If Apple looses the Pro market. Exactly who is picking it up and benefiting from its value?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonso Perez
I don't think Apple should "do whatever the pro market demands". It never has. Apple should, however, value the pro market, which it used to do, because it is valuable far beyond its direct sales.
Apple are raking it in by selling phones, therefore should not bother with the professional industries they have been supporting for decades? Seems to be the obvious business logic, and it's a shame. The Apple Pro ship is sinking, if not already sunk.
When the pro apps go the pros go. When the pros go the talent goes. Sooner or later the only people left are the sales guys & the grunts. Innovation gone.
Apple is a hardware company at the core but since OS X is locked to Mac hardware then integration requires either Apple open up their platform to other hardware or provide all the hardware solutions themselves. They've chosen to do neither, in the end something will have to give or it will start coming back to bite them.
When the pro apps go the pros go. When the pros go the talent goes. Sooner or later the only people left are the sales guys & the grunts. Innovation gone.
What makes you think Apple's innovation stems around its pro apps?
Quote:
Apple is a hardware company at the core but since OS X is locked to Mac hardware then integration requires either Apple open up their platform to other hardware or provide all the hardware solutions themselves. They've chosen to do neither, in the end something will have to give or it will start coming back to bite them.
Do you know how long this song has been sung. And people seem to keep singing it.
Dinosaur production companies like these are the least likely to be able to adapt their workflow to changing times. They'll all be gone eventually in favor of more streamlined approaches. Apple is playing the long game here.
The latest news reflects an overall migration away from Final Cut Pro for the professional video community
No, I'm pretty sure Avid was and still is the industry standard used by the professional (i.e., television and film production) NLE editing community. Even Pixar films are cut on Avid.
You guys are trying to spin this as "pro community abandons FCP sinking ship". But FCP was never the reigning big dog to begin with.
Dinosaur production companies like these are the least likely to be able to adapt their workflow to changing times. They'll all be gone eventually in favor of more streamlined approaches. Apple is playing the long game here.
So that's why they completely rewrote FCP for years and bring us FCPX?... Sounds they should have quit FCP altogether.
Personally I think Apple didn't expect this criticism looking at how they f*cked *p the transition phase. It was kinda arrogant.
They ran a clinic on how not to release revolutionary software with FCPX. If they treated this like the transition from OSX classic to OSX and ease everything in while supporting a slightly updated version of Final Cut studio, they wouldn't have had the backlash. If they would have gave the studio houses a chance to have input for a version 2.0, they wouldn't be loosing customers.
FCPX was ready for the consumers, but not for professionals, but they initially chose to offer it as the only solution. The Mac App Store was not ready for consumers, but multiple-license users, yet they chose to release it anyway. Apple could have had FAQs and press releases explaining what FCPX 10.0 could and could not do in relationship to Final Cut Pro legacy, but they let users find out stuff was missing the hard way. They only did that after people were pissed.
FCPX has the potential to far eclipse its predecessor when its feature complete, but Apple botched its introduction in every way possible. And when feature complete it might not get the traction it deserves because Apple foolishly burned a lot of bridges that with month or two of patience and actual communication it didn't have to.
But he didn't teach walking away with no REASON. There is no reason for Apple to take a flourishing product like FCP and flush it, but that's effectively what they've done. As others have said, they could EASILY have continued to make FCP a high-end product and also produced FCExpress. That makes FCE a "gateway" to get up & coming producers into Macs and FC, so they can graduate to FCP at the pro level. The same gateway that is used by putting Macs in elementary schools and by getting PC users to buy iPhones. But somehow Apple and Jobs thought this wasn't working in video?
Let us remind ourselves; not everything Jobs did was genius. I was a big fan, but he liked the round puck mouse, Ping, and the cube Mac too. I think we are remiss (and biased) if we don't acknowledge that the demise of FCP is another (admittedly rare) flub in the Jobs legacy.
Amazing how many clueless "professionals" there are out there. Apple HAS NOT abandoned the pro market by any stretch of the imagination. FCP X was a V1 release that was sorely needed. As was a complete rewrite. For the fools crying wolf, and the sky is falling, there are many great things to come. It is also amazing that these so called professionals can't see, or aknowledge that there are many great features to even the first version that will greatly improve their work.
