Pogue: New iMovie an "Utter Bafflement"

by , 10:45 AM EDT, August 17th, 2007

Apple made some great improvements with the new versions of iPhoto, iWeb, and GarageBand in iLife '08, but David Pogue of The New York Times thinks the company took a major step backwards with the latest incarnation of iMovie. According to him, the new version is an "utter bafflement."

His biggest complaint was that compared to the iMovie HD '06 it replaces, it seems like a stripped down application. "The new iMovie, for example, is probably the only video-editing program on the market with no timeline," he said.

The loss of audio effects, themes, visual effects, and the ability to export sections of movies all hamper the usability of iMovie '08, and the the lack of support for iMovie plug-ins means that many users won't be able to take advantage of add-ons they have been using for some time.

Even though Mr. Pogue was underwhelmed with the new iMovie, he did find a few things to like. "To be sure, the new version has some cool features," he said. "You can send a completed video to YouTube with one menu command; the color-correction and frame-cropping tools are unprecedented in a consumer program; and you can really, truly delete unwanted pieces of your clips, thus reclaiming hard drive space."

In the end, however, he sees the new iMovie as a weak replacement for the old one. He added "But one thing's for sure: it sure isn't iMovie."