If I was a smoker, I’d have a cigarette right now. Macworld was exciting: I saw the new 1″ PowerMacPro laptops, the uber-fast iMacs (both with built-in iSight). But aside from all the glitz, bling, booths that wouldn’t let me take photos, pseudo-booth–babes, cars that let you watch your iPod video in the headrest monitors and my dream office setup — it was the release of iLife ’06 that really turned me on. (Photos begin here; watch the QuickTime keynote and see Steve Jobs create a podcast with images on the fly.)
The new iLife has a blogging application and something called iWeb; supposedly an easier, prettier and more customizable blogging program than what’s freely available; my Apple friends told me the point is to make it super-easy for anyone to blog. But what got me all worked up was the new Garageband, that has a full-on podcasting recording “studio” and is completely integrated with all the other iLife apps; you can just drag photos from iPhoto into your podcast. I know, because I had the pleasure of talking dirty at asking a nice Apple employee for a demo. (Screenshot 1; screenshot 2; screenshot 3.) I think by the second question about Kbps, file size and .m4v exports he realized he had a power-user with a little girly hard-on on his hands, and he kept saying things like, “I should know this — we just learned the app about an hour ago — these are really good questions…” In the end I thanked him, and now I really want a copy of iLife ’06 because my mind is reeling from the sex ed possibilities, like creating sexual anatomy for pleasure lectures with images, (and maybe after taxes, I want to get an iPod video so I can watch my video podcasts). It was a total Macgasm.
