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Is Final Cut Pro X Apple's Biggest Mistake In Years?
Hugh Pickens writes "The latest version of Final Cut Pro, the widely used tool in the professional video editing world, was getting a reputation as the app that launched a thousand complaints, as the 955 reviewers and raters on iTunes collectively rated FCP as, 'Two and a half stars.' 45% of reviewers gave the software one star, the lowest rating possible, bestowing on the program the dubious honor of being the lowest-rated Apple software hosted by the company's digital store. Many complaints center around lost features. We used to be able to do this, and now we can't. You can't work with existing FCP Suite projects. There's no external video monitoring, no EDL imports, no backup application disk so good luck re-installing the software on the road without a good internet connection, and lots of unanswered questions about site licensing."
Pickens continues: "'This was the product that completely built my company starting in 2000 / 2001 and now it's time for me to say goodbye,' writes Walter Biscardi. 'As I tell everyone else, if the tool isn't working for you, then find a tool that does.' But is this negative response just a very short-term response from editors who have gotten used to doing things the old way and don't want to change? Clearly, there are some amazing new features in FCP X. The 64-bit architecture means much better performance. The new tools such as the magnetic timeline, clip connections, compound clips, and audition seem like intuitive, great features. 'Great design, like great music, is almost always foreign at first, if not disturbingly strange,' writes David Leitner. 'You have to spend time with it. But if it is great, and if you invest your attention, it will change the way you look at the world.'"
Remember, Apple was doomed to failure? Oh, wait, maybe it was the iPad? No one wants a tablet when they can have a netbook... Oh wait..., uh...
but First Post X is my biggest success this year!
... Apple goes to the wall. We've seen it before.
Everybody else seems to be holding it wrong.
Video.
A lot of people (and businesses) looked at Vista and stayed on Windows XP. Eventually, Windows 7 came out, fixing some of the problems (also, hardware was better and had more memory...).
Likewise, if FCPX won't work, you can still use FCP 7 until Apple adds back the missing features.
Still it seems like they should continue selling and supporting FCP 7 for a while or have called it Final Cut X Express so they could get the feedback without the complaints.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Steve will send some shill journalist *cough*mossberg*cough* a short ambiguous email explaining why FCP X is actually a better product, then the fanboys will understand that they were wrong and Apple is right.
Apple now. Mozilla recently. Canonical a few months ago. Facebook... well, forever.
Hiding behind "you're doing it wrong; the software is right, change your habits" may work sometimes; just because everyone else got away with it doesn't mean you're in the same boat.
There's certainly a lot of niches out there for software done right, if anyone wants to jump into them.
Apple essentially merged FCP and FCE. While leaving the extremely advanced users behind with EOL software. Some numbers say that Apple sold about 2 million copies of the last version of Final Cut Pro, if we assume that Final Cut Express sold less, at perhaps one million copies (this is a bit low, part of me thinks there are actually more FCE users). This is the market for the new Final Cut [any version] that Apple is targeting. However, was their mistake in alienating the top 50 000 - 100 000 or so users in the initial release enough to kill their whole market? No, most users are not affected by the high end limitations in the initial release.
Most importantly though is that almost all of the complaints have already been acknowledged by Apple and the product manager has promised that they will return to the suite in coming updates.
I can see Apple trimming features and re-thinking the UI in ways that people aren't used to: they do that constantly.
But making a new version of a software that can't load files created by last month's version? That's insane. These are professional quality video files: advertisements, short films, TV shows, movies ... these things have far more value to their creators than any features the new version might have.
Ensuring backward compatibility with existing data files for at least a couple of years, or at the bare minimum providing a translator, is probably the first rule of software design. What were they thinking?
This will go well with the iPhone 6 camera that won't record or take pictures unless someone else lets you. Apple has really streamlined their products by removing all that unnecessary functionality.
So, loading a file you created last month using the previous version is a "high end feature"?
it's true, Apple doesn't make mistakes, they take other's mistakes and make the future...
... but apparently a lot more vocal than anyone thought.
