Final Cut Pro X Released

[jaadgy akanni]

But still, it's not totally far fetched to think the same could happen in our industry. In other words, just like iOS -- those dismissed it as unprofessional might find themselves come back to it someday because it's the best tool.

That's exactly what's gonna happen; I'll bet anything on that.
Humans can't help evolving, improving, constantly changing for the better, the easier, the faster, the more convenient.
Good bye 90's paradigm, for the future of video editing has just begun-it's called FCPX. I welcome it.

 

[Chris Kenny]

So once FCPX is fixed, how long will it take the good news to spread around? And how long will it take before the misinformation and FUD stops being told as truth? My guess is that FCPX is going to going to have a tough go over the next couple of years. I've already waited 3 years for an update to FCP, and I'm not willing to wait another couple while Apple fishes it's reputation out of the trash.

Fundamentally, what has happened here? Apple shipped an initial release lacking features required by folks in some niche markets. People freaked out. Apple issued a statement clarifying that they were working on adding these features. There's nothing about this that should, particularly, cause long-term damage to Apple. The perception that significant damage has been done is largely a consequence of all of us, right now, still being too close to the whole thing. Antennagate seemed like a huge crisis at the time. But how many people are actually going to hold off on buying an iPhone 5 because of it? The whole thing is now widely regarded as having been much ado about nothing. A year from now, most people will only remember this in vague terms, and (and this is the important bit) it won't have the same emotional component to it at all. Human brains are constructed so that emotional intensity fades over time.

Of course the "I'm more serious because I use Avid" crowd will probably go around repeating some distorted version of these events for the next decade. And people who do actually make a permanent jump to another NLE platform before waiting to see how things settle out with FCP X will be anxious to justify (to themselves and others) their decision. But elitist nonsense and self-serving FUD are hardly rare in this industry -- Red fans should know that better than anyone. They never manage to impede the progress of legitimately compelling products in the long run. Looking at Red's list of credits, Red fans should know that as well.

 

[Colin Sheldon]

Fundamentally, what has happened here? Apple shipped an initial release lacking features required by folks in some niche markets. People freaked out. Apple issued a statement clarifying that they were working on adding these features. There's nothing about this that should, particularly, cause long-term damage to Apple. The perception that significant damage has been done is largely a consequence of all of us, right now, still being too close to the whole thing. Antennagate seemed like a huge crisis at the time. But how many people are actually going to hold off on buying an iPhone 5 because of it? The whole thing is now widely regarded as having been much ado about nothing. A year from now, most people will only remember this in vague terms, and (and this is the important bit) it won't have the same emotional component to it at all. Human brains are constructed so that emotional intensity fades over time.

Of course the "I'm more serious because I use Avid" crowd will probably go around repeating some distorted version of these events for the next decade. And people who do actually make a permanent jump to another NLE platform before waiting to see how things settle out with FCP X will be anxious to justify (to themselves and others) their decision. But elitist nonsense and self-serving FUD are hardly rare in this industry -- Red fans should know that better than anyone. They never manage to impede the progress of legitimately compelling products in the long run. Looking at Red's list of credits, Red fans should know that as well.

The required features are much more than niche requirements - it's really any post house that has more than one suite, and anyone who likes to use After Effects, Pro Tools, Speed Grade, etc. in other words ANY project that will not start and finish on a single machine. For us that's the majority of our projects.

For example, I produced a low budget $20k dramatic piece for a non-profit last year. It was shot on Red MX, edited in Premiere, effects were done in After Effects, color grading was done on speed grade and the dialogue edit was done in Pro Tools. Would that workflow have worked with FCP7? Yes. FCPX? No. I think there are a lot of editors who like to collaborate with other people in the post production chain.

But my point wasn't really about how good or bad FCPX is. You might feel Apple's reputation has been good up until this point, and will recover swiftly. I disagree. I think the discontentment runs deeper than that. We're on page 119 in this forum, and "I hate FCP X" gets 1.5 million hits on google, tens of thousands of #ihatefcpx on twitter... the backlash is huge and now Premiere and Avid users will spread as much FUD as possible to increase their competitive advantage.

The promotions that Avid and Premiere are putting on also indicates that they see a fair bit of discontent that they are trying to take advantage of. I even got an email from Plural Eyes offering a 50% discount on crossgrades. I've heard about film programs that are refusing to allow students to use FCPX because it isn't professional. From what I see an exodus is occurring, and only time will tell how large it really is. If it really is large, then Apple won't be motivated to add pro features to FCPX because there won't be enough pros using it. You may have been satisfied by Apple's FAQ, but I sure wasn't. That's when I decided to order Premiere.

