The controversial iMovie ‘08 app from the iLife ‘08 suite just got an update - 7.0.1, available through Software Update or via a direct 9MB download.

iMovie’s new version is controversial because of accusations that it’s a dumbed-down version, or more a downgrade than an upgrade to the previous version, since some major features seemed to have been deliberately removed. Some users say they would have preferred not to have gotten this particular upgrade had they known this would happen. Additionally, it has pretty high hardware requirements, and will not port older iMovie files from previous versions. Doh!

For non-Intel Mac users, the app is notorious as well because it’s the only component in the suite that requires an Intel or at least a 1.95GHz G5 processor and will not install on older Power PC Macs, even though the rest of the suite will. As usual Apple is vague on the specifics of this update, except to say that it addresses .Mac Web Gallery issues and improves stability of the app. The biggest disappointment with the update is that it does not restore the omitted features, as some had hoped. (For 9mb, what did you expect?)