Apples decision to go the prosumer-route makes perfect business sense, developing a tool for professionals in this market probably offers a dismal ROI, as compared to a tool that anyones mother buys for editing a wedding. They just had no inclination how attached and vocal the FCP users are, and the amount of backlash is staggering to them. The professional market (that needs OMF, XML EDL etc.) is probably a negligible speck in their turnover, but then again, they are people who are professionals in communicating, so this is turning into a PR disaster.
And the sad part it, most of this could have been avoided by two things: communication and not EOL:ing FCS3.
They should have come out saying that the product is not yet ready for professional use, and they are hoping to add the missing features in a certain timeframe. No, Apple hardly ever comes out and says this, but in this case I see no downside. The software seems brilliant for most users, and the Apple MO is to make big changes in the playing field, and giving people no choice except to embrace it or to fuck right off. But right now it is not a question of doing things differently, there are huge and gaping issues that render the software unusable for use in many environments.
And they should not have pulled FCS3 from the shelves. I mean, how stupid was that. Now bigger facilities are fucked if they need to add another seat, or someone loses his/her disks etc. They gain nothing but killing the product right away, but lose a lot of good will. They should have waited until _most_ of the professional features were there, giving people the option of staying with FCP instead of jumping ship to Avid or Premiere....
I guess that this debacle, along with eoling the xserve and adding os x server as standard to Lion is just to show that Apple is in no way interested in the business market. And that is perfectly ok, well within their rights. I am already migrating my clients from OS X Server based solutions to Linux and BSD (and AD, of all things). I just hope that others see the writing on the wall as well...
no 10.7 looks like Apples windows ME
it's not even a real os more like a paid 10.6 update.
FCP users are used to doing things the 'Windows' way. When they learn why Apple removed all of those features, they'll realise that having to change their entire workflow and implement a bunch of clumsy workarounds will make them far more efficient than before. Besides, the features that have been dropped nobody ever uses anyway.
Or how about we talk about how they caved in on the 30% cut for inapp purchases? Nobody talks about that?
Confusion - what is there to talk about besides Apple getting 30% on in-app purchases? That remains the case today. How did Apple "cave" there?
Are you thinking subscriptions? They did dial back a little. But lots of people talked about that...
Or how about how that Swiss newspapers are shifting away from iPad apps to HTML 5 apps
OMG, where the Swiss go the world follows!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Dude... ever hear of a USB stick?
If Apple had presented it as an update for FC Express people would be all over it. Many professionals would say: Hey, in many cases that suffices. I can do the same job in less time. Great!!! Pundits would say: If Apple improves this a little bit more, it will make FCP redundant. Financial analysts would say: Apple is cannibalizing FCP, and speculate that all this easy to use power would still turn out profitable.
But the above situation is with exactly the same program as we have now. Apple WILL add the stuff pro's want (e.g. multicamera support which Pogue got word from Apple is their top priority now). It is just that some professionals will have to get used to the idea that complicated stuff can be done more easily and more quickly, and that for some features they'll have to wait a bit longer and keep using their old tools.
Every professional uses the tools that make him most productive. It would be foolish NOT to add this one to the toolbox. If you're so specialized that you can never use it, you could still give it a spin: You'd be fluent with it once the new features are there. $300 is really nothing if you're a professional.
Bert
Hiding behind "you're doing it wrong; the software is right, change your habits" may work sometimes
It works for SAP. To our present horror and eternal damnation.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
look at it. XSAN hardware killed. OSX server killed ('rolled into standard build' = killed in a few generations), XSAN software is rolled into lion so I hear, but with less features. Color & Shake bought & killed. At this point there is no real use for mac pros - they must be next on the list. Weird they even sold them when FCP didn't use multiple processors anyway....
you can't even buy FCStudio now. The link takes you to FCPX
we have a lot of students using FCP on an XSAN shared storage. doesn't look like that is supported (ok video files can exist outside of the local machine as long as they tick the 'dont copy' box but what about projects existing on the network. if that's not supported we go back about 7 years)
its also screwing the BBC who from my sources have fallen out with another video editing supplier.
FFS Apple release the source to FCStudio 3. let the community take it over.
Ask the MS Word team
What?
I have been using Final Cut Pro since version 1.0 on projects large and small, and I have been an Apple certified instructor for about 6 years. Take that at face value.
