iMovie '08 - ugh?

The reviews are decidedly mixed on iMovie'08, part of the new suite from Apple.

Andy Dickenson generally likes it but points out some flaws, such as the inability to extract audio.

Chuck Fadley, in comments to the same post, says it's "almost completely useless for journalism," and Angela Grant pretty much seems to agree.

Rich Hernandez at Multimedia Shooter doesn't seem too impressed, either.

Dickenson links to a good post by Bakari Chavanu listing major features available in previous iMovie versions not available in '08. Among the most serious I see are lack of audio extraction, loss of control over fades and the inability to bring older projects into the new program.

I agree with the general sentiment that Apple has mucked this one up, or as Hernandez put it, has made it DUMB. Loss of audio extraction is a nonstarter for me; I use it, for instance, to remove the reporter's voice track from news video to create video and soundbite packages that my beginning writing class learns to write to. (And, no, using Garageband to deal with the audio is not convenient nor particularly practical for this case. And while I can lear FCP or FCE easily enough, it's still a pain when there was a perfectly good simple enough program to do what was needed.)

I admit to not having actually used '08 yet -- and I don't know when I will. But there are enough voices out there that I hope Apple hears, listens and redesigns things.