You're correct this won't be emotional a year from now, but I think most people will have moved on to Avid to Premiere and FCP won't really matter anymore. CS6.0 will be out with even more awesome features, and Avid will finally be 64 bit.

And the iphone 4 issue was very different on a lot of levels. I really don't see that as a valid comparison.

Really, though, all there is to do is wait and see what happens. There is just too little information at this point.

 

[Chris Kenny]

The required features are much more than niche requirements - it's really any post house that has more than one suite, and anyone who likes to use After Effects, Pro Tools, Speed Grade, etc. in other words ANY project that will not start and finish on a single machine. For us that's the majority of our projects.

Yes. I know. For us as well. But post houses are a niche in the larger world of people who get paid to edit video. A small one.

But my point wasn't really about how good or bad FCPX is. You might feel Apple's reputation has been good up until this point, and will recover swiftly. I disagree. I think the discontentment runs deeper than that. We're on page 119 in this forum, and "I hate FCP X" gets 1.5 million hits on google, tens of thousands of #ihatefcpx on twitter... the backlash is huge and now Premiere and Avid users will spread as much FUD as possible to increase their competitive advantage.

Anything new has to deal with that. The more interesting it is, the more FUD gets spread about it. It matters little in the end. Premiere and Avid users, today, have a rhetorical advantage. But Apple is offering a lower-priced product with more mass-market appeal. That puts history on their side. (Or we'd all still be working SGI workstations, rather than "personal" computers.)

The promotions that Avid and Premiere are putting on also indicates that they see a fair bit of discontent that they are trying to take advantage of. I even got an email from Plural Eyes offering a 50% discount on crossgrades. I've heard about film programs that are refusing to allow students to use FCPX because it isn't professional. From what I see an exodus is occurring, and only time will tell how large it really is. If it really is large, then Apple won't be motivated to add pro features to FCPX because there won't be enough pros using it. You may have been satisfied by Apple's FAQ, but I sure wasn't. That's when I decided to order Premiere.

An alternative interpretation of the Adobe/Avid offers is that these companies are trying to lock in sales before people realize this whole situation isn't as much of a crisis for Final Cut Pro as it has been portrayed to be.

I remember people saying they'd leave the Mac platform when Apple started charging for iTools (later known as .Mac and then MobileMe). Yes, seriously. Folks in Mac Internet forums were apoplectic about that for weeks back in 2002. The truth is, most existing FCP 7 users will keep using it for a while -- and would have regardless of what Apple had released on the 21st. This gives Apple time.

Most of the damage that has occurred to Apple's reputation is a consequence not of what Apple has actually done, but of what people are reading into it. The thing is, much of what people are reading into it is (see my many arguments above) wrong. And this will be fairly obvious in the long run. Even in the no-so-long run. Apple is introducing XML export in the next few weeks. What happens if there's a way to get FCP X sequences into Resolve by September? What happens if someone cuts an indie feature in it by January? The whole 'case against Apple' here is built on a house of cards -- on screwy market definitions, on a handful of missing features which Apple has mostly already said will be added, and on mostly misinformed opinion about a user interface that practically nobody has really spent enough time with yet.

 

[Colin Sheldon]

Yes. I know. For us as well. But post houses are a niche[/JI] in the larger world of people who get paid to edit video. A small one.

It isn't simply post houses, it's people who want to compete with post houses or work with post houses. It also includes people who have a buddy who does after effects work, or someone who downloaded an illegal* copy of pro tools. IMHO that covers a lot of people. (*I am no way advocating the use of pirated software. It does, however, exist and extends the reach of the software to a lot of people that don't have the resources to obtain it by legal means).

Anything new has to deal with that. The more interesting it is, the more FUD gets spread about it. It matters little in the end. Premiere and Avid users, today, have a rhetorical advantage. But Apple is offering a lower-priced product with more mass-market appeal. That puts history on their side. (Or we'd all still be working SGI workstations, rather than "personal" computers.)

FCP+Compressor+motion = 400. Then you're going to need third party plug ins, etc, and DVD authoring software (which, I'm guessing is going to be extra just like motion and compressor) and all of a sudden it's near the price point of Premiere CS5.5 production pack. In fact CS5 would probably be cheaper if you have a copy of Photoshop or Illustrator (which a lot of people do). And if the software is too expensive, people tend to just download it.*

Time will tell how much of a mass market appeal there is. It has the chance of being too expensive for the consumers, and too feature lacking to be appealing to the pros. No one knows. Apple took a gamble, and it might pay off or it might blow up in their faces.

