Dissatisfied Final Cut Pro X customers receive refunds from Apple - Page 4

How many times $300 is the price of Avid?

Then, by definition, FCPX or FCP7/FCS is not for you.

Did you expect them to be?

When you upgrade, what will you upgrade to.

I have read that Avid is not making enough money catering to the high-end market place -- maybe that's why they had to introduce a low-end version.

If Avid were to go out of business (EOL all their products) where would that leave you? In 5 years?

I am asking serious questions, not from an Apple perspective -- but from one of progress, technology and economics.

If I misquoted Larry Jordan I apologize but in a quick search it seems he did say that the next version would be 'jaw dropping'. You one of the beta testers paxman or know Larry Jordan and his intent?

I had purchased Final Cut Studio 2 six weeks before FCS (3) came out. Granted, it was just an upgrade from FCS 1, but it was still $449 (they gave me a discount). Imagine my disappointment when Apple released FCS (3) out of the blue (I was following all the usual rumor sites like this and there was no mention of an imminent release) for a $299 upgrade price. And to add insult to injury, it was possible to skip FCS 2 altogether and go straight to FCS (3).

Well, FCS 2 was installed and active on my machine and it appeared that there was nothing I'd be able to do but plunk down another $299 for the latest version. For the hell of it, I called Apple to see if they could do anything for me. To my surprise, they generously issued me a full refund (even before I committed to buying FCS (3) 2 days later).

So yeah, Apple issued me a $480.54 refund for the discounted upgrade price of FCS 2.

Well up until last week Avid Media Composer was $995 for the full boxed set if you have a full box set of FCS which you turned in to the dealer. Promotion ended June 17.

Maybe they should bring the promotion back. I think a lot of people might take them up on it now.

Is that the low-end Avid product that @Bruceedits was dissing? Is there nothing between that and the $75,000 per seat High-end he was using to create thousands of commercials?

The normal AVID Media Composer price is $2,295.00 – $2,495.00.

Anyway, if the AVID Media Composer is a functionally competitive product they should bring back the special -- might get pretty interesting.

P.S. Maybe that's why Apple pulled all the FCS product from resellers.

No need to imagine, there's a comic with pictures :

http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/636/finalcut5.jpg


I don't see it as iMovie Pro either for the long term. As of right now, I'd say it is but then you could describe Final Cut Pro as iMovie Pro if you ignore the file import/export and judge it on the ability to cut a movie.

There is one feature though that needs to be changed and that's the file reconnection. Multi-cam is really just an extra feature, it doesn't stop you doing an edit if you don't have it, although their suggestion of using two tracks and hitting a key to disable one in the mean-time is a bit like pissing on a fire - it doesn't put the fire out and it just makes everything smell bad.

With the file connection the way it is though, you aren't allowed to replace footage with a different format or a different file transparently.

For example, previously you could work on a file in AE or whatever while FCP was open, move one of the clips to trash and replace it and just bring FCP to the front and it reconnects the clip to the new version automatically. Now because files have identifiers inside FCP, it will tell you that clip is offline and you have to reimport it and replace it manually.

For the odd file, it's not a huge deal but it is if you do a proxy edit. Say you have 4K sources and you want to edit on a laptop, you can create a set of proxy files from the source, edit up a cut no problem and then reconnect to the highest quality sources for the final output. In FCPX, it will tell you to relink every single cut individually. nothankyou.jpg

Simple changes though, so I expect it to be just a matter of time - right now, I'd guess they are in the 'working their asses off' stage and the apology event comes later. We have to have a name for it though like antennagate. Maybe the 'didn't make the Final Cut Pro X' event or the 'Final didn't quite Cut it Pro X' event. It's all creatives involved in this so I'm sure somebody will come up with something.

Somehow I would respect the likes of this man's opinions and open minded opines before I would accept the rhetoric expounded by many of the whom profess to be experts on just about everything.

FCP X – FIRST MUSINGS by David Leitner, Filmmaker Magazine.*

* http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/new...first-musings/

Nothing you say I disagree with (except the high end of video editing is decades behind). All I can say is if Apple are changing direction this fast (i.e no ability to read existing files, use plug ins etc) then edit houses simply can't change over night and Apple need to allow for a transition period by continuing to support 7 while they, Apple, get the new product up to scratch, not end it like it was iWeb or some consumer product. Professional users invested a vast amount of money in human effort, equipment and risk all based on a software program Apple released for professionals and Apple should be proud of that and return the favor by continuing to support them.