I to am upset at some of the missing features in FCPX, but you know what? It's a 1.0 product. It is amazing for 80% of editors, maybe 90%, and I do believe the missing features will eventually be addressed. No one in their right mind would switch platforms in the middle of a project, stick with FCP7 if its still working for you, and let FCPX mature and blossom in its time.
At the risk of being the 20th person to paraphrase Henry Ford, "If you asked people what they wanted, they'd say they wanted a faster horse". Apple is consistently brave for throwing in the towel and starting froms scratch when it is necessary. 90% of people DONT need multicam, DONT need XML, and DONT even need tape any more.
Lest you think I'm all about roses and puppies, here is where Apple F@#$ed up, big time: The day that FCPX was released, they completely wiped out any evidence of Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Server. So if you DO want to stick with Studio until FCPX is mature, like any sane person would, you are seriously screwed.
Need to expand your editing suite? Too bad, you can't buy any more licenses. Need to replace a missing license? Too bad, you cant. Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Server don't exist any more. I needed to download the 1.5.2 patch to final cut studio the other day, and you know what? I couldn't. The download link went to FCPX's web page. That is INSANE!
What kind of company proclaims to support the professional and corporate world, puts out a product, gives you no hint of the upgrade lifecycle, and then yanks any and all evidence on a Tuesday with no notice whatsoever? I work with large businesses and universities, installing Final Cut Server installations. These companies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and months preparing for a roll out, and all the while Apple is happy to sell them products, knowing in the back of their mind that they're going to pull support before long. Who does that? Scam artists do that.
Apple was never all that corporate-friendly in the past, but this move is downright evil. There's no way I can recommend Apple's products to corporate clients now, for fear they could do this again. At least with Shake, they gave a warning, they kept selling it for awhile, and they released the source code so developers could continue supporting it. They didn't wipe out any trace of it on their site. I couldn't even buy a final cut pro KEYBOARD, from a totally different manufacturer, on the online store. The buy link was erased. That is some Orwellian shit right there.
Microsoft has a history of buying companies with promising technology, getting you locked in, then charging and arm & a leg. Apple buys up companies with promising technology, lowers the price, gets you hooked, then kills it off and leaves you hanging.
They did the exact same thing with iMovie a couple of years ago. They built a completely new product, and let it take over the name of a popular and established but long in the tooth product. People screamed bloody murder about the lost features (and to some extent because there were any radical changes, regardless of what they were). And then Apple re-added the lost functionality in the next couple of releases, and everybody forgot about it to the extent that people can think this approach "isn't like Apple". This is the way the address cruft and bloat in their software: kill it and write something cool and modern and simple that does basically the same thing from scratch and release it under the same name, then add back in the niche functionality you omitted for simplicity sake in the next few releases.
If FCPX doesn't do what you need, there's nothing stoping you from continuing to use FCP7 until it does. It functions just fine even installed on the same box as FCPX.
I seriously want final cut pro for PC, I'm ready to buy a cheap MAC just to use that one program for video editing. Sad to here the latest version isn't measuring up to prior glory I love the easy of use, and do not understand how PC based video editing programing tools look and feel like a newbie's first time using Dreamweaver(Not so new anymore through lol) Hope final cut can fix or re-release
"The professional market (that needs OMF, XML EDL etc.) is probably a negligible speck in their turnover, but then again, they are people who are professionals in communicating, so this is turning into a PR disaster."
A large part of the appeal of FCP is that it is an affordable *professional* product that non-professionals can buy and use as well. You can learn it and grow up to be a pro who edits on it. Colleges teach its use. It does it all--until now. Now there is no point teaching how to use it in professional film and video classes. It is no longer a product that cuts down the line between amateur and professional. It is now iMovie X.
The 30-year old Avid timeline interface and the new FCPX magnetic storyline (coupled with some of the missing features) are probably different enough that, no, you can't just read in a previous project. Without a half-zillion available tracks, you won't get an exact one-to-one conversion.
FCPX is a clean break with the past. Some will deal with it. Others will cry and complain about how things aren't the way they used to be and that they need to learn something new. Some will run to other platforms, each with their own problems and issues. (And cause equal chaos and disruption to their precious workflows in the process.)