An alternative interpretation of the Adobe/Avid offers is that these companies are trying to lock in sales before people realize this whole situation isn't as much of a crisis for Final Cut Pro as it has been portrayed to be.

I remember people saying they'd leave the Mac platform when Apple started charging for iTools (later known as .Mac and then MobileMe). Yes, seriously. Folks in Mac Internet forums were apoplectic about that for weeks back in 2002. The truth is, most existing FCP 7 users will keep using it for a while -- and would have regardless of what Apple had released on the 21st. This gives Apple time.

Most of the damage that has occurred to Apple's reputation is a consequence not of what Apple has actually done, but of what people are reading into it. The thing is, much of what people are reading into it is (see my many arguments above) wrong. And this will be fairly obvious in the long run. Even in the no-so-long run. Apple is introducing XML export in the next few weeks. What happens if there's a way to get FCP X sequences into Resolve by September? What happens if someone cuts an indie feature in it by January? The whole 'case against Apple' here is built on a house of cards -- on screwy market definitions, on a handful of missing features which Apple has mostly already said will be added, and on mostly misinformed opinion about a user interface that practically nobody has really spent enough time with yet.

You have no idea if what they're saying is wrong. As they say in the stock market past performance is no indication of future performance. There is a lot of evidence that you have to ignore to draw your conclusions (just like there is evidence you have to ignore to draw mine). Unless you had lunch with Steve jobs last week you're guessing just like the rest of us.


You choose to ignore stuff like this:
http://brookwillard.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/the-state-of-apples-professional-line/
Or the fact that Apple took the expresscard slot out of the macbook pro and replaced with a CF card reader? The most widely used professional media type? Nope. An SD card slot. Their "pro" machine, with a consumer drive. My interpretation of that is that they want to take a consumer machine and slap pro on it so that the consumer/prosumer market will buy it. Hmmm... what if that's what they're doing to FCP? If so then it will never be acceptable in studio environments. It'll get 80% of the way there and then they'll stop.


There is no hard evidence, there is only guesswork. You might be right, you might be wrong. Only time will tell. For now I am on the side of people I respect, and that's good enough for me.

 

[Alan Dang]

When the unibody MacBooks came out, I switched from PC to Apple. But after a few generations of Apple products, I've switched back to a Windows 7 workflow. The FCPX story is just more validation that switching back to the Adobe/PC was the right choice.

I've read everyone's arguments and you are all right, but the arguments are really about two different things.

Chris's argument is that FCPX 10.0 isn't going to be what FCPX 10.1 will look like. He believes that Apple is making the right business decision going for the single-user professional who might be making training videos, wedding videos, etc. Just as Final Cut Pro 1.0 isn't what Final Cut Studio ended up being, FCPX 10.0 isn't what Final Cut Studio X will look like. Be patient, stick with FCP7 for now, and when FCPX is ready, go ahead and switch. Your guess is that switch is going to be ready in 6-12 months.

What my frustration with Apple is and what Colin and David have said is different. I'm not going to argue that FCPX "will never be suitable for film/studio work." What I'm saying is that FCPX shows that Apple has demonstrated a "habit" or a "pattern" of bad behavior when it comes to meeting the needs of film/studio work. As these habits/patterns are shaping up to be the "personality" of the Apple, it is a good time to sit back and reconsider if Apple is still the right company for me to work on.

Chris's argument is a product-level one. My argument is a systematic company-wide one. What is best for the Apple shareholder isn't always best for the film/studio editor.

There is a big difference between the old migration from Avid to FCP and the current FCPX migration. Companies like Avid, Adobe, and Microsoft know the mistakes that have been made and they've learned from them.

1. The Hardware and Operating System
Back in the day, Avid was catastrophically expensive for individual licensees. Not only was the software expensive, but it was also tied into expensive/proprietary hardware. Adobe Premiere was the iMovie Pro of the time. Windows had a habit of crashing.

In comes Apple with a stable operating system and software that was "good enough." Chris is exactly right. It was because FCP was designed for individual licensees as well ("consumers") that made FCP so cheap. Was it as good as Avid? No. Was it good enough? Yes.

This was the golden age of Apple. We saw things like Color, Shake, and a Mac Pro that was quieter than anything in the industry. Apple switching to Intel was also one of the best things ever. On the Mac Pro, Apple was consistently getting Intel CPUs *earlier* than the PC equivalent. You basically had Unix stability, Apple user interfaces, and Intel performance.

