Along with its iPad 2 launch, Apple also released a new version of iMovie for iOS. iMovie is $4.99 from the App Store, or a free update if you already own the iPhone version that debuted alongside iPhone 4 last summer.

As for iMovie, I think I’ve used just about every version of iMovie from iMovie 3 on a 2002 iMac to the latest iMovie ‘11 as well as the iPhone version, so I was eager to get my hands on the new iPad version. However, Apple states you must have an iPad 2 to run iMovie. iMovie for the iPad is not available for the original iPad, but I have read several reports of people successfully installing and using iMovie on an original iPad. Nonetheless, I have an iPad 2. If you’re thinking you’d like to use the iPad version of iMovie, but don’t want to shell out the dough for a new iPad, you can go here for instructions to install iMovie on your original iPad, but please note the cautions regarding the installation of additional apps. Also keep in mind, my experience with iMovie (as you’ll read below) says it is a very resource intensive app (obviously, right) and I wouldn’t make any guarantees. It started to get bogged down during heavy editing sessions with the iPad 2’s dual core A5, faster graphics chip and supposed 512 MB of RAM. So consider yourself warned.

Since the announcement of the first iPad — iPhone really — I have been waiting to see what touchscreen computing would do for the non-linear editor (NLE). The gestures of swiping and pinching with your fingers to manipulate footage seemed to me to be a perfect fit for an NLE. Final Cut Pro is Apple’s professional NLE, whereas iMovie is for the consumer. As if to put an exclamation point on this, Apple rebuilt iMovie from the ground up in 2008 taking what was a capable consumer level NLE and stripping it down into something much simpler. The past few releases and updates has seen iMovie get back much of it’s original functionality. The latest version is really quite good and can take on some fairly serious editing tasks, but make no mistake with iMovie, Apple’s goal is to make editing movies fun. Final Cut Pro is an incredible editor, but to use it for “fun” and to edit my home movies with it isn’t what I think of when I think “Final Cut”.

iMovie for the iPad is no different in this regard. iMovie for the iPad is a stripped down version of it’s older bother on the Mac although it’s far more capable than its iPhone counterpart.
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