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Adobe Drops Mac Support For Premiere
Theaetetus writes "In a story on MacCentral, it's revealed that Adobe Systems is dropping support for the Mac in the new version of video editing app Premiere: 'If Apple's already doing an application, it makes the market for a third-party developer that much smaller,' said David Trescot, senior director of Adobe's digital video products group. In response to the news, Apple issued a statement welcoming Premiere customers to make the switch to the Mac and Final Cut Pro."
In a story on MacCentral,......
:)
or on the Ars Technica tab to your right for the past few hours......
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3976#11
Final Cut Pro is far superior. I know a guy heavy into video production/editing and he switched to FCP and never looked back. Premiere is/was a crash happy POS.
What are the stats for video editing? Clearly not as favorable.
Another benefit of open source - no need to obey market economics when developing products.
Adobe Premiere: $550
Final Cut Express: $300
And If you need the high-end features of FCP, chances are that $999 is cheap compared to the Avid you'd otherwise buy.
Additionally, as a person who does this for a living, i offer that the Premiere interface is a bad joke.
So anybody thought of running this on OSX using FINK or whatever? Maybee nice on G5.
I am the bastard of base minus 12! Turing was the ejaculate of my complete machine!
Final Cut Pro is more expensive. Final Cut Pro Express http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/
is not (at $299), while still offering much of the low end relevant functionality. I'd think that between that and the full-on version of FCP, Premiere would struggle to find a real market.
I do agree though, when I think video editing and Mac (being a graphic designer I do use them), I think FCP. Not Premiere. After Effects is a different story, and hopefully Adobe will put some of the old Premiere programmers on that project to get it up to par in terms of speed.
"Premiere is still the most popular film editing app amongst Mac users"
- It isn't. DV/film editors typically buy a turnkey system ( Dual-cpu system + editing app + DV card+ monitors +...). In the turnkey market, Premiere is always bundled with PCs, and FCP with Macs. These ppl are simply interested in editing their footage, and the turnkey guys give you a working system off the bat. Nobody bothers to investigate whether there is a Premiere for Macs, or an FCP for PCs - they're not computer geeks.
No, also wrong. It goes this way:
Final Cut Pro: $999
Cinelerra: $0
Adobe Premiere: $546
Final Cut Express: $299
iMovie (PPC only): $0
Now guess who wins the cost/feature ratio race.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Photoshop does all the pre-press, color separation, all of that shit... Google around, there is no lack of documentation about why Photoshop is superior to GIMP in almost all respects.
evil adrian
Hidden, unpublished APIs?
Have you even looked at the latest FireWire SDK?
Or QuickTime?
Or WebKit?
Or CoreAudio?
Or iMovie Plugin?
Or Image Capture?
Or Information Access Toolkit?
Or the rest of the Cocoa and Carbon APIs?
After you've written something that has exhausted the possibilities in those APIs,
then you might have a reason to gripe, but until then, you're just spreading FUD.
Premiere 6 natively supports DV editing. That means any system with a firewire port will perform like your DV500 card (BTW, the DV500 is crap, like anything Pinnacle has ever made). It also supports firewire device control, it uses any of After Effects' filters, it loads MPEG files, it supports effect keyframing and - more importantly - it crashes about 10 times less than version 5. The differences between Premiere 5 and 6 are much bigger than between 4 and 5. Premiere 6.5 adds real-time preview of effects (even without any real-time hardware) and a built-in MPEG-2 exporter.
Avid DV Express is a piece of crap. FCP 4 is nice, but the interface is too antiquated. They need to drop some of those old concepts and learn from compositing and rendering software like Shake, DFusion, 3D SMAX, etc.
You don't understand. The majority (I have read anywhere from 58% to 70%, movie industry editing news) of the computers that use professional video editing software are Macs. So, the Windows market is actually SMALLER than the Mac market for these softwares.
Now, throw in the fact that FCP became the de facto choice by pros a couple of years ago (overtaking AVID, which was more expensive, and cumbersome), and you have the reason Adobe is doing this. Apple simply beat them, and Adobe is bowing out. Nothing more.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Ehh, FinalCut is a better product. It has a much better UI, handles 24p h4 video perfectly, and does quite few things that Premiere needs 3rd party hardware to accomplish. Moreover, FinalCut on a PowerBook is typically a much more robust portable solution the Premiere on a PC laptop.
FinalCut's video/audio solutions have surpassed that of Premiere's during the past two major releases. Over the past 12 months FinalCut has become -the- pro video editing solution for MacOSX.