Then the golden age of Apple workstation computing changed. With the success of the i-devices, Apple's focus increasingly became consumer-level products. A smart move for the shareholders, but not so welcome for the film/studio professional.

Apple stopped focusing on getting the Intel hardware first and exclusively. Intel's tick-tock strategy for CPUs (driven by AMD's pressure) allowed them to continue on at Moore's Law (even faster, actually). A fast Nehalem Quad Core CPU was faster than an older 8-core Clovertown or Harpertown system, and today's Sandy Bridge CPU has really translated into a stratospheric leap in performance. While PC's were getting better, Apple dropped support for things like ExpressCard 34, failed to ever adopt e-SATA, and today, Apple hardware is no longer better than PC hardware.

On the OS side, we saw Windows XP which was insecure but stable, Windows Vista was slower, and only a bit more secure, and now we have Windows 7 which is pretty respectable. Microsoft successfully transitioned to 64-bit as the "default" supported platform. If you know anything about the MinWin project, you know that Windows 8 is going to be something pretty impressive. Microsoft has learned from its mistakes.

2. Software has changed
When Avid->FCP happened, Avid was too expensive. Now, places like Office Depot sell systems with 6GB of RAM, and desktop single-CPU PCs can easily support 24GB of RAM. Commodity hardware is "plenty fast." Look what consumer DSLR hardware did to Red's vision for 3K for $3k. Meanwhile, companies like Adobe and Avid, eager to break into the film/studio world have listened to their customers. Avid supports third-party I/O, and runs on regular systems. They're aggressively pursuing students with an academic version for $295 which includes 4 years of upgrades. Adobe has embraced the new world of hardware with Mercury Engine and CS5 is pretty darn stable. While Avid and Adobe are aggressively trying to incorporate features that help film/studio editors (even trying things like Adobe Story), Apple has not placed the same focus on film/studio work.

3. What's the future hold?
FCPX 10.0 will eventually add XML/EDL, multicam support, true video output, etc. (I hope). But what about Color? Is multi-cam or XML/EDL the first priority? Will we get multicam in 10.1, but not XML/EDL until 10.2 and support for calibrated video output until 10.3? We don't know Apple's timeline.

What I hate most about Apple is that they told the New York Times that they had been working with Red, when we know, straight from Red Team, that they had no advance discussions with Apple.

Meanwhile, Avid and Adobe do have a roadmap. Avid is moving toward 64-bit, recognizing (esp. with FCPX backlash) that they need to keep the same workflows. Adobe has a whole video about their vision of a collaborative world where things can be outputted for different screens.

What about Mac hardware? We don't know what the future is. Everything is still rumor. We do know that Apple has stopped being first-to-market with Intel workstation CPUs like they were with Clovertown, Harpertown, and Nehalem. Instead they're being first-to-market with consumer tech like "Thunderbolt." When we look at MacBook Air, we see that Apple is very much willing to stick with older technology when it suits them.

What about PC hardware? We do know that. PCs will always have the latest CPUs and GPUs.

In the end, it's the editor's vision that produces the final product. Apple, PC, Avid, Adobe are just tools to help make an editor's life easier. If you feel that FCPX makes your life easier, then embrace it. Plenty of single-seat editors will. But if you feel that FCPX makes your life tougher... that the uncertainty of the roadmap makes it tougher... Then you just have to ask yourself if there's another product in your budget that does make your life easier. That product might be FCP7. But it might also be Adobe CS 5.5 or Avid MC 5.5. Then after you ask yourself what makes your life easier today, you have to ask yourself, what will make your life easier one year from now. Will it be FCPX 11, CS6, or MC6?

 

[Chris Kenny]

It isn't simply post houses, it's people who want to compete with post houses or work with post houses. It also includes people who have a buddy who does after effects work, or someone who downloaded an illegal* copy of pro tools. IMHO that covers a lot of people. (*I am no way advocating the use of pirated software. It does, however, exist and extends the reach of the software to a lot of people that don't have the resources to obtain it by legal means).

Again, your average FCP user is, and always has been, a corporate/web/edit video guy. All of what you're describing is niche, and this is why Apple released FCP X with the initial feature set that we saw.

You have no idea if what they're saying is wrong. As they say in the stock market past performance is no indication of future performance. There is a lot of evidence that you have to ignore to draw your conclusions (just like there is evidence you have to ignore to draw mine). Unless you had lunch with Steve jobs last week you're guessing just like the rest of us.