I look forward to reading a more in-depth review from your professional perspective. Unfortunately, there are very few professionals who have the moxie to identify themselves compared to the many who hide themselves in the bloggesphere.

Yes and there's also a software only version of Avid DS for $10k. Full compatibility, all extended features supported, (red, raw, DPX, Arri raw, 2k 4k etc etc.) just no hardware, but you can always add it later and it's a perfect solution for an offline edit suite or a laptop on set. Avid Media composer kicks ass too (for the price). Thank god they got rid of that horrid DV express. What a POS.

On topic, I guess it's an official "disaster" for Apple.

It's pretty clear reading these posts that some people understand what its like to depend on a piece of software for your livelihood, and some simply don't; Unfortunately Apple falls into the latter category. And, that's really the issue. When you depend on technology, you don't want to have to worry that its about to get taken away from you next month. You want to know you can train new people on it, and the time won't be wasted. You want to know you can purchase new seats, buy new hardware and add-ons, without the money being wasted. Learning a complex application at a pro level, and integrating it into a multifaceted workflow is a serious investment. Apple just said "Hey y'all, go f*k yourselves."

There are ways to manage a transition like this. Look at what Adobe did with transitioning Pagemaker to InDesign. It was a long process. It took years. And, in the interim they kept updating Pagemaker. This gave people time to get up to speed on InDesign. It gave InDesign time to mature; and it gave third parties time to release new plug-ins. Apple did none of this.

To everyone that says "just keep using FCP," you just don't get it. You don't keep using an important tool that has no future. You don't start new projects in a dead program. At this point FCPX does not look viable to many users, and it won't open old FCP projects anyway, so, better transition now than later... Unless Apple does some serious back-peddling, and soon... even then, their cluelessness has been revealed. Once trust is lost, it's hard to go back.

Like hell they did.

I agree with everything you say about the future! My comment about FCP7 is that it really is old technology. There are AV APIs and frameworks in Cocoa that will never be available in Carbon. FCP7/FCS is built with Carbon. There are things in. Cocoa that are specifically designed for AV and AV editing -- that's why the good bits in FCPX are so appealing. FCPX, while incomplete, is today's state-of-the-art technology.

It is like FCP7/FCPS is built with cement and FCPX is built with aluminum, or titanium. It is not impossible to make cement float, but it is a poor solution when compared to the alternatives.

Spam, I respectfully disagree with you. I very much doubt that Apple wants to be held hostage or host their dev tools on Windows or Linux. Believe it or not there is a huge group of people that want nothing to do with mainstream PC hardware no matter how low the cost. We are part of that group. Even Microsoft has realized that in order to give customers a consistent user experience you have to build the whole ecosystem.

Excuse me, but that is a complete fabrication. Adobe did not keep updating Pagemaker, but you know what? Printing pros kept using PageMaker and switched to InDesign when it met their needs - which was at release, a year later, or multiple years later. What they didn't do is take to the Internet in droves and cry like little babies.


Last I checked FCP7 still works. It is not dead. And in the coming future, FCPX will have everything you need in FCP7 and more. The real pros understand that, just like the printing pros that eventually moved to InDesign.

You keep repeating "They still have 7" like it is some mantra that magically answers all the serious questions. I am not attacking Apple, hell I worked for them and have spent over 30 years evangelizing Apple. We don't have 7 unless Apple state they will support and update it. No one wants to pay to train a bunch of people and buy tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to run an application the manufacturer has withdrawn. The replacement product as of this time can't do the same job, period and there is no conversion path anyway.

I suspect (hope) Apple will respond and do the right thing which is to prolong the life of 7, they usually do the right thing in the end. It is not about being anti progress or still having 7 it is about being able to transition.

I truly looked forward to X becoming fully operational and paradigm shifts are no problem, heck I used an Apple ][, a /// then a Lisa before getting Macs!



You are 100% correct except you forget to include the requirement for 7 to not only work but be supported and what about being still for sale in the interim?

BTW I helped the 'printing pros' you mention move from type setters to PageMaker so I do understand changes in technology.

Back before form meant more than function.

I agree, I love FCPX, I am having great fun with it and can see it being amazing in time. I just don't want to see the high end studios abandon Apple because of what is basically a PR snafu. They need to know Apple will help them transition. I believe they will and hopefully blogs like this will help in that process.

