Apple looking into re-offering Final Cut Pro 7 volume licenses after FCP X backlash - Page 2

I never want to see anyone lose his/her job, but this Randy(?) guy who heads Apple's video software development needs to go immediately. He has no clue as to what makes good software. He obviously didn't get feedback from video professionals - how could he ambush them with no multi-cam support, and no importing of FCP 7 files (amng other things)?

He did thesame thing with iMovie - no importing of iMovie HD files, etc. If iMovie HD no longer works under Lion, then I won't get a new computer, since I need to re-edit those files from time to time.

And don't forget Quicktime X - ugly, less useful than QT7. Still hasn't been improved as was promised when Snow Leopard was released.

I never thought computer software would be Apple's Achilles Heel, but it looks that way, unless Jobs cleans house and gets some comptent people in there who understand working on computers, instead of playing around and getting cute.

Video editing is not all about faster and easier. For professional work its also about legacy file support and conversion to a new format and continued support of features. Not gut and renew so that your code is easier to maintain. Video professionals are not interested in what is easier for the programmer. They want what works for them, they are the customer.

Most of Apple's non-pro customers don't understand this and thats fine. Apple makes iMovie and FCPX for you.

Oh Frank, that's just silly, starstruck nonsense.

Absolutely. I don't care if Apple sells me FCP built on a Steenbeck, if it works.

elroth have you been paying attention sir?

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/faq/


And


Randy is well aware of what FCPX does and what direction it takes NLE. I'm sure he's not looking back nostalgically at a program on it's last breath (FCP 7) that has already be surpassed by the competition in ways.

XServe has been discontunued...
iMovie lost a lot of flab(though later gained also) during transition ...
There is no way to buy multiple seats of FCP from appstore.All downloads should be made directly.
No physical media for Lion release.....wil be downloaded directly from the net


And you pros still think Apple supports enterprise.
Frankly, Apple does'nt need and care about pros.
There is more money to be ad in the consumer market.
It is what they do best and it is whatthey excel at.

Working with pros would entail discussing roadmaps for at least a couple of years to the industry.E.g. how long wil they support a particular s/w.
I don't see Apple doing that.


Sorry for all the professionals out there but I think this ship has sailed and sailed for good.And I don't see why Apple should be apologetic about not supporting professionals

Who said the programming feat was easy? Not only was a Quicktime replacement created from scratch using modern principals but then major application had to be built on top of this nascent media core. It's like trying to assemble a car on a conveyor belt that's being built at the same time.



LOL. Read the above quoted posting. Video Editors by and large don't have a freaking clue about software design. Many thought Apple could just "flip a switch" and out popped a 64-bit Final Cut Pro.

Apple's handling of this was insulting. 12 years of building credibility in the video production/filmmaking community just went up in smoke....if not for the pathetic state of FCP X 1.0 (and it is pathetic), then for Apple's mean-spirited and dismissive way of handling the transition and managing the expectations/fears of legions of customers.

I have been one of Apple's biggest fans for more than a decade, and personally converted 30-40 people from Windows products to Apple. But I can honestly say that I am feeling *hatred* for the company right now....along with its upper management starting with Steve Jobs.

You don't treat legions of long-time customers-- who have made huge investments in your products -- like they're cattle, or lemmings. Apple pulled the rug out from under some of its best customers, all the while maintaining its smug, asinine "no-comment" policy, leaving people bewildered, confused and scared. That was completely unnecessary. F**k Apple and f**k Jobs for that.

Apple may have its eye on the shiny little consumer baubles that have carried it so far over the last few years, but it's a very stupid move to needlessly jettison the professional creative community. Besides buying Mac Pros and vertical apps like Final Cut, creatives buy a lot more Apple gear for the other parts of their "digital lives", and as tech savvy people, they also proselytize Apple products to much wider audiences of friends and family. Apple's retarded bean-counters have no way to objectively measure that, and so they dismiss it and are now throwing it away.

But a company's fortunes can change very quickly. The coming year could easily see Jobs dead from cancer, and a number of senior executives leaving the company because they were not made CEO, and have attractive offers elsewhere. Throw one or two product missteps into the mix, or an unexpectedly strong competitor, and Apple could find itself vulnerable, and wishing it could lean more on other parts of the business.

