A post-keynote briefing with Rob Schoeben, Apple's vice president of applications product marketing, has revealed more details on Apple's reasons to beef up iPhoto. According to the report, Apple knew exactly what features it wanted to add, leaving other image editors in a trail of dust.

“What we’ve seen with Face Detection and Geotagging so far is that they haven’t been useful,” Rob Schoeben told Macworld, as soon as Phil Schiller's keynote address came to an end. “If you’re not a pro, photo tagging has failed, but with iPhoto it’s really a lot of fun.”

Schoeben allegedly provided quite some insight into how Apple approached software updates. It is common knowledge, Macworld says, that it's very hard to add new features to an old program without loading it down. Apparently, Apple managed to add new stuff avoiding this scenario, with the upcoming iPhoto '09.

The integration with popular social networking web sites, such as Facebook and Flickr, and the inclusion of new slideshow themes are also helping the application move forward, instead of becoming full of unnecessary features. iPhoto also boasts the ability to export slideshows as videos for iTunes, iPods, or iPhones. All these features combined have nabbed iPhoto yet another plus from the Macworld editorial team, pushing it to the top of the Best of Show listing.

“Sharing is what people want to do,” Schoeben explained. “We don’t want to replicate what’s out there, we just want to tap into it.” But iPhoto is just one of iLife's apps. Some may wonder why iWeb and iDVD haven't seen that many improvements. “Photos, movies, and music have always been the heart and soul of the suite,” Schoeben added.

iPhoto '09 will be available by the end of January 2009 as part of the iLife '09 suite. As a standalone product, iLife '09 will retail for $79. The software is provided for free with the purchase of a new Mac.