Why iLife is rubbish
From MacFAQ
It's rubbish because it reduces the challenges you face, and simultaneously closes down the creative horizons it motions towards.
Contents |
[edit] iTunes
First is iTunes, which is the only one of the four directed at consumers rather than creators. What's being served up at the iTunes Store? Why, it's sugared water, and, stunningly oblivious to the irony, Apple even partnered up with Pepsi to "give away" music (or perhaps that should be 'give away "music"').
[edit] iMovie
Next is iMovie, perhaps the least offending of the four applications. As everyone who knows anything about producing film knows, the secret to producing even bearable film is to edit it within an inch of its life, to cut out the crap, and leave behind something that is at the very least watchable, which is hopefully not just a mush of mediocrity that does nothing more than sludge at the viewer, and at best is something that will leave a strong impression on them. Unfortunately, iMovie seems mostly geared towards applying endless video effects, titles and sound effects to vast quantities of footage.
Part of the problem is that digital video is so amazingly cheap. It costs nothing to add add add. If that were Super-8 you'd think before squeezing the trigger on your camera, because every minute would cost you several pounds. But it's video, it costs nothing: get it all in! get it all out!
[edit] iPhoto
Of course the same problem afflicts iPhoto (of course, it afflicts digital photography in general, not just iPhoto, but iPhoto makes that extra effort). You've got a camera, so take pictures! Take lots, because they cost nothing! You're standing there, pressing that button, and quite possibly you can't even see what it is you're pointing at because you're not even looking. You'd take better and more carefully-composed pictures if you were blind, because at least if you were blind you'd be thinking about it. And they're all rubbish, all pictures taken without thought or care, and because none even stand out as good ones you simply publish every single one on your web page. It costs as much to publish one as it does to publish a hundred, so publish a hundred. If it cost one hundred times as much you could be pretty sure that the quality would rise dramatically.
Of course, digital cameras are expensive - the tools cost a lot, but the consumables cost very little, just the opposite of film - and this is exactly the wrong way round. It should be cheap enough that *anyone* can get into it, even children, especially children, but then cost enough that they're forced to think about what they're doing. Now instead (with for example even Kodak moving out of the 35mm camera market) not everyone can join in, but anyone who can has nothing to oblige them to think before shooting. The world is filling up with crap photos and crap videos, which no-one thought about, which no-one is looking at, and which no-one will remember.
[edit] GarageBand
This cost thing also shows up in GarageBand, most depressingly wrong-minded of the four. You can buy a second-hand guitar for '30 and start making music. It's hard to make music, and very hard to do it well, but all you have to do is practise (or be lucky and talented). Or you can buy an expensive computer (and just any old G3 won't really do, you know, not even one you bought just three months ago), sit down in front of it, and start playing with loops and riffs. Let me explain something to you: that's not making music. It's no more making music than painting-by-numbers is painting. There's nothing creative in it. Nothing original is produced by dragging and dropping pre-assembled loops. Whatever next - GarretWriter, a prgram for writing novels, in which you drag and drop characters, events, situations and themes, and apply styles to them? GarageBand indeed. The premises of a garage band are contained in the name, and they indicate firstly that it's not something that only people who can afford '1000+ computers can take part in, and secondly, that it's a band - duh. A band involves being with, and doing something with, other people. Not sticking your face in a computer screen, oblivious to the rest of the world.
[edit] The dork aesthetic
There's a challenge in picking up a guitar, or playing with other people. There's a possibility of discovering or creating something new, that didn't exist before. There's no challenge in GarageBand. Nothing can come out of it which wasn't already in there. There's a challenge in picking up a camera or an instrument and coaxing something of aesthetic or artistic worth out of it. The challenge is diluted to the point of non-existence by the economics and dork-aesthethics of digital technology for consumers. iMovie and iPhoto lift the bar on restrictions to the quantity of production, and encourage every possible lowering of the quality.
And iTunes is there if you want sugared water.
