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

Weak sauce.

First, you mischaracterize what Jobs said: “During the presentation of the new iLife, Steve Jobs mentioned that one of their software engineers couldn’t put together a video of a recent vacation, so he decided to create a new iMovie that would make video creation faster, easier, etc. Blah, blah, blah, and more PR speak.” Swing and a miss! This unnamed engineer most assuredly could put together a movie. He’s apparently well-versed in iMovie and Final Cut Pro. But he was frustrated because it wasn’t easy in either one to just slap together a nice looking 5 minute movie in 20 minutes.

People don’t pay much attention when they’ve got a hissy brewing, but if you’d taken a moment, you might have seen the kinds of things that frustrated him, and the extraordinary solution he came up with: painless scrubbing through clips, expansion of clips, and selecting within clips. This is very cool, and it gives you a level of access to your video that you never had before, in any application.

Now, if all you want to do is take clips whole and cobble them together, you won’t get what’s amazing about iMovie and no doubt you’ll prefer the old iMovie. Fine. But it’s an extraordinary feature, and with all your whining about forced upgrades (boy is THAT a dead horse), you don’t even give it a mention.

You miss the timeline? Fine. This is a legitimate complaint, and if you miss it, there are probably others who miss it too. But this… wow, this is just a tantrum. iMovie wasn’t dumbed down. It was replaced by something different. This isn’t some sinister plot to keep annoying the user until they cough up more money. Somebody thought outside the box, broke clean of the “Upgrade means adding a couple of features rut” and made an entirely new app.

IMHO iMovie ‘08 is a big step in the right direction.  If you know how to edit in FinalCut or other professional or higher end app, you will find iMovie to be dumbed down to the point of actually being difficult to use.  However this was more true with the older versions. 

‘08 is so radically different to what we’re used to that it takes a while to understand it, but once you stop fighting for something that looks familiar, you’ll realize what they did was come up with a much better interface for an *entry-level* app.

Uh, J-Rod,

“...you’re basing this article on the way YOU use iMovie.”

And… ”The 08 suite blows away past versions...”

And finally… ”Dumbed down simple doesn’t make it one bit harder for old iMovie users to get used to.”

All are your sweeping generalizations based on your OWN computer experience. Not cool, dude.

GIMME A BREAK!

First off, I don’t agree at all with what you’re saying. Perhaps you’re basing this article on the way YOU use iMovie. Second of all, iLife is FREE on all new Macs. And 3rd of all, no one is forcing anyone to upgrade to anything?

The 08 suite blows away past versions, and for the measily upgrade price that it costs if you’re not buying a new Mac, its far far far from the drug dealer hussle you’re referring to.

Dumbed down simple doesn’t make it one bit harder for old iMovie users to get used to. Again, dont generalize based on your OWN computer habits. Not cool

Sigh, add me to the list of very disappointed customers… iMovie 08 sucks .. blows.. at the same time… hard… yesh,,

Such a horrible step assbackwards… iMovie 08 is more like a Microsuck app… If I wanted a crappy M$ app, guess what? I’d use M$ crap. I’m a Mac user for a reason, and iMovie 08 does not represent what Mac users expect or want… beh…

shudder..

jwd

BennyBoy, most of Apple’s new iLife apps are loaded with bugs when launched. It takes five or six revs to get it right. iMovie HD crashed all the time when I first bought it, but has been very stable the past year. I won’t touch iMovie ‘08 for awhile.

BTW - let’s not malign the recently departed. It’s not good form.

I forgot to add this, too.

It seems that your own site thought the last iMovie was full of bugs too.

Editor’s Note: The review in the link was over 18 months ago, shortly after iMovie HD was released, and, as is the case with Apple’s new releases, it had plenty of bugs. We expect the same with the new iLife ‘08 (iPhoto has already had an update).

You’re Kidding right?

The last iMovie was sooo full of bugs that it was impossible to crank out a movie in a hurry without having some wierd technical glitches that were part of bugs in the program.  I’m really looking forward to the click and cut and paste when you want just part of clip.  There are a lot of bugs in iMove HD just check out this link

http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovie_HD_6_bugs.html

So I’m looking forward to the new iMovie, dumbed down or not.  I just hope they fixed the bugs first.