Good. Don't want the name Apple associated with garbage that is reality TVs. Shut it already.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FreeRange
Amazing how many clueless "professionals" there are out there. Apple HAS NOT abandoned the pro market by any stretch of the imagination. FCP X was a V1 release that was sorely needed. As was a complete rewrite. For the fools crying wolf, and the sky is falling, there are many great things to come. It is also amazing that these so called professionals can't see, or aknowledge that there are many great features to even the first version that will greatly improve their work.
Exactly.
Forget about FCP7 or FCE. Try see this as Apple's first foray into broadcast/post-production suite. Version 1. Period.
This is the future of the mac line if Apple doesn't step up their game for the professionals.
If Apple doesn't support the Mac Pro, it too will get dropped by the pros, then the laptop, then the phone, then Apple will be right back where it was in the 90s, except, it won't have the professionals at it's core.
This is rich (pun intended) Apple is only for the professionals.
The problem with a lot of professionals is if it is not complicated it is not 'pro'.
Face it Apple is trying to make life easy for the rest of us and not more complicated.
Btw it is the tech pundits who are trying to kill Apple - remember ryan tate the one who has not yet done anything to make life better except bad mouth
Apple's ethos is more about "power to the people" than try to service corporate clients. They probably think giving FCP X to prosumers will allow them to compete with the pros, and cause disruption/power decentralisation from the corps.
Dinosaur production companies like these are the least likely to be able to adapt their workflow to changing times. They'll all be gone eventually in favor of more streamlined approaches. Apple is playing the long game here.
Here's a game for you. It's called "A Look Into Big League Media Production".
Major media outlets give FCPX a shot and say "Crap! We can't do our jobs with this!" Then they call their vendors and say "If you work for us, you cannot use FCPX". The vendors reply with "Don't worry! We couldn't use FCPX anyway!"
FCP shops everywhere start rolling-out Avid and Premiere test stations.
Game over.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FreeRange
Amazing how many clueless "professionals" there are out there. Apple HAS NOT abandoned the pro market by any stretch of the imagination. FCP X was a V1 release that was sorely needed. As was a complete rewrite. For the fools crying wolf, and the sky is falling, there are many great things to come. It is also amazing that these so called professionals can't see, or aknowledge that there are many great features to even the first version that will greatly improve their work.
This is simply ridiculous. You're trying to tell people who earn a living with Final Cut that they just can't see the value in the new version of FC.
You simply don't know what you're talking about, and are spouting fanboy nonsense.
The reality is, Apple had two choices. Build another FCP in the FCP 7 vein, and have to replace it again down the line when it becomes clear a more efficient, cost-effective solution is needed to cater to the increasingly small teams producing for the web etc. or just build that FCP now and take a hit on the film & TV business.
Avid was number 1 anyway, so Apple clearly just figured "what the hell"
This whole fiasco reminds me of when Adobe bought Aldus, then proceeded to abandon PageMaker for a totally new product. Eventually, InDesign became reasonably good. I used a few releases, and the early ones were pretty bad. Remember Freehand?
The only real difference is that Apple has done this with their own product rather than one they bought in.
As for Avid, go read their latest annual report (2010). They've been losing money since 2006, and revenues have dropped 30% over that time. They may be listening to some of their customers more than Apple but it's not working for their bottom line. In fact their product line reminds me of when Apple was losing money: they are trying to sell too many things without enough value-add.
If you want software with a development path that always suits your needs, go for something with a free licence and hire hot programmers when the mainstream trajectory goes off into la-la land. Otherwise nothing is guaranteed.
I only want what I view as the best. I'm not buying Apple products simply so I can support the company. FCPX is not the best. We can argue all day whether or not it's the best value, best for the average joe, best for whatever - but it simply is not the best editor out there. It has a stated desire to NOT be the best by focusing on the non-pro market. Its like Nike saying that thier new top-of-the-line shoe is not really intended for pros but should be more than enough for the average joe. Followed by Nike worshipers arguing to the world that the new aeverage joe shoe IS the best and kudos for not catering to the pros because what do they really know about basketball anyway. It's ridiculous. If Apple wants me to re-think the way I edit, then they need to do a better job explaining the value. It's like Android fans that argue so adamantly that if I just invested enough time, I would love Android. I thought Apple was supposed to be obvious!
