Yes, that’s right. Till date, all you could do, with images, was scale them. Now, WordPress has decided to enable more image editing features like crop, rotate, flip, undo and redo. While WordPress Tavern doesn’t report it to be too user friendly, we expect the features to be as polished as WordPress is known to be, by the time the 2.9 version reaches puberty.
WordPress 2.9 also seems to have a minimum requirement of MySQL 4.1.2 (up from 4.0, earlier) and has a better revamped admin screen settings. For a demonstration of how WordPress 2.9 might be, check out the video below.
Thanks for linking to the Tavern and for embedding the screencast. Image editing is still in the very early stages of development. The only thing I found to not be user friendly was the crop tool as when you click on it, nothing happens. But, until WordPress 2.9 hits beta, nothing is a sure bet.