I’ve had the new iLife version for a day now, and rather than giving a thorough review, here are my first impressions:

General:
- box is smaller than previous two versions
- disk has cooler design

GarageBand:
- You can now use your keyboard as a, well, keyboard. Got that? It’s really pretty cool. Of course, you have only one octave at a time, but it will still do for cheap electronic music.
- Notation view… well, I really couldn’t find this during my 10+ minutes of testing…

iTunes:
- OMG! It’s the same version you got from the net some weeks ago. Who would have thought?

iMovie HD:
- Speed is promised, but I didn’t really have time to import anything, so we’ll see about that later…
- New effects? Can’t say I was overwhelmed with them, but I’m sure they’re in there somewhere…
- HD and widescreen support. No clue if my camcorder support 16:9 yet, but we will soon find out.

iDVD:
- New themes! They are better than ever, but c’mon… there is hardly any innovation in this app since version 1 – then again, I have no idea what they could add to it…

iPhoto:
- New books! No, I’m not being sarcastic. This is actually one of the cooler features. The mini and medium softbound books look totally awesome! (great gifts)
- Lots of new editing options, like brightness and contrast and other manual things. Don’t know about you, but I will never have to turn to Photoshop again before submitting my photos for development.
- Search! This is BIG! iLife gets more and more expensive for each year, but I was lucky to pick it up at education discount, so for me at least, the price is still justified – even for iPhoto alone.