Some will do the sensible thing and stick with their current toolset until FCPX has what they need. After all, FCP7 works just as well today as it did last week. No one is forcing Walter or any of the other guys to convert today. Their "tool" is still working. All Apple needs to do is maintain FCP7 until FCPX gets up to speed and third-parties get drivers and codecs available for video cards and cameras like the RED.
And some will dive in and create some amazing video with it. Personally, I can't wait.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
This is a great release, especially for freelancers. Apple is telling everyone to redo their business, because they have a forward-looking vision that's based around a new platform with a great interface. They will work out user details later.
Aperture was pretty tough to use in v1.0. V3 is nearly perfect.
Apple leads the industry. The industry doesn't lead Apple. The lack of power felt by professionals must suck, but it's better in the long term for industry growth.
They should have forked the product. The old branch is clearly different than the new branch, but they're said to be the same product, and while close, there are lot of people making money with FCP that are really disturbed.
Were Apple to have forked the product, none of the difference in expectations would have happened. Altering expectations isn't what Apple normally does, so this is quizzical. It's strange behavior for Apple, and I think they realize this now.
This is so much different than a death-grip antenna issue, that Apple should have been wayyyyy on top of this long ago. Not like them.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Ask the MS Word team
I can still load Word 95/97 docs in Word 2010. Try again.
There is a large group of upcoming pro FCP users - the freelancers that are basing their video production business off of a dSLR video workflow. Apple saw this coming, and created a great editing suite for them. It doesn't have the major high-end features like Color or Shake, but I think the release as-is is fine for freelance pro use. Additionally, the goal is to get this new market experienced on this release, so they're prepared for a workflow that includes more advanced color correction and group projects.
Studios are going to hate it, freelancers are going to love it.
They did the exact same thing with iMovie a couple of years ago. They built a completely new product, and let it take over the name of a popular and established but long in the tooth product. People screamed bloody murder about the lost features (and to some extent because there were any radical changes, regardless of what they were). And then Apple re-added the lost functionality in the next couple of releases....
I sincerely hope this is what Intuit plans to do with Quicken for Mac. They haven't gotten to the "re-added the lost functionality in the next couple of releases" stage yet, alas....
The main problem these days is that so-called "designers" are calling many of the shots, rather than actual software developers.
This is a pretty radical departure from the past few decades, where we've seen it mostly be the opposite situation. Software developers would make the decisions, but would occasionally enlist the help of graphics and UI designers to tweak the UI's appearance or for suggestions about improving the UI's usability.
These days, however, we're seeing the "designers" deciding how UIs, and even the software as a whole, are to behave, from beginning to end. The software developer is there to merely implement whatever the "designer" wants, without any ability or power to make decisions themselves.
The problem arises because software developers and "designers" have very different focuses. Software developers want to create applications that work well, and are effective to use, even if they might not be very pretty. "Designers" tend to only care about appearances, even if the application isn't very usable. And they only keep themselves relevant by changing, often needlessly, the appearance of the application or web site on a frequent basis.
This is exactly what we've seen from each organization and group that you mentioned. Apple, for example, was originally founded by software and hardware developers. The UI didn't look horrible, but it was usable and that's why Apple systems became popular initially. After their rough patch, and the acquisition of NeXT's technology and talent, we saw them focused on providing high-end, high-quality software and hardware where usability was key. Then the iPod/iPhone/iPad situation arose, and the emphasis shifted more towards "design". Now more emphasis seems to be on making the software look "trendy" and "hip", rather than working well.
The same goes for Mozilla. We've seen nothing but one pathetic Firefox UI redesign after another from them lately. These unnecessary redesigns are only disruptive, and haven't been beneficial. Now the developers have been distracted for a long time making these changes, rather than fixing the performance problems or memory leaks that plague Firefox. Users suffer not only from the bad UI changes, but they also suffer from the lack of real progress when it comes to fixing these serious problems.
It's time for software developers to make the decisions, rather than "designers". The priorities and concerns of the software developers are much better aligned with those of the actual users. The applications may not look as pretty, but that's easily ignored if they work well.