Hear, Hear!

And to think only last week I was berated for even suggesting that Apple offer trial periods for apps to see if customers find sufficient value in them.

Don't forget the line, "You should all hate each other for releasing this piece of crap...!"

No. Apple is so perfect anyone should love anything they buy from Apple from day one. Either that, or they "shouldn't have bought it in the first place", are a "whiner", or an "Apple-basher".

[sarcasm... in case anyone didn't get it]

May I respond with:

Yeah! In hindsight, Apple should have offered a free "trial" version to any FCS licensee.

And maybe a 45 day trail for new purchases.

Maybe the app store can't do trials, yet!

I find it interesting that Apple decided to sell this exclusively in the App Store. A botched release would be highly and instantly visible to anyone, and without censoring comments or playing games with the ratings, Apple would not be able to PR their way out of it. In other words, transparency and visibility means that the public knows very quickly that this product is not universally well regarded. Without the App Store and its rating system, the feedback and failure of FCPX would have played out in the blogosphere, and it would have taken weeks for the public to sense dissatisfaction from video professionals, who are normally more of a niche market anyway.

The FCPX haters are holding it wrong.

[sarcasm... in case anyone didn't get it]

And for the record, I'm not complaining because I don't use FCPX. I may someday if it grows into fitting my needs. For my production capability, I splunked down $800 for Premiere Pro CS5. Yes, I don't like Adobe sometimes, but Premiere Pro is very mature now, not the crash-happy piece of junk it used to be, and it supports all the formats and features I need, including bag-of-hurt production.

- FCP7 is not going to be updated.
- FCP7 is no longer sold.
- FCP7 has been recalled from retail channels.

FCP7 is dead.


Why... because it fits some fanboy ideal of what Apple will do?


The real pros... the ones I know editing for broadcast have a very good understanding of what FCPX means. A transition to Avid or Adobe.

FCPX doesn't allow for silly, trivial things like drawing from any projects you've ever created before (which happens constantly) organizing media in a way that makes sense for anything more professional than wedding videos ("Events"... seriously?), accessing networked storage, collaborating with... anyone... accessing decades of tape media, using broadcast-quality monitors, doing anything meaningful with audio (can I assign audio tracks? Nope! FCPX is designed around the idea that they don't exist!)

Trying to explain these things over and over again to people who don't know what post is like, don't care to know, and assume it's a case of "Ewww... new is bad" is like talking to the box FCP7 came in.

Many workflows cannot be updated to work with FCPX because FCPX simply cannot produce the results needed through any combination of actions. Waiting for a fix from Apple is a nonstarter because Apple thought this was a good idea in the first place, and therefore doesn't know or doesn't care what professionals need to get through a day at work. FCPX was not designed around bins and audio tracks, collaboration with others, and backwards compatibility. It's just broken on every level and utterly useless to a significant portion of the FCP7 user base.

Oh yeah? Here's an article written a year after InDesign had been released:
http://web.mit.edu/is/isnews/v16/n01/160103.html

It notes that Adobe released new versions of Pagemaker and rebranded it for business.

Here's another one talking about Pagemaker 7, which was release TWO YEARS after InDesign was released: http://designer-info.com/DTP/adobe_pagemaker_7.htm

And according to Wikipedia, Pagemaker development wasn't completely ended until 2004, FIVE YEARS after InDesign was released: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_PageMaker And even at that point they would still sell you a copy, and still give you tech support! They also give you tools for translating Pagemaker projects into InDesign projects.

In fact, you can still go buy Pagemaker, if you want: http://www.adobe.com/products/pagemaker/index.html

That's how you do it.

Plus, Adobe had signaled that InDesign was coming long before they released it. That's WHY nobody freaked out. It's not that video professionals are cry-babies, it's that Apple completely mismanaged the transition.


It's dead as far as updates are concerned, and given the speed at which Apple releases new system software, who knows how long it will keep running. That's not something to build a business around. So for enterprise, in terms of planning, it is dead. Also, many video pros are not liking what they are seeing in FCPX. Apple's entire direction seems to be headed away from serious post production work, and so it is unclear if FCPX will ever have the missing features. If Apple had any clue as to what pros actually need, why on earth would they release it like this and simultaneously kill FCP? It makes no sense. Apple has shown they are completely out of touch. That is not confidence inspiring.

