My current iPhoto library consists of 23 photos that I happened to have on my digital camera (Canon Powershot A80), and the readme didn't say I had to, so I didn't bother finding out how to rebuild my iPhoto 04 library before installing. It does say to backup your library though. I didn't bother with that either.

The install, while largely hands-off was kind of irritating. After going through the readme, license, and other wizard-like steps, it spent 10 minutes "preparing" the various iApps. For 10 minutes the DVD drive (I installed from the DVD media) repeatedly thrashed its head back and forth, sounding much like an inkjet printer. My conjecture is that the "prepare" script was reading file info from one location on the disc and reading he actual file at another location to verify it. If that or a similar cause is the case, they really need to optimize it. It sounded to me like a CD drive does when it gets read errors from dust or scratches. Not very reassuring.

Note that the optical drive is quite loud when in use, even when listening to an Audio CD. It's not something I'd want to put up with any more than necessary to get data off or on a disc. All the disc activity causes the internal fan to kick in, which is louder than its normal blissful state, but still nowhere near the volume of my PC. When things calm down the fan turns off relatively quickly.

Anyways, it eventually prepared the apps and spent another 10 minutes writing files (without the head thrashing racket this time).

Upon running iPhoto 05 for the first time, it wanted to update my library. It appeared to mainly want to regenerate thumbnails, which took next to no time on my paltry collection. The other apps didn't require any such step when opening.

Since I've never really used the iApps in their previous form, I don't know how these new ones compare. If I discover anything extra exciting about them I'll chime in here.