[TonyD]

I was hoping that iLife08 would include some additional explicit support for syncing photos between iPhoto and the iPhone. Am I missing something ?

[tom2012]

Yeah, I was quit baffled as well. Since upgrading to iPhoto '08, plugging my iPhone into my Mac no longer initiated an iPhoto sync. I was like, what's up with that?
Solution #1:
(from Help menu) "You can set iPhoto to open automatically when you plug in your camera, triggering the import process. Choose iPhoto > Preferences, then click General. For Connecting camera opens, select iPhoto from the pop-up menu."
Solution #2:
If that doesn't solve your issue, simply quit iPhoto and delete the iPhoto plist:
"User">Library>Preferences>com.apple.iPhoto.plist
Restart iPhoto '08 and plug in your iPhone and it should recognize it as usual (it did for me)

[TonyD]

What I had in mind was some intelligent behavior to recognize the fact that the iPhone has a relatively small amount of storage e.g. to automatically downsize the images (perhaps it does ?) or make it easy to select a subset of the photo library.