As I posted earlier today, iLife ‘06 made it’s way into my hands earlier today. Sadly though it wasn’t all bells and whistles. I had real trouble getting my most looked forward to application of the suite, GarageBand 3, to work. Since then I may have seemed unresponsive to the floods of messages I am getting asking for help, advice and more feedback pending future purchases. I for this I can only apologise and say that although it’s not a great work around, I have one. iLife ‘06 is officially working fantastically well right now.

What took so long? I was constantly rebooting, reformatting and reinstalling on both my PowerBook and also on a friends iBook in order to try and resolve the issue. This takes time. So, what was up? I don’t know. How did I fix it? I simply installed it under an administrative user account and then ran it in another user account. I found a difference between this and using a second administrative user account.

I honestly don’t know why this is, but I have been testing relentlessly all day long. I hope this is helpful to you and I will again, update if I find out any more information or a better workaround.

[Note: Apple iLife '06 consists of: iPhoto 6, iWeb, GarageBand 3, iMovie HD 6, iDVD 6 and also contains iTunes 6.0.2 and QuickTime 7.0.4]

A quote from the Cult of Mac tonight caught my eye. I think, only think mind you, I can’t be sure but…

So tonight I’m sitting in a bar when I run into an old friend, who is very highly placed in the Apple world. I hate to cite an anonymous source, but trust me, he knows.
And he tells me the keynote that Jobs gave was not the keynote he had planned. Some of the speech had been cut out. Key products were missing.

My source said there was some stuff, “some very, very cool stuff,” that Jobs couldn’t unveil because of “supply issues.”

“They can’t get enough Core Duo (chips),” said my source.

He also said that if he were me, he probably wouldn’t order one of the new MacBook Pros.

I asked if there would be MacBook replacements for the 17-inch and 12-inch PowerBooks, but he said, “Oh, it’s much cooler than that. Much cooler.

Hey, didn’t I said on day one, during the keynote, that this is only a temporary thing? Releasing an iBook with that kind of power would blow us all away too much, too soon. Frankly, the MacBook Pro is not a good release and I think the name is a refelction on that. It looks unfinished, it’s a test subject, Alpha work. I don’t believe that these models will stick around. Steve must have something else planned.

Additionally, I also thought that Steve was simply slightly ill to begin with, but the more I look at it, the more obvious it becomes that all was not as planned.

Today I received my copy iLife ‘06 from Apple. I have been very excited about this release since before Christmas and was correct in my predictions that there would be built in blogging and podcasting tools as well as another application to add to the package.

Of course, the second Steve Jobs announced to the world that there was indeed an iLife ‘06 release this past Tuesday, I updated my software and got the new versions of iTunes (6.0.2) and QuickTime Pro (7.0.4). This was not without it’s drawback however, as I documented here.

That all done with, I have been impressed overall with the updates and was eagerly awaiting my early ordered iLife package from the local courier. I even formatted my PowerBook in anticipation and did not install the iLife ‘05 bundled with my copy of OS X. I was ready, I was updated… and I still haven’t published anything.

As always the packaging was beautiful, the disk was a DVD, the installer was even pretty exhilarating. Unfortunately though I have not gotten very far in my attempt to create either a podcast or an iWeb/.Mac website. Every time I try and do the smallest thing, such as change some pre-formatted text, every time I right click a typo or even just try to open a menu it freezes for a minute, sometimes ten. It’s very frustrating.

I will endeavor and will update you when I can.

[Specs: PowerBook G4 (Aug '05) 1.67Ghz, 768Mb RAM, Mighty Mouse, iSight, LaCie d2 160Gb E-HDD, OS X 10.4.4, All available software updates installed, absolutely no third party software or hacks or keys (with the exception of Carbon Copy Cloner)]

Update: This has been a surreal experience. I have Photocasting through iPhoto working great (if slowly compared to Steve’s presentation) and I also have iWeb working (all be it timed out because of my huge movie.

The issue really is GarageBand; my most looked forward too addition. It just keeps freezing up like there is no tomorrow. I have done everything I could and even restarted. Fresh access to all that RAM still won’t see it though. The CPU is working because I have power plugged in. iWeb was fine after the restart, why isn’t GarageBand? I don’t have all the answers, but you couldn’t get it on a cleaner system so it’s nothing third party or the like.

I am sure GarageBand will work eventually if I leave it for long enough, but right now it’s unusable.

[Note 2: According to Apple, my PowerBook is more than capable of running this entire suite; I even exceed the recommended requirements.]