If Apple looses the Pro market. Exactly who is picking it up and benefiting from its value?
<off topic rant ON>
People, please. I see this *every* day now on various forums! First Final Cut Pro goes to hell, next is our ability to spell. Does anyone see a connection here?
LOSE = Be deprived of or cease to have or retain something. Cause someone to fail to gain or retain.
LOOSE = Not firmly or tightly fixed in place. Set free; release. -- "The ropes are loose."
LOSED = Misspelling. Perhaps you meant LOST. -- "I lost my appetite."
LOOSED = Past tense of LOOSE. Similar to the more commonly-used LOOSENED. -- "The ropes were loosed."
LOSING = Present participle of LOSE. -- "I'm losing my appetite."
LOOSING = Present participle of LOOSE. Rarely used nowadays. Commonly, and wrongly confused with LOSING.
It will just take time so that today's workflows adapt to the new FinalCut if they decide to make the effort.
Sorry, but Apple MUST adapt to industry workflows, not expect industry standards to change because their coders don't understand how motion pictures are made.
As a professional film editor in 'Hollywood' for the last twenty years, I've seen technology change drastically in a relatively short period of time, but the techniques and workflows have remained (and shall remain) a constant.
Ok, some people here seem to be missing one big point. This matters to us "Pros" in a financial way.
First of all: for me, the definitiion of a "Pro" is, that said person is making a living out of it.
So, by this definition, i´m a Pro since 2004. Since the beginning i made every € i ever earned on the Mac plattform. I´m not a big studio, i´m a single freelancer. And i have to rake in several thousand € a month to make it work.
And i think many of the "pros" out there, that are so pissed of because of apples move towards the "prosumer", are like me. So please try to understand us.
Second of all: Nobody says that Apple is doomed, FCPX is a "beleagured system" or any of this nonsense. No real professional will say that. Apple is making money like hell and nothing is going to change that for the forseeable future.
What we are trying to say is this:
We spent the last decade building our business on our skill, Macs and severall software packages.
For most of us this was a Mac Pro running Finalcut Pro and the Adobe CS Suite. I do a lot of motion graphics, so i use Cinema 4D too.
If one of these pillars of my daily work is crumbling in, then that is threatening my whole business.
Please don´t try to out-argument my point. I know that it is possible to do that. I know that there are alternatives to my workflow. I know that apple "had to do this" and "had to do that" and that they walked away from other popular things in the past.
But i personaly (and from the comments i can tell many of you too) just can´t sit back and wait till FCPX is good enough to work with it. The costs of living would eat me.
So PLEASE stop it with all these wiseass comments about how "FCPX will be perfect in the future" or how discontinuing the Mac Pro line doesn´t affect anybody. If that is true for you, i´m happy for you. But for the rest of "us professionals" this stuff matters. A lot.
Comments
If Apple looses the Pro market. Exactly who is picking it up and benefiting from its value?
I don't think Apple should "do whatever the pro market demands". It never has. Apple should, however, value the pro market, which it used to do, because it is valuable far beyond its direct sales.
Apple are raking it in by selling phones, therefore should not bother with the professional industries they have been supporting for decades? Seems to be the obvious business logic, and it's a shame. The Apple Pro ship is sinking, if not already sunk.
It's been a good 2 years since this was updated:
http://www.apple.com/pro/
Says it all really.
When the pro apps go the pros go. When the pros go the talent goes. Sooner or later the only people left are the sales guys & the grunts. Innovation gone.
Apple is a hardware company at the core but since OS X is locked to Mac hardware then integration requires either Apple open up their platform to other hardware or provide all the hardware solutions themselves. They've chosen to do neither, in the end something will have to give or it will start coming back to bite them.
When the pro apps go the pros go. When the pros go the talent goes. Sooner or later the only people left are the sales guys & the grunts. Innovation gone.
What makes you think Apple's innovation stems around its pro apps?
Apple is a hardware company at the core but since OS X is locked to Mac hardware then integration requires either Apple open up their platform to other hardware or provide all the hardware solutions themselves. They've chosen to do neither, in the end something will have to give or it will start coming back to bite them.
Do you know how long this song has been sung. And people seem to keep singing it.
