(UPDATE:  Sony did the surprising and released the Sony Imagination Studio Suite.  I have a review HERE)

Before everyone reading this (all three of you) start agreeing with me that I need “a life” outside of my fiancée, computers, and my Xbox, remember that a little while back I wrote a post discussing the perceived benefits of Apple releasing the iLife suite to PC’s. Now that we are up to speed…

I wrote about the financial benefit that I believe Apple would receive from making this suite available to the broader market of PC users, there are quite a few PC users out there who, like myself, would jump at the chance to have these basic programs loaded up (for a price of, say, $200 or so – $50 per program isn’t too bad, and no iDVD doesn’t count as a program for this purpose.)

And I have to say that I am quite let down that Steve Jobs hasn’t already taken my advice, made this software available to the market, and personally called me to thank me for coming up with such a great idea and offering me a fabulous job working on more amazing ideas. 😉

I know that the programs installed in iLife are basically grandma-ware versions of Apple’s more powerful consumer level (Final Cut Express, Logic Express) programs, and they are very basic compared to Apple’s pro level stuff. But they are still strong enough for what most basic-level social media/internet peeps want to do – put up a quick site, record podcasts in Garageband (which has a killer World Music Jam Pack, I’ve gotta say – see Steve, it’s not all vitriol 😉 ) or edit some video in iMovie.

In lieu of Apple coming up with iLife for PC (they can put a wrap around suit and tie on the box to go with their current marketing theme), I’ve come up with another brilliant idea.

Why doesn’t Adobe beat them to the punch? If there is a punch to beat them to (It’s not too late Mr. Jobs, you can still hire me on a freelance basis… 😉 )

I thought about asking the same thing for Sony. I’ve got most of the individual elements of a PC iLife studio already: ACID Music Studio (an awesome program, BTW), Sound Forge Audio Studio (which I’ve used for editing podcasts at work, and have even convinced my boss to order a few copies for the office’s podcasts) and even a trial copy of Vegas Movie Studio Platinum edition. I haven’t tried using Sony’s Photo Go software yet (although for $20 I might just try it, even though I have Photoshop CS2), and Sony doesn’t have an equivalent to iWeb (which might not matter to those who can do a little coding and have Konqueror KompoZer (Where in the hell did I get Konqueror from??) or even Microsoft Expression – more on that another time)

Adobe is better positioned than Sony right now to offer the same primary elements that iLife offers. Adobe already offers Premier Elements and Photoshop Elements in a bundled package. So if Adobe were to offer “Audition Elements”, GoLive CS2 (with a bunch of templates ‘cause, let’s face it, iWeb’s strength is a bunch of templates you can work with) and a version of Adobe Encore DVD maker, you would have the PC version of iLife.

Adobe or Sony aren’t the only ones who could do this, but I believe they are already positioned to do this (although Sony still needs some Web design software to round out their package – unless Microsoft decides to release Expression Web as part of Vista… didn’t think so). And given that the apparent view of Apple Computer, Inc. (Apple, Inc… feh) is to not release this product to the larger market (think of the market share you’ll get, plus the possibility of people moving from PC to Mac to use the professional levels of these tools) then either of these two companies could move in to fill the void. Especially if they worked out a deal with Microsoft to provide this suite as part of Vista’s operating system. The tighter these programs are interconnected, the better the experience would for the user.

Speaking of Sony, if they really wanted to generate some goodwill, they could release this suite for under $150. After all, it’s not like Sony has any bad PR to come back from… (rootkits, anyone?)