AS a former user, I can say that it is a truly massive software suite. It is well made and addresses so many niches in the field that they are bound to upset people different amounts in each niche. Apple has also been working on a complete rewrite of the massive quicktime library that does much of the heavy lifting; probably to make it do more of it and doing this while porting the whole app over and redesigning it as well. Some features are bound to get put off until later and they likely wanted to make some money and/or didn't want to patch the old version's growing incompatibilities; so rather than get everything ported and revised they chucked or delayed features.
Some things are big mistakes and possibly with enough complaints they will be resolved. Somehow I doubt EDL support would be chucked. delayed or buggy perhaps? Could be that they intend to sell Final Cut Pro Studio as the new "pro" and this one is the "express" version of Final Cut Pro. That is what I expected -- since express lacks many features they can make a better express on the path of rewriting the full product.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The 30-year old Avid timeline interface and the new FCPX magnetic storyline (coupled with some of the missing features) are probably different enough that, no, you can't just read in a previous project. Without a half-zillion available tracks, you won't get an exact one-to-one conversion. FCPX is a clean break with the past.
My concern is that this experience is going to give the dynamic timeline a bad name, even though I'd been wanting one for years. Having to manually manage a one-to-one relationship between media and a statically-allocated player object, which is what tracks on an Avid are, is very old-fashioned compared to what the hardware can do now -- I really shouldn't have to worry about wether or not a sound is playing on A1 or A2, I just wanna hear them both, please let the computer figure it out for me. But now people are racing to call it consumerish, when they're really pissed off about AAFs and RED support.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Mistake would be the understatement of the year. Apple f*%ked up royally on this one.
We manage two prestige advertising firms, one in Canberra and another down in Melbourne and the complaints are flowing, loud, and spitting from the mouth. But what's worse is, our customers are 100% right and they ain't shit all we can do.
The balls is deep in Apple's court on this one, and unlike the failed Xserve. The high-end video market is an area they do not want to drop the ball on, this industry laps up Apple hardware, is glued to the Apple suite and these guys pay up *big* bucks for managed services from Apple directly, the resellers and support vendors.
The video says it all:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20074064-248/conan-obrien-rips-apples-final-cut-pro-x-on-show/
All Apple needs to do is maintain FCP7 until FCPX gets up to speed
But that's the whole problem! Apple will not maintain FCP7, they have pulled it off the shelves already. That's what all the professionals are complaining about.
You cannot buy FCP7 any more. Imagine you are a video shop that needs to hire more people. You can no longer buy new FCP7 licenses for them! You are forced to either use FCP7 illegally or switch to FCPX (which means completely changing your workflow and redoing everything because your old projects will not load).
If FCP7 remained as a viable option there wouldn't have been nearly as many complaints as the current shitstorm.
Jesus... I know this is Slashdot, but at least bother to understand the problem before dismissing it out of hand.
Did Apple hire a bunch of Gnome developers to work on FCP? Only Gnome developers (er, "designers") have the sheer arrogance to remove a bunch of features, claim the product is better than ever, and then dismiss users who complain as idiots.
Apple knows better than you and always will. At least that's what they want you to think. The FCP castration, plans for OS X Lion and the desktop App Store, Thunderbolt, the proprietary USB connector on iPods and iPhones, iOS itself, Apple's EULAs, iCloud, killing off iWeb, and well the list goes on and on. All of these lead to one conclusion: controlling the end-user experience in a profitable way. Apple is working very hard every day to separate people from their money, and that is ALL they care about. In the past they developed some excellent software (well, NeXT and other little fishes did the real work) but one look at their flagship bloatware iTunes should be all anyone needs to see Apple's real agenda. I used to be a pretty hardcore Apple fan but I got rid of my last MBP 2 years ago when the writing on the wall became clear. They better hope Steve Jobs never dies because he's probably the last person at the company trying to make sure the same mistakes made in the early 90s aren't made again.
The Conan O'Brien show's take on it is pretty hilarious.
The problem I have anymore - whenever a "pro" product is discussed - is it's very hard to get at the reviews from the small group of people I actually am interested to hear from. For example with photo workflow software, such as Lightroom or Aperture, I really only care about what serious, experienced photographers have to say regarding most of the feature sets - yet the loudest screaming is coming from fanbois on one side or the other. And now, with FCP X, we're seeing exactly the same thing.