Please see my response to Gustav.

There is no back pedaling. This is classic Apple. Every fresh software (and this is a fresh software not an upgrade) comes missing features etc. Point Zero is really the last Beta. Those of us crazy enough to get the point zero are in the 'in the field' testers.

Some of the things that folks are griping about aren't really used as widely as the griping makes it sound out. Others are used and are probably at the top of the list to roll out next after the initial bug checks are done. We could see them within the month. Given that no real professional is going to use FCPX for real projects for a few months to learn the new UI etc, it's not a huge deal. Other things will be left for plug-ins by the companies that own the tech rather than making us all pay for tech we don't all need and so on.

If we had the numbers of actual sales to negative reviews to those that actually demand a refund it probably isn't as horrible as the blogs are making it sound. And in a few months when those updates are rolling in, some of those folks could be back to buy it again.

A recent American political cliche says it pretty well: Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I felt that the general sentiment was more important than the specifics of the complaint. FCPX now has many thousands of signatures and Apple is clearly paying attention and reacting.

To date, only 21 have signed the iWeb petition. Video editors are a tight group and have many active forums from which to spread the word. iWeb/MobileMe Gallery users are a diffuse lot with only general Apple forums to use to find each other. We've got to start somewhere. If everyone who signs this "impertinent" petition posts its link in as many places as possible we may have a chance to save it yet.

iWeb/MobileMe Gallery users, don't take this laying down. Get LOUD.

Sorry, bad grammatical construction. You read it wrong because I wrote it wrong. I was citing Avid as an example of high end pro.

Indeed. "Just don't edit it that way." -SJ

I actually think it is good that Apple has moved most products to the App Store. It eliminates a lot of hassle of stamping discs and distributing it through retail channels and particularly reseller channels around the world. This way anyone can get access without waiting for it to be shipped, in stock, etc.

Of course the disadvantage is you need the bandwidth, etc.

Volume licensing is of course another important consideration that seems to be addressed properly in Lion but surprisingly not yet for FCPX of all things (AFAIK).

I think Apple is bold in that it is not too worried about micro-managing the rollout of big products, now that everything will be launched through the App Store. Lion will be another quite transparent launch. I think that's good.

The point is feedback only makes any product or company better, if the company knows how to incorporate the feedback into its vision. At the end of the day Apple now has to choose what feedback ties in most with its vision of Final Cut, and what that vision actually is.

If you have "no idea" about Kona, then you have no idea what you're talking about regarding FCP.

And yes, FPC X "runs" on Lion. But it won't install on Lion.

Quit repeating "there's still FCP 7" like a retarded child. If Apple doesn't announce that it will continue to support it, it's dead.

Oh look, here's something from one of the Shake development team regarding Apple's position towards pro users:

http://digitalcomposting.wordpress.c...6/28/x-vs-pro/

Anyone looking for intelligent discussion of this issue should be somewhere like creativecow.

'Kay. Sure.


I suppose I'm just not running Lion, then.




Huh. Look at that. There's also a page for the XServe. Probably because it's still being supported.

That is ridiculous. It's a new, rewritten application. It's like calling OS X an "upgrade to OS 9." That said, I don't disagree that it should open older versions of FCP files.


Oh, stop. You don't care to list those features because it looks better to post "missing many features" than it does to post "missing a few features, some of which are important." And keep in mind, I'm not saying it's feature complete. I'm saying a it's a pro app. It's not even close to iMovie, the new version of which is so dumbed down that it doesn't fit what even a moderately advanced user needs.

Here is the link to the Pogue article. Here are the the truly "missing" features that actually affect the editing process. I've omitted the ones that are just differences in the way the program does things

*Multicamera editing (though there is a workaround, and Apple states it's working on it)

*Can't assign audio tracks (there is a workaround, though it looks cumbersome)

*No support for RED or some other raw formats (workarounds possible, but some question as to whether they are adequate. Need here is questionable).

*No tape output.

*No EDL, AAF or OMF file support

*Can't import old FCP files (whether this is a missing "feature" is debatable, but I see the problem).


Again, I'm not claiming these are insignificant. But it's still a pro app...that is my point. And just to be clear, I've also read some more detailed (and I would say, hyperbolic) analyses from at least one actual "pro." Take this guy for example. He's pissed.

Other than that what did you think of the play Mrs. Lincoln?

Its only a flesh wound.