14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has published an updated Support document to note the system requirements for iLife, following a major overhaul of all apps contained in the suite, including an incremental iMovie update which adds support for older graphics cards.
KB article HT4411 is not new. For years it has enumerated the system requirements for iLife apps, including iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand (as well as iWeb and iDVD when Apple still sold boxed copies of the software).
As the years progressed, so did the tech specs that iLife needs in order to run on your Mac. With the release of iPhoto 9.5, iMovie 10, and GarageBand 10, Apple has yet again raised the bar in system specs for iLife on the Mac.
iPhoto 9.5 requires OS X 10.9 aka Mavericks, a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor, 4 GB of RAM (2GB might also work, but 4GB is “recommended with an i3 processor or faster).
iMovie 10, which just got a small update this week, requires OS X Mavericks, and 2GB of RAM (4 GB recommended). Apple doesn’t mention any requirements on the graphics front, but the release notes for iMovie 10.0.1 state, “Allows iMovie to be installed on computers with some older video cards.”
Finally, GarageBand 10 also requires OS X Mavericks, a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor, and a recommended 4 gigs of RAM with an i3 processor (or faster).
System requirements for older versions of iLife are also available. (Some of these KB articles have been archived and are no longer updated by Apple because the cited hardware is out of date and / or discontinued altogether).
iLife ’09 system requirements iLife ’08 system requirements iLife ’06 system requirements iLife ’05 system requirements iLife ’04 system requirements