I don't know if the problem is too many wanabees poseurs on line or what - but when I read someone generally whining about Apple "giving up on professionals" and then they follow up with a statement like "That's it, I'm switching to Adobe/Microsoft"... it's quite apparent their statement is a waste of space since they aren't in that line of work.
If a person want to complain about specific features, and can show himself/herself knowledgeable, great - that's useful information no matter what their background is. But unfortunately the signal to noise ratio on the web is dismally low in most regards, and when it comes to intelligent discussion of Apple products it seems to fade to the level of background noise.
#DeleteChrome
Someone is an avid (pun intended) Apple fanboy.
The love fest that is your post is sad. Apple screwed up here. Badly.
Something that they have shown that they have little interest in doing. They have not updated FCP7 since 7.0.3 (a very minor update), September 15, 2010.
Combine this with the other Apple missteps of the last month, and it looks like Apple is losing sight of quite a bit these days:
iMac internal hard drives require a custom firmware and--far worse--a custom connection on the physical drive itself. Meaning you cannot replace a dead drive yourself. Good luck if you hang onto your computer after its warranty expires, or live no where near an Apple Store for that matter. This will be expensive in the future. (I have replaced the hard drive of an iMac that is currently three years old; it was not that difficult, but now it would be impossible)
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will supposedly only be installable after installing Snow Leopard on current machines. So, if your drive dies, then you must install Snow Leopard before installing Lion. And it sounds like you will have to redownload Lion every time you choose to install it. Around 4 GB of fun. That won't add to down time, will it...?
I hope that Apple is set for a huge backlash for this (Lion in particular, as the iMac issue won't surface for most people until years later). Their dominance of being a dream customer service company is about to hit a wall and lose. And, I say this as an owner of an iPhone 4, MacBook Pro and iPad 2. These will be my last Apple devices, at least until they turn themselves around like Microsoft (of all companies!) has recently with the latest crop of WP7 Mango and Windows 8.
The issue is not whether you can create good new video with it, or whether you have to learn something new. It's the fact that the existing FCP data files out there are worth millions -- or more likely billions -- of dollars, and unless backward compatibility is maintained, those files are *worthless*.
You do video editing for a local advertiser. Your client wants to rebroadcast last year's Memorial Day sale ad with this year's dates and times. You're screwed.
You're the editor/director for a small but successful art film that showed at Cannes last year. A studio asks you to make a few changes so they can show it in theaters worldwide. You're screwed.
You did a TV biography of a famous person three years ago. That person has just died, and your channel wants to do a retrospective using your footage. You're screwed.
You're a senior film major applying for work at a major studio. They ask you to send them a sample of your most recent work so they can look at your technical skills. You're screwed.
I can't think of another major piece of software that broke backward compatibility with data files from the previous version. When OS X came out, they had Classic Environment so you could run OS 9 apps, and they supported that for about a decade. When Intel macs arrived, they provided Rosetta so PowerPC apps would still work, and they supported that for six years. Word 2010 will still read Word '97 documents. I'm not sure, but I think Adobe Illustrator CS5 can open Illustrator '86 documents.
This is not a case of stick-in-the-mud thinking. It's simply the case that for every experienced professional user of a piece of software, the value of the software is insignificant compared to the value of the files they've created using it.
haha, nice!
...pro machine at the instant FCPX was released?
Damn Apple, that's some cold-ass shit.
Having hight end graphics development being done on apple helps counter the image that apple owners are just stupid content consumers with more money than sense or in the very least allows those apple users to ignore rational arguments and say 'but high end video editing is done on apple computers'.
If all the professionals left apple, i think that the fan-boys might find themselves loosing arguments (rather than the other side giving up try to convince him he's wrong) and think twice before shamelessly pointing to the apple on the back of their monitors.
Minimalism is the wave of the future. We all remember when Gnome Shell/Unity came out, on how slashdot was so overjoyous and beaming with pure excitement and energy. Suddenly, simple tasks that took one or two clicks were simply gone! It now took more clicks or could not be done at all. I mean the highlight was when the minimize and maximize buttons were removed, so we could focus on single tasking with one app at a time like a real Unix geek would do.
