to the existing alternatives.

iPhoto

It keeps a copy of every edited image. This copy remains even if original is deleted so this app is a huge disk space eater. It has only a basic set of image editing controls and export options are limited. The best tool to manage and edit photos is Adobe Lightroom; after using it to correct images iPhoto looks like a toy. Aperture is good too but I like Lightroom’s editing options more.

iMovie

The last good iMovie version was 6. After it has lost timeline it became a crap. Apple has Final Cut Pro application that is all you need. Express version of it is much cheaper and in most cases the one you really need.

iWeb

If you want to blog there are lots of sites that give free accounts. They also provide comments, stats and other goodies. If you want to share photos there are many sites that you may use too. The same for sharing videos. If you need a database and generated pages iWeb won’t help you. So the only thing left is to create a nice page with your photo, text “Hello, my name is John” and links to wordpress.com, picasaweb.google.com and youtube.com. Do you really need 300Mb application for this? RapidWeaver is much smaller and more flexible.

Garage Band

Many people nowadays have photo and video cameras but much less have midi keyboards and compose music. Maybe it’s great for musicians.

iDVD

The only app that makes sense to me. Of course I can write movie clips to DVD disk and watch them sequentially but not all DVD players can do it and it’s much more pleasant to look at themed menus. DVD Studio Pro is more powerful but I seldom need it’s complexity.