My guesses, for the reasons I've extensively outlined, make much more sense.

You choose to ignore stuff like this:
http://brookwillard.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/the-state-of-apples-professional-line/
Or the fact that Apple took the expresscard slot out of the macbook pro and replaced with a CF card reader? The most widely used professional media type? Nope. An SD card slot. Their "pro" machine, with a consumer drive. My interpretation of that is that they want to take a consumer machine and slap pro on it so that the consumer/prosumer market will buy it.

The current MacBook Pros are almost indecently high-powered, rivaling Mac Pro towers from just a couple of years ago, and have an external interface with two 10 Gbps full-duplex channels, i.e. 8x the total bandwidth of ExpressCard 34. How come Apple ditching ExpressCard on one model of computer is evidence they really don't care about pros, but Apple adding Thunderbolt to everything isn't evidence that they do? This is what I mean when I say the case against Apple here is weak. It's just cherry picking data points that fit the a particular narrative.

Hmmm... what if that's what they're doing to FCP? If so then it will never be acceptable in studio environments. It'll get 80% of the way there and then they'll stop.

It's already about 98% there. Seriously. They've rewritten the entire app as a 64-bit Cocoa app, running on top of a new engine and a new media framework. The hard stuff is done. There are only four significant missing features:

1) A way to export sequence data.
2) A way to map audio tracks for export.
3) 'Real' video output.
4) Multicam.

Apple has already announced the first and second of these are coming "in a few weeks" and "summer". The third, Apple is being slightly vague about, but it's very hard to believe it's not coming. The fourth is announced as a feature for the next major release, and there's lots of high-end single camera work that won't have to wait on it.

People are simply overstating the extent to which the app is not useful in high-end workflows. What's missing is critical to those workflows, but there isn't that much of it.

 

[Alan Dang]

Again, your average FCP user is, and always has been, a corporate/web/edit video guy. All of what you're describing is niche, and this is why Apple released FCP X with the initial feature set that we saw.

Agreed, but isn't that the why the niche of film/studio users are vocally upset with FCP X? We're not as important as we want to be with Apple. In contrast, Adobe's average user is a corporate/web/edit guy also -- but they seem to be actively courting our niche. Avid's average user isn't a corporate/web/edit video guy, but their pricing is dropping to the point where it can almost be reasonable for a corporate/web/edit video guy (if that workflow was right).

How come Apple ditching ExpressCard on one model of computer is evidence they really don't care about pros, but Apple adding Thunderbolt to everything isn't evidence that they do?

The 21 months it took between the time Apple removed ExpressCard from the 15" MacBook Pro to the time they put in Thunderbolt.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

I don't get it.

People invest 40K and much more in a camera system and are deeply upset that a 1.000 USD software that never worked well with their camera now costs 300 USD and still does not meet their needs. They take Apple's business decisions personally and fill a thread with more than 100 pages...? That's unreal.

If your problem is to edit R3Ds there are plenty of ways to accomplish that. The cheapest is Premier Pro and costs less than a 5th of a used SuperSpeed lens. It's cross platform and works with a 200 USD Nvidia card on a 1K off-the-shelv PC surprisingly well.

If you want to cope quality wise with your Red camera on the editing/finishing end get Smoke on the Mac for the price of 3 RPPs or, if you are an Apple hater, Avid DS that costs with a MC5 license 2 1/2 RPPs.

As a reduser worrying about a 300k app. is somewhat asymmetric.

Hans

 

[Chris Kenny]

What my frustration with Apple is and what Colin and David have said is different. I'm not going to argue that FCPX "will never be suitable for film/studio work." What I'm saying is that FCPX shows that Apple has demonstrated a "habit" or a "pattern" of bad behavior when it comes to meeting the needs of film/studio work. As these habits/patterns are shaping up to be the "personality" of the Apple, it is a good time to sit back and reconsider if Apple is still the right company for me to work on.

Chris's argument is a product-level one. My argument is a systematic company-wide one. What is best for the Apple shareholder isn't always best for the film/studio editor.

My argument goes a bit beyond what you're saying. It is also my contention that Apple's "pattern of bad behavior when it comes to meeting the needs of film/studio work" -- of focusing on the larger market first -- is not new, it is how Apple has always operated. And FCP was (according to all of us who chose it, anyway) the best choice of NLE in the previous round of the NLE wars anyway. There are actually consequences of targeting a larger market that benefit the niches most of us here are in.