Firefox 4 was also a great reaction from slashdot with all its features removed with such positive fanfair from all the comments. Firefox 5 was even more positive and the only complaint, was you could still have basic functionality.
Infact, I am typing this and my dissertation in textedit rather than Word. I can now focus on what I am doing rather than using the program to do thinks like check APA format sourcing, adding bibliographies, and so on. That is sooo 20th century and lame. The only thing needed to to run text edit through some emulators like Word uses to be compatible with the older versions in Windows all no other functionality of course.
I look forward to Final Cut Pro X!
http://saveie6.com/
The same thing happened when they went from iMovie HD 6 to iMovie '08.
I still have to old Final Cut, I guess I'll keep it just like I did with iMovie HD 6.
You'd think they might've learned... but obviously not.
No, but I'm sure I read that FCP 7 would be incompatible with OSX Lion. But I got that from the interwebs, it may be BS.
Cause newton, killing licensed clone makers, and not having a x86 version of X available sooner pop to mind
It's missing essential features. I literally cannot do my job without MOF and EDL exports, something FCP X removed. I literally cannot do my job without video monitoring, something FCP X removed. These are basic things in an editing program, and it's totally baffling as to why they are gone.
You say that like it's a *good* thing. Star Wars Galaxies NGE was "a clean break with the past."
The bigger issue for Apple is that pros tend to be fiercely loyal to the product lines that they use. The only time they really switch is when the vendor massively screws up the product. After all, its how FCP got a foothold in the market to begin with. Adobe kept putting out crap releases of Premiere, while Avid was slow to update their software and hardware solutions for OS X. Apple through aggressive marketing and having a top notch product managed to firmly establish itself in a market that saw little competition in the past.
Looks like Apple really screwed the pooch for me. I was mad enough about having to do a download, no high speed in my area so I'm stuck with a mifi with a nasty cap. It's why I stopped buying download films. It effectively costs me $10 to download a film. The real problem is the reverse compatibility. After a two year battle it looks like i'm getting an old unfinished film of mine back. I'm starting a new film and I had planned to use FC X for both. It's going to be a nightmare using both versions at the same time. I'd stick with the old version but I need several new features for the new film. I'd consider dumping Final Cut and switching to Media Composer but it'd mean redoing several months of editing on my previous film. I'm now seriously considering the switch to Media Composer either way for the long haul if they don't fix this mess fast! I find it hard to believe that they can fix the backward compatibilty problem. If they could have they would have made it a part of the upgrade. From the sounds of it they are risking their entire pro market. Not the first time. When I first got into Mac five years ago I was assured they were pushing the pro market. Ever since then I've seen a steady drop in pro support. It's ironic since the pros kept Apple alive back in the days when they were mostly out of the range of the average person. Now the pros seem to be an annoyance.
Anyone who hasn't noticed that Apple has been dropping the ball on professional users and generally releasing slightly lower quality software the past couple years is simply not paying attention, is not a professional user, or is hopelessly goggle-eyed over slick looking features instead of practical application.
And it's no surprise: there's far more money to be made in mass market products. It's sort of an inevitable thing that those who need the most from their hardware and software will be least served by the market - they're at the end of a diminishing returns curve.
I'm still fairly happy using their stuff - everything is better than what I had five years ago, so what do I really have to complain about? Still, I expect as computers become more a part of everyday life for all people, features will move closer and closer to the mean. I don't really expect Apple to focus on my needs any more. Who has the money to drive the market against a 100 x larger pool of users?
Apple stopped updating FCP right before a MAJOR change in video production workflow. FCP7 was designed for tape workflows using MPEG2 or DV family codecs, now everything has moved onto the AVC/H.264/MPEG-4 family of codecs and tape-less work flows are common. Adobe managed to completely rewrite all their OS X apps in Cocoa, and support the newest codecs and technologies during that time frame, whats Apple's excuse?