I look forward to all that. Fate has a way of punishing the arrogant...

You look forward to somebody's death because they shipped a product you didn't like? Wow, what a morally superior person you are. Next time a movie pro makes a movie I don't enjoy I guess I should look forward to his painful death right?

As for fate punishing the arrogant, George Lucas still seems to be doing just fine - so I think we can safely dismiss that idea.

-arch x86_64

The fact is Apple could have flipped a switch and built a 64bit binary, though they still would have had issues with any 3rd party plugins if they were passing pointers across their interface. Maybe some issues if they had bad code that explictly assumed 32 bit pointers for file sizes or memory allocation and didn't use 'sizeof'. Most code, even most large projects can be migrated to 64 bit pretty easily- and I say this as somebody who has worked porting very large systems between compilers before.

Apple didn't want to do that, they wanted to start with a clean page, a new code-base, new user paradigms, full support of new technology not just minimal support. There are good reasons for us programmers to throw away old code and start again, we don't need to blame it on relatively simple architecture transitions.

Apple's willingness to do this is a big part of what makes them great.

The mistake I think people make is trying to predict Apple's future approach to FCP X is to assume that they still have any real interest in the "high end" market - people who edit broadcast TV and film.

Apple sells something like 10 million computers a year. Building a fast and easy to use editor that works well with DSLR video and other consumer/prosumer formats (AVCHD) and selling it cheap is a very sensible business decision.

At $300 a seat there's really not much value for Apple in trying to woo that high-end market. Maybe there's 100,000 edit suites in that industry, maybe 200,000 - but that's a tiny slice of the potential pie for Apple.

It doesn't look like FCP X will ever get support for previous project import - that alone is enough to make is seriously impractical for many in that market. The closed ecosystem approach isn't suitable for that market either.

Apple has been bailing out of low-volume high-difficulty enterprise markets for a while now, and frankly if it can't sell millions they don't seem interested anymore. The way they've chosen to break this to the film and TV professionals who've accepted FCP over the last decade is bizarre and somewhat insulting, but it seems clear that they are "just not that into us" anymore.

Say what you will about Adobe and Microsoft, but in Office 2010 I can open any Word document I've ever made. In Photoshop I can open and PSD file I've ever made. In Avid Media Composer I can open any edit I've ever made (from at least as far back as 1999). None of those companies would or could draw a line in the sand the way Apple has with FCP X.

FCP X will get better, and features like Multicam will come, third parties will solve some other problems, but overall it is never going fit into the workflows that FCP7 could in film and TV post production.

Apple's willingness to do this is a big part of what makes gets them booted from the enterprise time and again. Advocacy for Apple and its products in any media space just got a lot harder - and we're meant to be the Mac's natural home.

"There are good reasons for us programmers to throw away old code and start again?" Clearly you're a programmer, not a programme maker. How great is it really to tell that to someone who's built a business using tools Apple's just thrown away to start again, with no migration path. I'm sick of hearing people who make this stuff, or pretend to, declaring that we should all go home for a year while they rebuild our house, and if we have all our eggs in one basket we can't be true professionals. Apple's looking like a phone-and-gadget company now, playing to the mall.

Professional users will rely on them like photographers rely on iPhoto. Not at all.

High end editors will return to Avid, if they ever left. 48-hour film fests will get shot on iPhones, cut on FCP X, and "Shared". Not much in the way of feature budgets going on there.

AppleInsider stop repeating the false and made up statement that FCPX is aimed at 'prosumers'.
It is as false as your claim that the mini was end of life.

J.

Between shutting off FCP 7 too early and the almost complete lack of communication initially (and especially during development) Apple has been pretty much run a clinic on how to thoroughly botch the launch what could end up being the release of a revolutionary piece of software. Wait six months to get things sorted out or tell Pros upfront that this is new software that may not initially meet their needs and there wouldn't be the backlash. I don't don't think someone high up at Apple fully understands professionals (it sounds like the final cut team knew this was going to happen) and I fear it might be Jobs.

At this point of time, it is. It may end up returning to a professional piece of software, but as of launch there are quite a few things that Final Cut studio does better or FCPX doesn't yet do at all. At this point, its a lot closer in functionality to final cut express than final cut pro.