Apple stopped focusing on getting the Intel hardware first and exclusively. Intel's tick-tock strategy for CPUs (driven by AMD's pressure) allowed them to continue on at Moore's Law (even faster, actually). A fast Nehalem Quad Core CPU was faster than an older 8-core Clovertown or Harpertown system, and today's Sandy Bridge CPU has really translated into a stratospheric leap in performance. While PC's were getting better, Apple dropped support for things like ExpressCard 34, failed to ever adopt e-SATA, and today, Apple hardware is no longer better than PC hardware.

There are rumors Apple is getting Sandy Bridge Xeons several months early, for this next round of Mac Pros. In general Apple is pretty good about keeping the Mac Pro current on processor specs. Claiming they don't care about the pro market because they don't get early access to new Xeons every time is pretty silly.

As far as the I/O issues, Apple has its own opinions, and these days they point in the direction of Thunderbolt, which is essentially the Holy Grail of pro I/O interfaces -- multiplexing PCIe gives it crazy bandwidth, ultra-low overhead and latency, and extreme adaptability in terms of the types of devices it can support.

2. Software has changed
When Avid->FCP happened, Avid was too expensive. Now, places like Office Depot sell systems with 6GB of RAM, and desktop single-CPU PCs can easily support 24GB of RAM. Commodity hardware is "plenty fast." Look what consumer DSLR hardware did to Red's vision for 3K for $3k. Meanwhile, companies like Adobe and Avid, eager to break into the film/studio world have listened to their customers. Avid supports third-party I/O, and runs on regular systems. They're aggressively pursuing students with an academic version for $295 which includes 4 years of upgrades. Adobe has embraced the new world of hardware with Mercury Engine and CS5 is pretty darn stable. While Avid and Adobe are aggressively trying to incorporate features that help film/studio editors (even trying things like Adobe Story), Apple has not placed the same focus on film/studio work.

List price for Media Composer is still ~8x the price of FCP X. More seriously -- and I know this is invisible to Avid fans, but it's true -- Media Composer is extremely unapproachable to people who aren't already familiar with it. This was true relative to FCP 7 an it's even more true relative to FCP X. This puts Media Composer at a substantial disadvantage in terms of picking up new users, which will have (has already had) fairly dire long-term consequences for its market share.

Premere Pro is a much more serious competitor in the long run, in my opinion. I expect the next decade to be more about Adobe vs. Apple than Avid vs. Apple.

Characterizing competitors as eager to break into the film/studio world (with the implication that Apple is not eager for FCP X to do this) is entirely missing the fact that a developer has different priorities at different times. Adobe rewrote Premiere in 2003. They modernized their engine a couple of years ago. Of course they're now looking around at what sort of gaps they can fill to make Premiere appealing in more market segments. That's what a developer does with an app at that stage of its lifecycle.

FCP X is a brand new app. For the first release, Apple's focus was on getting a solid foundation in place, and delivering sufficient functionality to make the app useful to the median Final Cut Pro user (who is not in film/broadcast). That's what a developer does with an app at that stage of its lifecycle. But the FAQ Apple has posted (as much as some wish it has provided more detailed information) makes it clear that Apple has now turned its attention to filling the gaps that need to be filled to make FCP X appealing in more market segments.

What I hate most about Apple is that they told the New York Times that they had been working with Red, when we know, straight from Red Team, that they had no advance discussions with Apple.

Given that nobody else Apple was talking to reported such a thing, this seems more likely to be David Pogue misunderstanding what he was told than Apple lying to him. Particularly since he goes on to demonstrate effective cluelessness about Red workflow in the same article. (Which is hardly unexpected for a random tech columnist with no specific connection to the industry.)

What about Mac hardware? We don't know what the future is. Everything is still rumor. We do know that Apple has stopped being first-to-market with Intel workstation CPUs like they were with Clovertown, Harpertown, and Nehalem. Instead they're being first-to-market with consumer tech like "Thunderbolt."

This characterization of Thunderbolt is frankly absurd. Consumers do not presently require anything resembling what Thunderbolt provides. Practically every announced Thunderbolt peripheral squarely targets pro users: video I/O interfaces, RAIDs, external PCIe enclosures, FibreChannel adaptors, etc.

Sure, eventually Apple wants Thunderbolt to have widespread consumer uses as well. Which will make gear a lot cheaper for pros. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to dislike about that.

When we look at MacBook Air, we see that Apple is very much willing to stick with older technology when it suits them.