Honestly, it makes no sense to keep selling Premiere on OS X. Adobe would be loosing money. Now that FinalCut's feature set is mature, Mac user are migrating away from Premiere. Furthermore, a lot of Digital Video folks are migrating to OS X simply to use Final Cut or Final Cut Express.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
You ARE wrong. FCP came from Macromedia, who had pinched Premiere's lead programmers to produce a Premiere killer (that's why FCP is so Premiere like - it IS "Super Premiere"). Macromedia had let the project founder, Apple bought it back to life.
Now, Adobe has finally admitted defeat. The Premiere killer has killed.
That was classic intercourse!
wouldnt it also force users to purchase an additional copy of premier (pc version) in order to keep using it?
Actually, Adobe has a great cross-platform upgrade deal. When I switched from Wintels to the Mac, Adobe gave me a great deal for Photoshop. Since I already had the latest PC version of Photoshop (7.01) they charged me for SHIPPING only to get the Mac version with the caveat that I had to destroy my PC version of the software. Not bad at all! All in all, I paid $14.99 for 2nd day shipping.
Gimp poses no threat to photoshop whatsoever.
The only people who would be interested in using GIMP instead of Photoshop are home users who pirated photoshop in the first place. Adobe makes its money from corporations, not home users. And there are no open source programs that rival adobe now, or in the near future.
As much as I admire OSX and the new Mac hardware, I have to be honest and say that I think Steve Jobs is burning bridges with a big group of Mac users. First he moves the Mac to a Unix codebase, which we love, but old-line Mac users have huge reservations about. Then he slowly goes about writing all the important apps for the Mac, pushing out longtime 3rd party vendors that Mac users have relied upon for years. This is a direct shot at Adobe, the software company most associated with Mac third party software. Jobs seems intent on making all software on the Mac "All Apple, All The Time". And I think this might be the new Apple's Achilles Heel; its really hard to expand your market if no one else is writing software for your platform. I know ole' Steve wants the revenue, but this is getting rediculous.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
They then sit down, go "doh...!?" for about ten minutes, click half-heartedly a few times and proclaim it an abject failure because it doesn't have precisely the same user interface as PS6.
I'm not going to disagree with you, but I'm not going to agree either. I used Photoshop 3.x through 6.x (whatever time frame that is, five or six years, I think) and have since switched to Linux. I have been using the GIMP for my photo manipulation and every-now-and-then web graphics work for about two years now. Not all the time, but a few times a month.
I still make a lot of mistakes, and things still take a lot longer to do. I'm not sure how v1.3 is coming along, but in the newest release version there are a lot of interface slowdowns. Here's a concrete example: in Photoshop, to rotate an object so it is square:
1) CTRL+T
2) Click and drag until the object is square
This works for all of those actions. In the GIMP, to do the same task, I must
1) SHIFT+T
2) Find the tool options dialog (could be obscured, or not open at all)
3) Select tiny "Rotate" radio button
4) Click+drag, making note of the numerical rotation
5) See if I guessed correctly and the object is square.
6) If not, undo (CTRL+Z) and go back to 5 with a slightly adjusted rotation. Repeat until object is square.
In my experience, this is somewhat representative of the GIMP's user experience. But hey! It's free! And maybe I'm just not used to it yet. My workflow was highly tied into Adobe's way of doing things so I'm perfectly willing to admit that I am stuck in my ways.
And I hear 1.3 solves a lot of these issues.
Erik
P.S. Here are some other UI slowdowns I just noticed playing around with the GIMP:
* I sometimes accidentally tear off a menu instead of hitting the first menu item
* There is no shortcut to accept a dialog (like Enter,) so I have to use my trackpoint, which is very slow.
* Since there are so many windows it's difficult to tab back and forth between other programs (I lose GIMP windows)
* Photoshop keeps common tool options (like brushes, opacity, feather, etc) in a small "always there" bar at the top of the screen. In the GIMP I feel like I am always hunting for a dialog which either wasn't open or is behind some other window or something.
when your product has been superior for years and recognized as such
In this case, it's not so. My dad runs a video production business. He runs Final Cut Pro, but before he went digital he did a lot of research between Mac/Windows, and the various editing platforms on each. Apparently working with Premiere is widely regarded as a painful, frustrating experience. It has its strong adherents who are used to idiosyncrasies, but new adopters are often annoyed, or don't know that there's a better way. His experience with FCP, btw, has been spectacular. He's awed by its power, its interface, and its reliability. It's probably a good thing Adobe is redesigning Premiere things from the bottom-up. Maybe it will be too FCP-like to distinguish it from Apple on the Mac, or they just know they can't compete on that platform. You can read the user boards on digitalvideoediting.com or www.2-pop.com to get the feel for Premiere out there.
And you're articulate and insightful.
I'm running 16 threads with 250 simultaneous stereo audio tracks in my game tranquility
and it's doing it while drawing 10,000 objects in OpenGL. Sometimes, if not always, you have to dig for the right information,
but most things are possible immediately or eventually, or you end up taking an alternative approach to solving the problem.
