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Premiere Back on Mac
woof69 writes "After dropping OS X support for Premiere some time in 2003, Adobe is bringing it back in the new
Adobe Production Studio. The new software includes After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Encore DVD, and Soundbooth, and will be available for Apple's Intel-based computers in mid-2007; an updated version of the Windows suite will ship at the same time.
Does Final Cut have a fight on its hands?"
Final Cut Studio has a total lock on the video editing software market south of $10k.
Premiere disappeared from the Mac because it couldn't compete. Speaking as an independent filmmaker, I can't even imagine what Adobe could do to woo me back over.
There is no chance Premiere will take the market from Final Cut. The installed user-base of Mac video editors all use Final Cut. They're not going to take the time and expense to switch to Premier, when Adobe could decide to pull the upgrade plug at any minute. The only possible result is that Windows-based Premiere users might switch to a Mac. This is only good news for Apple.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
PPC Macs are dead. PPC processors are far from it.
The consequences have been enormous - dumps like AII "train" people to use software that "the industry" uses, and the industry uses that software because that's what they learned in school, and they learned it in school because back in the early 1990s, Adobe (and Apple) did one helluva job embedding themselves in every art and design school they could find.
Macromedia tried to do the same thing, but they didn't have the range of products: they had an image editor for a while, xRes, but it was such a buggy piece of shite, and Macromedia had done such a crap job of getting into schools, that MM decided the thing to do was to switch enemies. Adobe used to be their hated target - they saw the Internet as the next big thing and dumped their graphics orientation for the Web. With a proper panoply of tools (Dreamweaver, Flash) they got their web software into schools, and ceded the graphics market to Adobe.
Fundamentally, people use what they know, and what they know is what they learn, and that's why Quark Xpress, possibly one of the single most over-rated pieces of software EVER, still has a deep hold in the printing industry. Quark 2 was WAY better than Pagemaker aka, RAGEmaker, and Quark 3 completely blew Pagemaker out of the water. Here is where Adobe's Education strategy started to pay off... Pagemaker was a dud, and the first rev of InDesign was putrid. However, they quickly fixed InDesign, and it is now an extremely competitive product to Quark. Combined with Quark's dramatic expense for minor upgrades, InDesign is now making massive inroads into Quark turf - and the kids coming out of design "schools" have experience using it and know it as a decent product. They use what they know...
Now: this brings us to Premiere...
Adobe and Apple were on the skids when Apple cooked up FCP and iMovie. There was zero incentive for Adobe to continue developing Premiere o nthe Mac, and they stopped doing so. That, at the time, Premiere was a buggy piece of shit was not that much of an issue - the Top End was AVID at $150k for a decent set up, and then there was the rest of us... FCP (originally developed by Macromedia and sold to Apple when MM changed their focus to the Web) came in and sawed AVID off at the knees. The lead programmer for FCP was the guy who had developed Premiere for Adobe - Randy Ubillos. With massive infusions of cash from Apple (Jobs didn't care - he saw FCP as a way to sell hardware...) So, Adobe saw this all as one big Bitch Slap. Adobe's response? The Education Angle... people will use what they know, and what they know is what they learn in school...
If Apple was going to eat Premiere's lunch, then Adobe was going to de-emphasise the Apple platform, and crush FCP from without. How? After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator on the Mac is OK - Adobe defeated MM there. But Premiere ? Windows. Encore? Windows. Soundbooth? Just a repackaging of CoolEdit Pro - Windows only. And sell ALL of that software to Art Schools at a cut rate price...
Translation: an end run around Apple - a reverse Bitch Slap.
Problem: It didn't really work. In the Windows World, AVID hadn't surrendered. They used their Cash Cow (Digidesign) to help drag their ailing video editing systems along until they could get a new strategy going. AVID cooked up a pile of new software, all of it superior to Premiere et al. Cost competitive? No, but the UI was extremely similar from the low end to the high end, and with increased integration from AVID into ProTools, there was no way that Adobe could possibly compete with AVID. AVID provided an entry -> pro environment, and was deeply embedded in the industry - recording studios use ProTools, and Hollywoo
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.