Both I'd say. Video professionals are notoriously conservative, but even if they were less resistant to change, Final Cut Pro X 1.0 is not ready for them. It does not do the things that they need it to do.

We don't need or want an app that matches every latest geek must-have. We get paid to deliver on platforms that work. You want to constantly update your code? Then make a plan, do it incrementally, and make sure it's ready before you throw its predecessor in the trash and empty it. This might be great, watershed app development but it doesn't get rid of deadwood or sort out the new kids from stick-in-the-mud old farts, it just damages workflows and the companies that depend on them.

No one needed Apple to flip any instant 64-bit switch - it's been 3 years since the last release and a migration path for us, as well as them, would have sorted this. Instead we're left with beta software, which is not cool behaviour, no matter how "revolutionary". You don't line up your 10-year customers and shoot them, then yell for the nearest kids to steal their clothes. Not mature.

Who is it aimed at then?

If the answer it "professionals" then please clarify what "professionals" means and explain reasoning?

You're dead right - no prosumers involved. It's a consumer app.

Just tryin' out my new sig!

You used to be Mac's natural home, but that's no longer the case. Apple is increasingly focused on the consumer experience, and I mean that in a good way. Microsoft brings enterprise level kludge to the consumer desktop - Apple brings consumer level radical redesigns to the enterprise.

The fact is that even in enterprise computing there is an increasing movement towards this approach. Vendors are becoming more aggressive about forcing customers off legacy versions because they've come to the conclusion that the cost of supporting such customers is greater than their value. I work in the enterprise space, primarily Windows & Solaris, so I'm not just pulling this out of my ass. The situation in the enterprise market had gotten completely out of control - I remember back in 2001 migrating a client onto a new version of a platform and having to beg Sun to give me a license for a antiquated compiler - because the shiny new application wouldn't build except on a compiler that had been obsoleted for a year. Not just no longer sold, not just unsupported, obsoleted.

For the users who are stuck? Not great. For new users to your platform? Potentially great. Movie makers do this too you know, ruin the experience for old consumers for reasons of their own. Don't believe me? I can demonstrate it with just three words. Han shoots first. Still don't believe me? Star Trek (2009). Star Trek is pretty much an exact analogue - an aged platform with a huge customer base but an increasingly baroque architecture is rebooted but at the cost of throwing away masses of the history and enraging many fans. Sold well though. Oh and there's a vague promise that they'll resolve the time-line crap in the sequel, we're all supposed to wait for years for that.

Did Apple marry you? Declare undying devotion? Promise to produce you products until they died? Did you promise to never look at Adobe or Avid? No. Apple will continue to do what is in their best interest as a company, and sometimes that will entail upsetting old users. Did it not occur to you how many old Apple developers had to adjust when OS-X came in? They didn't just throw a few video pros to the wolves that day.

And Apple's bottom line will be affected just as much. You no longer matter to them, and frankly I think that's what is really upsetting you. People used to think there was a 'halo effect' from design pros that made consumers want Apple computers. Turned out there was a bigger halo effect from the consumer iPod by an order of magnitude.

Do you work for Apple's PR or something? You're defending their practices, but people just want to do their job. People actually EDIT for a day job. And yes, we can spend all day commending Apple's developers for their efforts to make things easier, but people are using a particular software brand for a reason.

Are you aware that there are Final Cut Pro classes? Actual courses where people learn and train before they become full-time editors? This is like learning a whole new system for them. Sure, it may take a few weeks, or even months to get accustomed to -- but that's a lot of time when there's a deadline looming. This effects people's livelihoods.

Software is supposed to evolve and get better.
Apple decided to give birth to a new system all together -- there's a reason there's a backlash. Stop blindly defending a company -- it's as if you've pledged allegiance to them.

Again, this thread are fractured into two lines. The professionals that make money using Apple products and the sheepies and apologists that only make Apple money.

The biggest distinction here is that FCPX would have been fine if it dropped the "Professional" from the title. The apologists think that Apple has done no wrong releasing a half baked product. In rare form, Apple has backpedaled by continuing to offer enterprise licensing and the software until this fiasco is fixed. The apologists and sheep have lost the argument that Apple does not care for this influential segment, at least for now.