The latest news reflects an overall migration away from Final Cut Pro for the professional video community
No, I'm pretty sure Avid was and still is the industry standard used by the professional (i.e., television and film production) NLE editing community. Even Pixar films are cut on Avid.
You guys are trying to spin this as "pro community abandons FCP sinking ship". But FCP was never the reigning big dog to begin with.
Dinosaur production companies like these are the least likely to be able to adapt their workflow to changing times. They'll all be gone eventually in favor of more streamlined approaches. Apple is playing the long game here.
Umh... no...
So that's why they completely rewrote FCP for years and bring us FCPX?... Sounds they should have quit FCP altogether.
Personally I think Apple didn't expect this criticism looking at how they f*cked *p the transition phase. It was kinda arrogant.
They ran a clinic on how not to release revolutionary software with FCPX. If they treated this like the transition from OSX classic to OSX and ease everything in while supporting a slightly updated version of Final Cut studio, they wouldn't have had the backlash. If they would have gave the studio houses a chance to have input for a version 2.0, they wouldn't be loosing customers.
FCPX was ready for the consumers, but not for professionals, but they initially chose to offer it as the only solution. The Mac App Store was not ready for consumers, but multiple-license users, yet they chose to release it anyway. Apple could have had FAQs and press releases explaining what FCPX 10.0 could and could not do in relationship to Final Cut Pro legacy, but they let users find out stuff was missing the hard way. They only did that after people were pissed.
FCPX has the potential to far eclipse its predecessor when its feature complete, but Apple botched its introduction in every way possible. And when feature complete it might not get the traction it deserves because Apple foolishly burned a lot of bridges that with month or two of patience and actual communication it didn't have to.
But he didn't teach walking away with no REASON. There is no reason for Apple to take a flourishing product like FCP and flush it, but that's effectively what they've done. As others have said, they could EASILY have continued to make FCP a high-end product and also produced FCExpress. That makes FCE a "gateway" to get up & coming producers into Macs and FC, so they can graduate to FCP at the pro level. The same gateway that is used by putting Macs in elementary schools and by getting PC users to buy iPhones. But somehow Apple and Jobs thought this wasn't working in video?
Let us remind ourselves; not everything Jobs did was genius. I was a big fan, but he liked the round puck mouse, Ping, and the cube Mac too. I think we are remiss (and biased) if we don't acknowledge that the demise of FCP is another (admittedly rare) flub in the Jobs legacy.
Amazing how many clueless "professionals" there are out there. Apple HAS NOT abandoned the pro market by any stretch of the imagination. FCP X was a V1 release that was sorely needed. As was a complete rewrite. For the fools crying wolf, and the sky is falling, there are many great things to come. It is also amazing that these so called professionals can't see, or aknowledge that there are many great features to even the first version that will greatly improve their work.
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a geek.
Then they shunned the network admins,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a network admin.
Then they shunned the editors,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't an editor.
Then they shunned me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Amazing how many clueless "professionals" there are out there. Apple HAS NOT abandoned the pro market by any stretch of the imagination. FCP X was a V1 release that was sorely needed. As was a complete rewrite. For the fools crying wolf, and the sky is falling, there are many great things to come. It is also amazing that these so called professionals can't see, or aknowledge that there are many great features to even the first version that will greatly improve their work.
Exactly.
Forget about FCP7 or FCE. Try see this as Apple's first foray into broadcast/post-production suite. Version 1. Period.
This is the future of the mac line if Apple doesn't step up their game for the professionals.
If Apple doesn't support the Mac Pro, it too will get dropped by the pros, then the laptop, then the phone, then Apple will be right back where it was in the 90s, except, it won't have the professionals at it's core.
This is rich (pun intended) Apple is only for the professionals.
The problem with a lot of professionals is if it is not complicated it is not 'pro'.
Face it Apple is trying to make life easy for the rest of us and not more complicated.
Btw it is the tech pundits who are trying to kill Apple - remember ryan tate the one who has not yet done anything to make life better except bad mouth
apple.
Dinosaur production companies like these are the least likely to be able to adapt their workflow to changing times. They'll all be gone eventually in favor of more streamlined approaches. Apple is playing the long game here.
Here's a game for you. It's called "A Look Into Big League Media Production".
