Will the real iMovie please stand up?
by Volker Weber
David Pogue is not happy:
Most people are used to a product cycle that goes like this: Release a new version every year or two, each more capable than the last. Ensure that it's backward-compatible with your existing documents.
iMovie '08, on the other hand, has been totally misnamed. It's not iMovie at all. In fact, it's nothing like its predecessor and contains none of the same code or design. It's designed for an utterly different task, and a lot of people are screaming bloody murder.
Comments
I've been reading about this too - apparently iMovie has been stripped of a lot of functionality. I'm reluctant to upgrade to iLife '08 because of it - even though I don't do movies yet...I will.
You can keep your copy of iMovie by renaming it. Apple also lets iLife 08 users a copy of iMovie 06. But as the comments on David's site spell out, this is end of life for iMovie 06. No more fixes and upgrades. (Not sure about the fixes). In the long run either iMovie 08 has to smarten up, or you are stuck with two progams who don't cut it. One is old and dated, the other one too weak.
Maybe they moved iMove '08 to Eclipse and will be adding lots of new features in 8.0.1 :-)
Bruce, and with version 8.0.2 we should expect iMovie for Windows :-)
Having used iMovie 08 I have to say that I think Apple has seen a new area of the market and has moved to exploit it. These days more consumers (not pros or prosumers) are taking video not with camcorders but with digital still cameras that also take video, or else with their mobile phones.
These users are unlikely to be interested in timelines, plug-ins or many of the other features that have been dropped from iLife08 (for the moment). Instead they want to put a few clips together as quickly as possible, create a
@Stuart - what do you think of the rest of iLife 08? I am wondering if it's worth the upgrade before I really start getting into garageband or iPhoto for instance.
Rob, I haven't had the chance to play with Garageband'08 yet.
However, for me, iPhoto'08 is worth the money alone... The Events feature makes it so much easier to manage our library (15,000 images in the main library plus a couple of older archives), the ability to hide images that you want to keep but not view regularly is great, and the web galleries are beautiful - though you do need a .Mac account to make the most of them. The thing I hadn't appreciated is that the web galleries are kept synchronised with the Event (or selection) in your library which is a great feature.
As you probably realised from my first post, I really like the iMovie'08 - I'm no great videographer, so the effort involved in the old iMovieHD (though still far less than Premiere or other PC packages) meant I often didn't get around to making clips of family birthdays, outings etc. into iMovies, whereas in the new version it is so easy it really does only take 10 minutes max. In the old one, you really had to watch clips all the way through to check them out whereas the skimming feature allows you to quickly see what is in each clip and to cut them if needed.
Mind you, I have had iLife06 since it was announced back in January'06, so the upgrade was overdue for me. However, if I had just spent $1000+ on a MacBook Pro I might feel differently about the upgrade cost ;-)
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