Pro vs. Joe: Why Apple Dumbed Down iMovie ‘08.

Sorry guys… Not buying it.  Bottom line, Kate nailed it.  The issue is FUNCTIONALITY.  I get that Apple was trying to put out a version of iMovie that a hamster could use, and a retarded hamster at that. 

Fair enough.

But COME ON!  Look at all the functions that were left off.  This is NOT about “comfort zones” and “hissy fits.” I can deal with new interfaces and the like. No problem.  But this?  It’s like I’ve been driving a car for years, and suddenly someone is trying to sell me a bicycle as an upgrade.  True, it is simpler to use, and more widely accessible to the general public, but… well you get the idea.

The bottom line:  An upgrade should be an UPGRADE.  iMovie 08 is NOT.

I’m mad as hell...in my opinion it seems like steve jobs was not on the ‘Job’ or maybe bill gates sliped something in his ‘Apple’ juice !! ..what were they thinking-- !!!? I been running the ‘real’ imovie ware for years..As for 08 being easier? I had to pay for an online tutorial to understand that mishmashed imovie o8 interface!!..Imovie 08 is a slouch!!!-missing tons of very urgent and important tools ... those who say ‘nay..? ,,you must be a newbie and never used the old versions
Apple ..shame on you !! oh yeah , Thanks for wasting my weekend- I had to re-do all my ken burns effects on another mac that still had 06 ,as your new and ‘improve’auto ken burns was too jerky to watch in the playback , when i contacted apple care techs,,they just said , “ oh, yeah..we know about that ...sorry’..../// then how about giving me my refund ?? for ilife 08

Peter nailed the direction apple is going.
“We must distinguish between easy-to-use and easy-to-learn. “
Easy-to-learn being the destination of the iLife suite… Many user are result driven. they just want to get what they want in the least frustrating way.. no steep learning curve… no pondering the directions in the Help… just be done with it already. Others want and need the full functionality of a full-industry norm app. they’ve paid their learning dues and they know what they need from their finished file… the pro apps are for them..Those Pro apps are easy-to-use is as much as the pro is enabled to do what is needed.

iMovie was the only app I never really used. I played with version 1 when it first came out and made a few movies, but it was always too time consuming. It was a cumbersome app and it did not get easier with newer versions. We must distinguish between easy-to-use and easy-to-learn. Perhaps old iMovie was easy to use once you had learned it but I never got there, and I cannot even dream of seeing my parents using it. iMovie 08 looks great and I cannot wait to play with it.

So, New Type, what you’re saying is that Apple dumbed down the new iMovie, right? After two days of dealing with the inefficiency of creating a movie the “new” way I can say Apple missed the boat with this one. Instead of making iMovie easier to use, and add library clip and project features, they start from scratch, create a new paradigm for editing without realizing that it’s actually worse than the old way.

We love you Kate!! Keep up the good work and keep callin’ ‘em like they is.

I have to definitely agree with Ron and IT Guy. The problem Katie, is that you don’t like iMovie ‘08 because it isn’t a gussied up iMovie HD. In other words, it’s something different and pokes at more than a few comfort zones.

I would like to remind everyone here that there was ceaseless complaining about the “inefficiences” and the “worthless eye candy” of the Dock when OS X first debuted from hordes of comfortable MacOS 9 users. In fact, as I recall, many MacOS 9 users were disatisfied wtih nearly all aspects of OS X.

My point? It wasn’t that OS X was inferior to OS 9 - it was clearly a superior foundation and a platform that would enable Apple to grow to to where it is today. But the main beef, it seems to me, was that OS X was simply too different and broke too many conventions.

I would also like to remind the general distaste many people had for iTunes when it first debuted. iTunes was considered a “bad” program because it managed all the music for you. You had no idea where it cataloged the actual music files on your hard drive. It was “horrible” that it took away the control away from the user, who was quite comfortable filing away music in hundreds of manually created folders and sub-folders because that user was *used to* knowing exactly how to spend hours and hours filing music away. Only after a couple of years did people realize, “Duh! There’s no point in manually managing music! The computer should just do it for me!”

iMovie ‘08 is similar in such a way in that it attacks the very assumptions of what a futuristic non-linear video editor should be. It breaks the old, comfortable assumptions. Your article is a little bit disingenuous in that (as others pointed out above) the engineer behind iMovie ‘08 in question was a Final Cut Pro master, yet it almost sounds like you are talking down to him about how to edit movies.

iMovie ‘08 is a RETHINKING of basic video editing. That’s why it has a totally new icon, to visually indicate a TOTAL break from the past. Frankly, Apple should have also changed the name because iMovie ‘08 leads people to mistakenly think it is an upgrade from iMovie HD. It is NOT. It is something totally new, and is version 1.0 of something totally new.

So instead of trying to force iMovie ‘08 to be like iMovie HD, why not take a step back and reevaluate things in a new light.

Because if Apple simply decided to make iMovie ‘08 into Final Cut Express Light, well, someone please explain to me how making a video editing program more and more like a Pro app with each iteration makes things easier for the video neophyte? Because that’s what was happening (and I’ve even heard some people say Apple should just make FCE the new iMovie - please! Talk about not knowing your audience!)

Funny how some Mac users are so proud to “think different” but when it comes down to it, Apple is really the only one that’s willing to take that risk time after time.

I think you’re reading something far more sinister into this than what is really going on:
iMovie HD - mature app with some basic design limitations.
iMovie ‘08 - brilliant hack that gets Jobs backing as a better way to do entry-level video, but basically a 1.0 app. 

Sometimes it truly is better to start over from scratch, but with software, there’s always a price and it’s usually feature immaturity.

I’m looking forward to kicking the tires on iMovie 08.  It’ll be interesting to see whether it gets any significant feature upgrades before the next rev of iLife ships.  I’m betting yes.

Kate, that’s a bit of rant, but it looks to me like you isolated the exact issue with iMovie 8. I listened to Jobs’ presentation and wondered what kind of Apple engineer who apparently knew something about Final Cut yet couldn’t use iMovie to edit clips of a movie in 20 minutes. My wife can do it, so the fault isn’t with iMovie.

I have to agree that Apple is pulling a switcheroo on us. iMovie gets the library and project features but loses the all important timeline for editing. Dumb, dumb, dumber.

There’s nothing in iMovie 8 that could not have been popped into the old iMovie and improved what was already very good. I tried iMovie 8 and found that there’s no time savings, no keystroke savings, not anything better at all except for the project and clip management.

You are 100% correct, despite what the idiot above me wrote-- iMovie 8 is dumbed down and aimed at a very basic user-- probably the Windows PC users who are switching to the Mac.