Seriously? The fact that Apple uses an older-generation CPU in a 2.3 pound netbook is now a reason to doubt their commitment to the professional market? This is weak. Assuming the MacBook Air were remotely relevant to this discussion (which it's not) I could point out that Apple makes essentially the fastest netbook in the world, and claim that as evidence of their commitment to performance. The truth is, today's high-end Mac towers are higher-end relative to mainstream Macs than has been the case at most times in the past. (At least when the towers and desktops aren't split across processor generations the way they currently are while the Mac Pros wait on Sandy Bridge Xeons.)

 

[Chris Kenny]

Agreed, but isn't that the why the niche of film/studio users are vocally upset with FCP X? We're not as important as we want to be with Apple. In contrast, Adobe's average user is a corporate/web/edit guy also -- but they seem to be actively courting our niche. Avid's average user isn't a corporate/web/edit video guy, but their pricing is dropping to the point where it can almost be reasonable for a corporate/web/edit video guy (if that workflow was right).

See my post above. Adobe is actively courting our niche because Premiere Pro has been around for 8 years at this point. They've had time to get everything in place for the median user, and are now looking farther afield. Very different considerations are in play with the first release of a ground-up rewrite. Now that the new media framework, the new engine, the new UI, etc. are done, and the app has a feature set sufficient to make it useful to the median FCP user, we can expect Apple to also look further afield. And based on their FAQ, our niche seems to be one of the first places they're looking.

The 21 months it took between the time Apple removed ExpressCard from the 15" MacBook Pro to the time they put in Thunderbolt.

Apple left ExpressCard on the 17" for people who really needed it. "Apple doesn't care about pros because they expected them to buy a laptop with a slightly larger screen (which many of them would have wanted anyway) to get an ExpressCard slot for 21 months" is just not a very compelling argument. You could also complain, I suppose, that Apple doesn't offer a 13" machine with a dedicated GPU, 'forcing' pros to buy 15" machines. The reality is that Apple is not going to offer all options on all models. It has nothing to do with Apple valuing or not valuing pros, it's just a matter of practicality. Apple has to make choices to narrow things down to some reasonable number of model variations.

 

[Scott Crawley]

What I hate most about Apple is that they told the New York Times that they had been working with Red, when we know, straight from Red Team, that they had no advance discussions with Apple.

If that's your biggest beef then you don't have much to complain about.

If you were working with an SDK or other tools and data supplied by Red, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that you were "working with Red" even if no member of the Red Team were actively involved. Likewise it is a reasonable possibility that a misunderstanding between Apple and Pogue could be an explanation.

I figure it as just a another bungle in the chain of events. It's easier to attribute this to stupidity than deception.

That not withstanding, I'll believe it when I see native .r3d implementation that works in FCPX.

 

[Tim Morten]

For those who are new to the thread, here's a recap:

- There is broad agreement that FCPX was released missing features that are important to film and tv editors
- There is broad agreement that Apple's communication regarding FCPX has been poor
- There is broad agreement that at some undetermined time in the future, many (perhaps not all) of the missing features will get added, either by Apple or by third parties

The debate that continues to rage surrounds the following question:

- Did Apple intentionally choose to prioritize consumers over film and tv editors, or were the missing features just a natural by-product of the development cycle?

One school would have you believe Apple loves consumers and professional post equally, but that consumer features happened to be finished first. Another school believes that Apple deliberately chose to prioritize the consumer market because it is financially more valuable to them.

- Does it matter what Apple's priorities are?

If Apple has decided to prioritize consumers, it is reasonable to expect that consumer needs will continue to be served first. Some may choose to accept this; others will choose to move to another vendor who does NOT prioritize consumers first.

Personally, I believe that Apple made a deliberate choice to prioritize consumers.

Why do I believe this?
1. I work for a public company. Apple is also a public company. The goal of all public companies is to maximize value for shareholders. There is clearly greater revenue and profit potential from the consumer market. Prioritizing this market makes financial sense.
2. I have managed the development of many software products. Software teams make deliberate choices regarding order of implementation. Features like OMF, XML, and EDL support are not substantially harder than iMovie, iPhone, and Facebook support. The presence of the latter but not the former features indicates that choice, not happenstance, dictated the consumer focus.
3. I respect the opinion of Ron Brinkman, who has an insider's perspective: http://digitalcomposting.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/x-vs-pro/

I further believe that prioritizing consumers will have on-going detrimental impact. I know from experience that the needs of different market segments are often at odds with each other. There are times when it is necessary to compromise the needs of one segment for the other. This has obvious negative impact for the segment whose needs have been compromised. As Jim would say, pretty simple stuff.

