There's a couple of flaws in the views of Phil's. Firstly to say that the timeline allows more power is actually not true, in fact quite the opposite. While iMovie '06 does allow for a better volume adjustment, the fact that it only allows for two audio tracks + whatever audio is in the video means it is woefully inadequate.

If you strip the audio from the video so that you can edit the volume of the sound you have reduced the overall audio tracks to two. This can be seen in the image Phil showed:

The purple bits represent the audio tracks. Notice the three ticks on the right hand side? That's a tick for video, audio track 1, and audio track 2. Want to see iMovie '08's ability to handle audio?

That's 4 music tracks dragged from iTunes into iMovie plus whatever is in the video itself meaning 5 audio tracks. But wait there's more. At one stage I had 10 tracks and could easily add many more.

But truly powerful audio editing should be passed to the proper app namely GarageBand so whatever shortfalls both iMovie's have GarageBand should be able to pick up. '08's drag and drop methodology is infinitely more powerful than people give it credit for. This is actually more inline with the Final Cut Pro way of editing which is somewhat ironic considering the arguments. For more powerful audio editing in Final Cut Pro you pass the audio into Sound Studio.

Another example of power simplified is in working with photos. Both apps use Ken Burns Effects but only '08 truly uses Ken Burns Effects. Here's the settings under '06:

It's not bad but super simplistic to the point of being useless. Now for '08:

See how much more simpler it is to work with photos and yet how much more powerful it is? The green box represents start and the red end with the yellow arrow being the path the clip will follow. Shrink the boxes down you can make it move across a diagonal path. You can also rotate, crop the image, or just have a static image (Fit). No timeline, infinitely more power.

This is the photo on the clipboard. Notice the three buttons. The first is Video Adjustments (think iPhoto's adjustment editor), the second brings up the above window and the third allows you to set the duration of the effect.

But like many people Phil argues that because the interface of iMovie '06 is similar to Final Cut that it will be relatively easy to move between apps. Actually the opposite is true and to illustrate this I'd like you to think of a car.

If I was to ask you what was easier, learning to drive or driving an automatic for the first time after having only driven a manual before how would you answer? Most of you would say that it is easier to hop into an automatic than it is to learn to drive for the first time because you already know how to drive. On the surface this sounds true but the problem is this is generally not the case in practise and I'm speaking from experience here. The first time I drove an automatic I almost shot myself through the windscreen at 80Km/h after I went to apply the clutch but instead hit the larger brake pedal. What idiot thought that design was a good thing? Because I hopped into the car knowing how to drive I was in a bad position. It's a car, it should drive the same. Clearly it isn't. By comparison, because I never knew how to drive when I went for my license in the first place, I was in a better position to learn. I had no preconceived notions as to how to drive a car because I had no comparison. A car is different to drive than a motorcycle or pushbike which were my two main forms of transport then.

And this becomes my point. Because iMovie '08's interface is so vastly different to Final Cut's when it comes time to move to Final Cut you are forced to learn a new interface. You have no preconceived ideas as to how to use Final Cut. This is not the case when it comes to iMovie '06 which would be the equivalent to hopping into an automatic from a manual or vice versa. '06 may look and feel similar but it doesn't operate the same and so everything you've learned with iMovie doesn't translate into Final Cut and so you find yourself getting frustrated because the brakes are jammed on.

And this has been my point all along. iMovie is sufficiently different in the way it does things that thinking the transition is going to be an easy one is actually misleading. If the transition is more difficult then it seems to me that the easiest form of learning is to come to something you know nothing about. It forces you to pay attention to what you're doing because it is new to you, therefore you're more open to new ways of working. With this in mind what do you think is going to be more frustrating, using two apps that have completely different interfaces or using two apps that have a similar interface that works in different ways? It's got to be the latter because you will always be confused and try to do something that the app can't do. If the differences are in your face you know which app you're using and thus work accordingly.

It is for this reason that I think iMovie and Final Cut MUST have two different interfaces. Like I said in my previous post, iMovie is not Final Cut Express Lite but is its own app. It is a compliment to Final Cut and thus needs its own interface.

Oh and Phil, the app you're looking for is Pages. Not only is its way of doing things different between AppleWorks, TextEdit, and Office but its way of working is different within itself depending on which mode you're in. Apple has set interface precedences before, hell you only have to look at Numbers for that one.