iLife installation not as easy as it should be

by Volker Weber

Most of the things you try to do with a Mac are easy. But not everything is smooth sailing. What I tried today should have been very easy but it wasn't. Lucy came with Jaguar and some earlier versions of iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto and iTunes installed. Both the operating systems and the applications have been updated in the meantime. That works for all of the applications besides iDVD 2. The newer 3.0 version is only included in the iLife box, presumably because a download would be too huge.

So I asked Apple to send me the iLife box which arrived a few days before I left for CeBIT. Today I finally got around to installing the software. Insert the DVD, lauch install, enter password, click on the stupid Agree button ... and then I hit a roadblock. The installer tells me:

"There are newer versions of some of the software packages in "applications" already installed on the volume. This software does not allow older versions to be installed on top of newer versions."

That is correct. Everything besides iDVD is newer. I can only escape the installer because there is only a cancel button left. How do I tell this thing to go ahead and only update the software that is newer? It - does - not - say - so.

The installation DVD only shows me two icons in the root. One is the installer, the other leads to numerous readme files in a variety of languages. Those explain many things but not the solution to my problem.

So I dug around on the internet until I found a little hint. The Install icon is only a shortcut. In the Finder menu you say "Show original" and suddently a new icon appears in the root which gives me access to the install packages:

ilifeinstall.jpg

There you go. Open the iDVD install package. Problem solved.

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