iLife Refresh Imminent, Retail Checks Suggest

After checking with several Apple Retail Store managers, a tech site was able to confirm that Apple is “forgetting” to refill stock mere days ahead of its planned Town Hall event where the company is expected to preview the next-generation Mac OS.

iLife is a suite of Apple-developed applications pre-loaded on every new Mac. Currently comprised of iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD, and GarageBand, the forthcoming iLife 11 is believed to drop iDVD in favor of a new, mystery application.

The people at 9to5mac claim to have been told that Apple retail stores are low on iLife supplies, amid rumors of a refreshed suite, and the confirmation of an October 20 event which focuses on the Macintosh.

Just like most sources reporting on the rumor, the site speculates that iLife 11 may arrive short of a certain iDVD application.

The suite is also believed to include iOS integration of some kind (no specifics are given), as well as FaceTime support, be it via a mere update to the underlying code of iChat.

The software should also support 64-bit machines, the source points out.

For the past few months, several rumors have indicated that iLife 11 would arrive not only lacking the rather unnecessary iDVD application, but also with a completely re-written iWeb app.

Most recently, Amazon.com listings suggested via price drops, that a new version of iLife was likely to emerge soon.

As noted by Softpedia in a previous report, rumors of Apple introducing iLife 11 go as far back as June, when multiple tech publications believed Apple was on track to update the suite on August 7, 2010.

The last major revision to iLife, announced at Macworld 2009, was version 9.