It's up to you to draw your own conclusions. You shouldn't accept my own opinion as fact, any more than you should accept the seemingly endless opining from Chris Kenny. Don't be influenced by vehemence or by repetition. Make your own call.

Cheers,
Tim

 

[AnthonyFlores]

Tim - without disagreeing with ANYTHING you say, it's still possible to acknowledge that like iOS - which is now decidedly superior for business professionals than Blackberry or Windows Mobile - FCPX could start "broad" and ultimately become a superior pro tool. It's paradoxical, and yet very possible.

(If you disagree about iOS, just look at how much faster adoption is occurring and how many banks and other major institutions are now adopting the iPhone for employees. The main thing that is keeping Blackberry in the enterprise game is that it's been "used in the past" and it's been supported by multiple carriers.)

Still, this absolutely doesn't mean one can or should use FCPX (most can't right now) -- or even bet their entire future on Apple. Just like an investor, it's wise to hedge.

I mean, Apple could buy both Avid and Adobe many times over (scary thought for those who think Apple is the devil!) And I believe Microsoft has discussed purchasing them. If that somehow happened, what if new ownership messes things up? I know it's not probable, but there's always risk and never wise to have all your eggs in one basket IMHO.

For me, even though many are running to Adobe -- if I were to focus on another NLE it would be Avid, which as everyone knows is still used most often on features and very popular in "Hollywood." Yes, there is a steeper learning curve but it seems to me that knowing both Avid and FCP very well would cover most bases. And just like Adobe has shown, Avid seems very apt to have a direct relationship with Red and supposedly have some "big" things coming for Redusers.

As has been said many times in this thread ... "only time will tell."

 

[Chris Kenny]

- Did Apple intentionally choose to prioritize consumers over film and tv editors, or were the missing features just a natural by-product of the development cycle?

One school would have you believe Apple loves consumers and professional post equally, but that consumer features happened to be finished first. Another school believes that Apple deliberately chose to prioritize the consumer market because it is financially more valuable to them.

My position is that this entire debate is based on screwy market definitions. Under the narrative you've bought into we have consumers, the new supposed target market for Final Cut Pro, and film/TV editors, the old supposed market for Final Cut Pro -- Apple has shifted its focus.

But film/TV editors were never the primary target market for Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro has always been an app primarily targeted at the wider world of professional video editors, most of whom are not film/TV editors. Final Cut Pro X is primarily targeted at those same users, and the first release meets the needs of many of them.

FCP had features added to it over time that also made it useful to film/TV editors. Based on Apple's statements we can already see this happening with FCP X. If this process produced what many film/TV folks apparently considered the best option the last time around (based on the fact that they chose it), there is no particular reason to believe it can't do so this time around.

2. I have managed the development of many software products. Software teams make deliberate choices regarding order of implementation. Features like OMF, XML, and EDL support are not substantially harder than iMovie, iPhone, and Facebook support. The presence of the latter but not the former features indicates that choice, not happenstance, dictated the consumer focus.

Facebook/iPhone support are utterly trivial once you have H.264 encoding implemented, which I think everyone can agree was a worthwhile feature for the first release, yes? iMovie import would have been more work than iPhone/Facebook exports, but iMovie projects are not that complex, so this was probably much less work than representing the full complexity of an FCP X sequence in an XML format. And XML export is clearly something Apple was working on prior to release. There's an implementation of it in the app, not hooked up to any UI controls. People have successfully invoked it via a debugger, and gotten XML out. This feature just didn't reach release-quality in time for 10.0.0.

 

[M Most]

Can we just rename this thread "Chris Kenny Spends 120 Pages Telling You You're Wrong" and leave it at that?

 

[Scott Crawley]

:beatdeadhorse5:

 

[Chris Kenny]

:beatdeadhorse5:

In my defense, the horse keeps trying to get up.

 

[AnthonyFlores]

Can we just rename this thread "Chris Kenny Spends 120 Pages Telling You You're Wrong" and leave it at that?

Lol, you gotta admire his persistence. I hope Apple proves him right ....

 

[D Fuller]

What my frustration with Apple is and what Colin and David have said is different. I'm not going to argue that FCPX "will never be suitable for film/studio work." What I'm saying is that FCPX shows that Apple has demonstrated a "habit" or a "pattern" of bad behavior when it comes to meeting the needs of film/studio work. As these habits/patterns are shaping up to be the "personality" of the Apple, it is a good time to sit back and reconsider if Apple is still the right company for me to work on.

Just for the record, this is exactly what I said, but in slightly different words. It's about whether Apple is a business you can trust enough to build your business on.