I’ve been using iPhoto. The features really strike a chord with how people use computers. I have a few ideas for version 2 already.
One of the most impressive features is the slide show. Watching an audio slide show with soft dissolves of some nice family portraits really tugs at the heart. I heard that a number of people at the keynote were visibly affected by the audio slide show demo that Steve Jobs did.
I want to export a set of iPhoto pictures as a Quicktime movie complete with the audio and dissolves. I can export the movie from iPhoto, but I lose the dissolves and audio. I tried the “Make Audio Slideshow” iPhoto AppleScript, but I lose the dissolves and wide pictures are squashed (I do get the audio). I can take the exported Quicktime, open it in Quicktime Player, and save it as a DV stream file, import it into iMovie, import the audio as well, and save it back out as a QT movie, BUT–I lose quality, I lose the dissolves, and the frame pacing seems to speed up.
I think that most of the issues are pretty easy except for the dissolves. You’d have to give iPhoto the ability to render the dissolves as it exports the pictures. It would be nice if the iMovie team could lift some code from iMovie and work it into iPhoto for this, but I think it just wouldn’t be that easy.
Still, it’s a great product.