Major media outlets give FCPX a shot and say "Crap! We can't do our jobs with this!" Then they call their vendors and say "If you work for us, you cannot use FCPX". The vendors reply with "Don't worry! We couldn't use FCPX anyway!"
FCP shops everywhere start rolling-out Avid and Premiere test stations.
Game over.
Amazing how many clueless "professionals" there are out there. Apple HAS NOT abandoned the pro market by any stretch of the imagination. FCP X was a V1 release that was sorely needed. As was a complete rewrite. For the fools crying wolf, and the sky is falling, there are many great things to come. It is also amazing that these so called professionals can't see, or aknowledge that there are many great features to even the first version that will greatly improve their work.
This is simply ridiculous. You're trying to tell people who earn a living with Final Cut that they just can't see the value in the new version of FC.
You simply don't know what you're talking about, and are spouting fanboy nonsense.
Avid was number 1 anyway, so Apple clearly just figured "what the hell"
The only real difference is that Apple has done this with their own product rather than one they bought in.
As for Avid, go read their latest annual report (2010). They've been losing money since 2006, and revenues have dropped 30% over that time. They may be listening to some of their customers more than Apple but it's not working for their bottom line. In fact their product line reminds me of when Apple was losing money: they are trying to sell too many things without enough value-add.
If you want software with a development path that always suits your needs, go for something with a free licence and hire hot programmers when the mainstream trajectory goes off into la-la land. Otherwise nothing is guaranteed.
What value is that?
If Apple looses the Pro market. Exactly who is picking it up and benefiting from its value?
<off topic rant ON>
People, please. I see this *every* day now on various forums! First Final Cut Pro goes to hell, next is our ability to spell. Does anyone see a connection here?
LOSE = Be deprived of or cease to have or retain something. Cause someone to fail to gain or retain.
LOOSE = Not firmly or tightly fixed in place. Set free; release. -- "The ropes are loose."
LOSED = Misspelling. Perhaps you meant LOST. -- "I lost my appetite."
LOOSED = Past tense of LOOSE. Similar to the more commonly-used LOOSENED. -- "The ropes were loosed."
LOSING = Present participle of LOSE. -- "I'm losing my appetite."
LOOSING = Present participle of LOOSE. Rarely used nowadays. Commonly, and wrongly confused with LOSING.
<off topic rant OFF>
It will just take time so that today's workflows adapt to the new FinalCut if they decide to make the effort.
Sorry, but Apple MUST adapt to industry workflows, not expect industry standards to change because their coders don't understand how motion pictures are made.
As a professional film editor in 'Hollywood' for the last twenty years, I've seen technology change drastically in a relatively short period of time, but the techniques and workflows have remained (and shall remain) a constant.
FCPX is simply a phenomenal joke.
First of all: for me, the definitiion of a "Pro" is, that said person is making a living out of it.
So, by this definition, i´m a Pro since 2004. Since the beginning i made every € i ever earned on the Mac plattform. I´m not a big studio, i´m a single freelancer. And i have to rake in several thousand € a month to make it work.
And i think many of the "pros" out there, that are so pissed of because of apples move towards the "prosumer", are like me. So please try to understand us.
Second of all: Nobody says that Apple is doomed, FCPX is a "beleagured system" or any of this nonsense. No real professional will say that. Apple is making money like hell and nothing is going to change that for the forseeable future.
What we are trying to say is this:
We spent the last decade building our business on our skill, Macs and severall software packages.
For most of us this was a Mac Pro running Finalcut Pro and the Adobe CS Suite. I do a lot of motion graphics, so i use Cinema 4D too.
If one of these pillars of my daily work is crumbling in, then that is threatening my whole business.
Please don´t try to out-argument my point. I know that it is possible to do that. I know that there are alternatives to my workflow. I know that apple "had to do this" and "had to do that" and that they walked away from other popular things in the past.
But i personaly (and from the comments i can tell many of you too) just can´t sit back and wait till FCPX is good enough to work with it. The costs of living would eat me.
So PLEASE stop it with all these wiseass comments about how "FCPX will be perfect in the future" or how discontinuing the Mac Pro line doesn´t affect anybody. If that is true for you, i´m happy for you. But for the rest of "us professionals" this stuff matters. A lot.