My wishes for iLife '06
This morning at Apple Matters, James Stoup asks the question, "What's next for the iLife suite?" He proposes three great applications, including an end-user CGI tool he's calling "Animator." With Animator, anyone can make their own talking clown-fish or incredible superheros. I think it's a great idea and very feasible. Apple has a history of bringing sophisticated software to home users, like iMovie, iDVD, Garageband and to a slightly lesser extent, Final Cut Express. I can see an end-user animation application fitting nicely within this strategy. When integrated with iMovie and iDVD, it could be a lot of fun.
He also describes Site Builder, a website-building application that would bridge the gap between the free wizards some webhosts offer and the pricey big boys like Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive. I know there are inexpensive applications already available that fill this role (Realmac Software's Rapidweaver being my favorite), but to have one designed by Apple that was beautifully integrated with its iLife siblings would be great. More after the jump.
You should read Mr. Stoup's article, as I've only skimmed some highlights here. While condsidering his suggestions, I've come up with a suggestion of my own, tentatively called "Podcaster." I think of Podcaster as a do-it-all application that will record, edit, enhance, upload and publish your podcast. With Podcaster you can select photos from your iPhoto library to use as chapter markers and import Garageband tunes to use as theme music or background audio. Podcaster will also generate a feed for you and publish either to your .Mac account or the FTP
location of your choice. Today, producing a podcast usually involves, at the very least, two different applications. I'm confident Apple could get the whole shebang done with a single application, which would be great. They've made retrieving podcasts so easy via the iTunes Music Store, why not make producing them just as simple?
As far as enhancements to existing iApps, I'd like to see video playback available right in iPhoto (for all those .avi movies I import with my digital camera), as well as an option to send videos stored in iPhoto to iMovie. So what do you all think? Have an idea for a brand new iApp? Want to improve on an existing one? Let's hear it.