January 25, 2003: What, You Want Money for Software?

iLife is a staple of the Macintosh and one of the most compelling reasons to use OS X. Yet only long-time Mac fans remember that iLife didn't start out as a suite of cohesive programs but as an iApp here and an iApp there. Oh, and the iApps were always free.

That changed when Apple started calling the assembled iApps "iLife" and began shipping a CD containing all the iApps for a paltry $49. One dollar less than fifty got you a CD containing new versions of iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes and iDVD. Apple tried to alleviate the outrage from users who now had to pay to use the latest software by continuing to offer the previous versions of iMovie and iPhoto as a free download.

While Mac users were initially despondent that they now had to pay for the latest versions of some of the best and most user-friendly software Apple had to offer, it proved to be a canny business move by Apple. Once the outrage passed, many users gladly ponied up the cost for the yearly iLife update. Apple shipped the first version of iLife on January 25, 2003.