I gripe about Apple's sparse or non-existent documentation as much as anyone, but what I was addressing was the
accusation that the iApps etc. were built on intentionally non-published APIs and I don't think that's a fair assessment.
With every non-trivial app there's always some aspect you get stuck on when trying to get things just right (or just working),
but Apple's pretty good at disclosure, and getting better as time goes by. The new FireWire SDK is an excellent example of that.
Closer to the truth is that internal development of applications at Apple drives the extensions of the toolkits more than third
parties do. A team is building something like iPhoto against a specification and when they need some specific part, they
either write it, or ask the department in another building to extend an API to accommodate their needs. So naturally, Apple
gets first crack at the new functionality. Eventually that new functionally gets documented and tested, and Apple publishes
it to developers. But that's not a real-time pipeline.
but people like you are embarrassments to the platform
That's not true. I'm a unique and beautiful snowflake. There's no one like me.
And besides, to Apple, anyone that buys a few Macs isn't an embarrassment to the platform.
From what I've heard, they hired a former Adobe programmer. Depending on who's telling it, that's why Adobe's video products stagnated until after FCP came out.
I think it's important to remember that there was a lot of dissatisfaction with Adobe's attitude and Premiere's interface in particular before Apple bought FCP from Macromedia.
It's that Quark-style "hey, we own this market, we don't need to fix anything if we don't want to" attitude that did them in. Apple have clearly decided that they don't want the main reason to have a mac (a/v media editing) in the hands of unfriendly third parties.
It's much the same as Microsoft not leaving the main reason for having a PC (office apps) to 3rd parties.
If you didn't notice, they don't even mention Final Cut Express, which is bound to devastate whatever market share they have.
Final Cut Pro has decimated Premiere, which is quite a feat considering that it's a $999 program and Premiere was $695.
Final Cut Express would have dealt the killer blow at $299. Now Premiere doesn't even have price to recommend it.
I think Apple's market share has been low because Apple owners are waiting for the breakthrough in speed that just happened with the G5. I know I have a PowerMac G4/450 dual processor system I'm still using, and I plan to buy a G5 later this fall to replace it. There are a lot of people like me around, based on discussions I've seen on various message boards. With the G5, we've been given the "red meat" we need to get a new system.
I expect Apple's market share to improve a point or two when the new machines are available - and most of them are going to be that US$2,999 dual processor model.
Finally, Apple users are happy to spend money on software. I don't see mainstream commercial support vanishing for the platform any time soon. We're just too inclined to spend money for this to happen.
Consider Premiere's sales numbers before Final Cut. By Adobe's own admission, Mac users had 30% of sales. Those sales vanished because people love Final Cut. But a 30% market share for software purchases, coming from a platform that only has 3% of sales, is pretty impressive, no?
They're still getting results like that for Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects, and that's why the Mac version of those products will continue.
Premiere is simply not a very good product compared to the competition. I think Adobe should have risen to the challenge, but it's possible that Final Cut is just too well loved for them to have a chance. I well remember the standing ovation for Final Cut's founders at a users group meeting I attended. FCP users are a rabidly loyal bunch, and we are VERY well treated by Apple.
I don't see that changing any time soon.
D
I keep scanning my Applications directory and, for the life of me, I can't find a copy of Final Cut that came with the OS.
OH, you're talking about iMovie. Which is, in no way what so ever, competitive with Premier. Nice try, though.
The fact is, Final Cut ownz the non-linear video market now. Premier can't compete with this, so they've decided to market their software to a platform that FCP won't run on. Which is fine, but don't go spouting off ill-informed canards.
My other computer is your Windows box
Yes they have. Final Cut Express was the Result. It killed Premiere, not FCP. For a couple hundred dollars, you got all the basics of FCP, none of the extras.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
- iMovie, which ships on every Mac, and is an entry-level video programme that is still quite good -- and completely locks Adobe out of the low-end. This was once Premiere's territory. Even iMovie supports a thriving third-party plug-in community.
- Final Cut Express, which is FCP shorn of some of the true pro features, that only true pros need. This sits just about exactly where Premiere is in the market, but costs less and the interface skills you develop can be taken "upstairs." There's also the snob appeal of using the "lite" version of stuff the big Hollyweird boys are using.
- Final Cut Pro itself, which as other
/.ers have mentioned, is eating Avid's lunch.
Two of these have identical code bases, practically speaking, letting poor Premiere get beaten up from above and below at once. Apple also is extending FCP's reach (and Apple's money-making) with things such as add-on compositing software.The bottom line is, Adobe's marketroids looked at Premiere on OS X and said, "Why would I buy this product instead of...?" and the answer they came up with... was curtains for Premiere.