Apple may want to get out of this segment because they can no longer compete software engineering wise with Adobe and Avid, I get that. The software market is competitive. Just don't throw around the pro moniker as a marketing tool. Some people actually make a lot of money and thousands to millions of dollars or assets invested in your product. Its something the clueless do not understand.

Another way to think of it is that it's fractured between the people who build software and the sheep who merely use software

I have used Final Cut since its release and edited many sports shows for national TV. I have used X for a week now and I can do everything in X, I could in 7, it just took some figuring out. The big missing element is importing projects and the points Apple say are coming soon. I can live with out import by retaining 7 and look forward to the new features. Many plug in makers already have X versions available I see.

I think the problem in Pro edit houses is that the edit staff are trained to work employees (rather than being self employed and adaptive by nature) and many may take time to re learn. It is excellent news Apple have removed the EOL on 7 for their sakes. In time I think many will come over but in their own time not when forced.

I also think Apple need to add more to their web pages describing X, they actually make it seem far less capable than it is. A pro tips section would really help.

I agree Ripple focus too much on iMovie comparisons which doesn't help with all this really. I'm impressed you managed to stay awake during the Ripple training videos Oh my what a boring training series that is! I much preferred the energetic, if slightly more amateurish one by this guy. http://www.izzyvideo.com/final-cut-pro-x-tutorial/

Now now, that's stretching it. People who build software are as important to humanity as those that use the software to make cool stuff. "Avatar" was impressive because of both the programmers, hardware engineers as well as the actors and artists.

Together, we make a better world... C'mon, group hug.

There is another line you can draw to distinguish groups, those that are professionals but self employed and those that are professionals in the sense they employ a load of editors but may not actually be all that expert themselves rather managers.

The former group have the luxury to experiment and adapt the latter has nothing short of an assembly line to retool. I have great sympathy for the large company in situations like this but hiring outside trainers may be the way to go.

It is nothing about adaptability, and everything about the core competencies of the software. Many editors are fluent in many varied tools (Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, etc) - learning a new tool is not the issue.

The fact that you can do all you did in FCP7 with FCP X suggests that you weren't using FCP to it's full potential. In high volume post production there are a number of things that FCP7 can do that FCP X can't (and may never be able to).

Things like EDL/XML/OMF interchange are absolutely vital in many workflows. Things like multi-editor realtime collaboration (which FCP7 wasn't that good at, but could do) are impossible in FCP X.

More than anything flexibility is a requirement. If anything FCP X has become less flexible. While it's very usable for some specific workflows (shoot on file, edit and finish in FCP X and deliver a file) it lacks the flexibility to support any other workflows well.

The tape I/O is a big example of this. Yes, it is possible to capture with the AJA or Blackmagic tools, but there is no way to batch-capture or recapture a file. The nature of FCP X's media management mean that if you lost a file that had been captured from tape and had to recapture it there would be NO way to relink that media. You would have no choice but to re-edit.

Similarly, you could export a finished edit to a file and then output that to tape with a third-party tool, but if you needed to make a simple correction or reinsert a shot - that would be a huge effort. It's not even possible to export a segment of a timeline, you can only export the whole thing - you have to duplicate and then remove the unwanted bits.

FCP X as it exists now is absolutely completely unsuitable for most of the work I've done in FCP 6 and 7 before, and wouldn't even be remotely useful for the high-volume network TV work I do in Avid.

In time the application itself and the third-party tools around it will improve it's suitability for a wider range of workflows, but fundamentally Apple is unwilling to support some of the "old" workflows that are still the backbone of major TV and film work. And Apple has burned their trust and reputation in that industry.

I don't disagree, I have arguing on the same points for weeks if you check back through the threads. What I am saying now, is X isn't as lacking in many areas as I first thought after using it and I can adapt as a one man band freelancer. X can be brought up to speed with all those missing functions and if only import of projects is missing then I can live with that for now by keeping 7. I have argued for Apple to lift the EOL for production houses since X was released. It was a PR disaster for sure.

If a project can be completed by one editor, on one computer staying within the one application then overall FCP X should be fine (things like Multicam not withstanding). And that describes plenty of "professionals" perfectly (which is the problem with that term - it's very broad).

I really don't think Apple want the higher-end market - or at least don't care if they lose it. I really think they should be honest - say something like "we feel that the we can produce a better product if we focus on the needs of the majority of our users. Unfortunately this means that Final Cut Pro may no longer be suitable for some high end users. We will continue to sell FCP7 to those users for the next 6 months, and will maintain security and compatibility updates through 2012."

