Apple posts iLife '08 tutorials

Did anybody else try to buy iLife in an Apple store? I went to the Pasadena store on Tuesday evening, and they said they had sold out early-afternoon. Yesterday, I went to two more Apple stores in LA -- one of them the LA flagship (The Grove) -- and neither store had even received them yet. (In fact, both were still displaying iLife '06.)
I ended up ordering it from the store online, but it seemed weird that there was no inventory of iLife in the physical stores. Anybody else experience that?

Downloading iLife??? 3Gb downloading, i do not think so, that would take ages!!!! more than 5 days with my connection!!! (7,2Kb/Sec)

no no, long live the actual DVD, also handier when reinstalling...

Not to mention the waste of materials that goes into producing the cardboard box, plastic shrinkwrap, silver & plastic & ink disc, and paper leaflets.

Plus the aviation and diesel fuel to transport the cartons of goods to respective stores around the world.

After all, Steve showed the recycling symbol during the iMac unveiling, making the point that Apple was doing its bit to stop trashing the planet.

That said, we all know most people still like to walk in and buy something tangible in their hand. It makes them feel they're getting something for their money. Even if it the packaging will be thrown away soon after.

iLife 08 DVD is 3.6gb, fwiw.

Whew, these people are fired up about hardcore Apple fans wanting the instant gratification that comes from getting something via download.

I just downloaded a trial version of iWork. When you open it, it asks you if you want to buy a serial number ONLINE to UNLOCK iWork. Wow!

Now I know iLife is a bigger download, but iWork took about 5 minutes. I still doubt that it would take that long. The download for the iLife TUTORIAL is 756MB! More than iWork! So double, maybe triple that and you got yourself some iLife.

I highly doubt that offering digital downloads is somehow more expensive than sending out actual DVD's, but I could be wrong.

Besides, what does it matter to you guys? I don't have an Apple store down the street to just pop into whenever my heart desires and I really don't like waiting for it to arrive in the mail.

If Apple was offering downloads like that, you'd be praising it until cows came home saying it was the next revolution.

In 10 years, we won't remember what a CD is, thanks to iTunes. Now can you please make me forget what a DVD is?

Whilst checking out the tutorial the URL caught my eye... so I gave it a try.

http://gallery.mac.com/brian_crawford

The image carousel is awesome.

Almost not worth the keyboard effort to reply but let's pile on to show how inane Scott's comments are:
a) Apple is a *distributor* of music as you point out. They don't need to make back the cost of production
b) Until there are HD movies on iTunes, all the downloads are quite small - that makes the server side much easier than the several Gb of data for iLife
c) Apple's apps and restore disks have long been DVDs not CDs, so you know it's a lot of data
d) If you go into the store, you'll see the new iMac and you might want to buy one, or the new keyboard, or an iPod, or some accessories for your iPod... Get the idea..? There's a reason Apple built bricks and mortar stores and a reason they are doing so well. Were you one of the people saying it was a mistake to do that..?

There is the download size which has already mentioned but also if you have to go to an Apple store, you might be more inclined to add an additional impulse item to your sale.

A distribution as big as iLife would be a brutal download. iLife 06 was on a DL DVD; I have no idea how large 08 is.

Last year Sun started mailing Solaris DVDs for free. I read somewhere that it was actually cheaper for them to mail free discs than to have that many people download such a large package.

Of course, they could have seeded a torrent, but that's not the point here. Apple needs to sell the software; it isn't free.

Downloads are the way to go. Besides, they could cut down on distribution costs and customers would be happier.