While they are unwilling to admit that FCP X is simply not going to be suitable for many of those high end users and respond to their concerns with dismissive and seemingly detached responses as in the FAQ they are only further damaging their reputation. I know of one business already that has cancelled a large Mac Pro order because they feel so uncomfortable with Apple as a supplier now (even without FCP7 which was destined for those computers, they would have be suitable hardware).

haha. Nice try Randy Ubilos.

Mac OS 9 is still way better in every aspect than OS X is claimed by some. But than again some people believe no one has been on the moon.

J.

From what I can see as an outsider (I am not part of the FCPX team) Apples aim was to unify editing so it could be used by amateurs an professionals at the same time.
The key is to simplify editing and content management but making it more powerful at the same time. Professional users can buy additional plugins they need because the software is an ecosystem.
This takes time of course because third parties and Apple itself need time to get this up and beyond the capabilities of FCP.
That Apple is perfectly capable in doing this is shown by Xcode.

J.

You seem to have some difficulty in understanding the semantic difference between Apples 'aim' with FCPX and your opinion about the current state of FCPX. Maybe it's a bit to difficult for you to understand.

J.

Support and perhaps licensing that Apple has to pay to third parties for patented technologies in Final Cut that Apple uses.

BTW, not for ABC prime time for sure but I did a four camera multi-cam in X no problem, in fact far more easily since it automatically synced the clips on audio. There really is a multi track time line there, just well hidden.

I think that Apple is taking Santayana's dictum to heart and is determined to learn the lessons of history. The history in the IT world is that consumer has beaten enterprise whenever the two have come into direct competition, due to the huge economies of scale in the consumer space.

So we see increasingly supercomputers are built using consumer components, or enterprise versions of consumer chips. We see consumer versions of enterprise chips such as the Power architecture driven completely out of the consumer space. We see the total death of Silicon Graphics at the hands of Nvidia & ATI. We see countless technologies like Betamax and DAT that never broke out of the enterprise space. We see the recent defenestration of RIM and Microsoft in the smartphone world at the hands of genuine consumer platforms.

Apple's bet here is that the paradigm that has worked in hardware, and has been shown to work in smartphone platforms will also work in productivity applications. It's a daring bet, but even losing it they still win the consumer market, which is a heck of a consolation prize.

All very true and in terms of FCPro itself I remember well Final Cut was considered a toy for amateurs by the Cube, Avid and Media 100 crowd at the beginning.

You mean the guy who developed Adobe Premier, Key Grip, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, and now Final Cut Pro X? Right.

People don't understand that sometimes to go forward you have to go backwards first. The same happened when Apple went from the Mac OS 9 to OSX. OSX in its first version lacked lots of features that OS 9 had. The improvements to OSX over OS 9 were largely under the hood. Many people couldn't use OSX as their primary OS. Apple quickly went to work and added missing features. Now it is great.

To add many of the features that Final Cut Pro X has, Apple had to do away with backward compatibility because the technology isn't compatible. I can see how that stinks, but sometimes life stinks. Apple will many of the missing features. Meanwhile, Final Cut Pro 7 still works. When Apple went to OSX, files like .doc were not backwards compatible either. Companies had to offer work arounds.

This is not a software problem. The problem is with Apple's delivery of the new Final Cut. Apple should have understood better the needs of professionals and continued to offer Final Cut Pro 7 for some time. Further, it should have done a better job beforehand to let people know about what was left out. Apple should have made the lack of backward compatibility known. Apple consulted with video professionals, but perhaps not a reflective enough bunch.

Somebody suggested Apple should have released Final Cut Pro X as Final Cut Pro Express X. I think that would have solved some problems. People could have given Apple feedback and people could have digested the changes better.

100% agree on all points (now the EOL is lifted). Amazing people writing here don't even check who Randy is!

I also suggest people dive in and discover all the features Apple are hiding so well in X. Like so many of their consumer apps (this might also signify a shift in philosophy) Apple simply leaves you discover so much that isn't mentioned anywhere unless you really dig. This is a stark contrast to a set of manuals that is hard to lift from FCPro of old!