As for the missing features, Multicam support is a pretty big one. Being able to edit a production like its currently being filmed live is pretty important for folks in post production. At least iMovie users aren't left behind, FCPX supports importing its projects. Another glaring error on Apple's part with this release was not rewriting Compressor. The one program that could use proper multi-core and 64-bit support is just a refresh of the clunky previous version.
I can still load Word 95/97 docs in Word 2010. Try again.
Sure, you can *open* it. But will it *render* the same. It *might* open all your old files and render them just the way you intended, in which case you'd be perfectly justified in being satisfied with Word's backward capability. Just like somebody who found his files hopelessly screwed up would be perfectly justified in being unsatisfied.
Nobody ever claimed that Word wouldn't go through the motions of opening old Word files and produce *some* kind of output, but my own experience with older versions of Word is that they couldn't be relied upon to render large, complex documents consistently, even if the documents were created in the same versions of Word. Granted, such documents should be produced in something like page layout software, but Word was what we had to produce proposals with and we didn't have time to teach everyone a totally different kind of software.
Setting the compatibility bar at simply *acting* like "everything was hunky dory what's your problem you moron" would make most open source word processing programs "compatible" with MS Office. In fact I'd say they were *more* compatible in that when something goes wrong they tend to hash up formatting, not lose text. That's probably the result of defensive parsing of an undocumented format. In fact, I've found that open source implementations of ".doc" are considerably better at recovering the content of corrupted files than Word, probably for that reason.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yes let's all keep using the same FCP7 software forever, while Adobe marches onward with new features. Really great plan, dipshit.
Everyone is uptight because they wanted a real FCP X and got the first release of a new code base with the same name that is missing a lot of stuff. What is there is very nice, but any software team is going to need time to bring a new engine completely to speed. The software isn't bad, but the marketing was seriously miscalculated. They should have given the product a different name (not iMovie Pro) to send the correct signal.
Yeah, I wondered about that, too. But after a bit of thought I realized that the pros need to complain now, and loudly enough to get changes made. This is Apple's product going forward, and if we want any part of it we need to tell them before we're shut out. I certainly won't be switching to FCP X any time soon, and I doubt any even semi-pro editor will be. But if we want something that will work on our next computers, or even to properly leverage our current ones, or if we want software updates to keep our codecs and export formats up-to-date, or any of the useful traits of current-release software, we need to be sure that we can use FCP X. Right now, we can't. That's OK; real professionals are used to waiting on software updates and rarely get to use 1.0 software because it has bugs and incompatibilities and all sorts of problems that are fine for consumers but not fine for clients. We use it on test machines if we have the luxury and tell manufacturers where it isn't working and then we usually get to deploy 1.01 or 1.03 to the trenches. This explosion is exactly what we should expect, given that no one can buy FCS3 any more. If Apple was more open and had let pro users beta test it, we'd be a lot less vocal - no one gets that mad about Avid's bugs because they have a relatively open process for dealing with them. No one got excited over FCS3 bugs, either. It's more Apple's style of reveal, "Hey, this is all you can buy now! It's professional, since it says it in the name! Isn't it awesome?" that gets the high-end users worked up.
It's their own damn fault for doing it so sudden.
Can't they ruin their cash cows more gradually? Just look at Autodesk!
It IS like them. You obviously don't remember the late 80's and 90's when a *Microsoft* cash injection was the only thing keeping Apple going. From all that I have seen and heard, they are a consumer electronics hardware company now. They stopped making a server. A lot of the core OS team has left or is leaving (Unsubstantiated, but I heard this). The phones and tablets, although still ahead of the game somewhat, are more style than function. And now they are cutting out the high-maintenance creative professionals in order to sell more copies of FCPX. Sorry Robert Rodriguez, you'll just have to edit the next Sin City on your iPad. They are getting out of supporting business, because premium phones and computer stuff are a big consumer market, and they want to make money. Plus I think that Steve is wearing thin and he's having to let other people do stuff and they are not OCD so the stuff is not perfect. On top of all that, they have tons of dough so maybe they are satisfied with their position and aren't out to fight man to man with Microsoft or whomever else is out there, but rather cement their current business for a long time. There's something to be said for that.
IMHO, since OS X was introduced, with each new version Apple applications have been dumbed down in the name of streamlining them. Maybe they are trying to appeal to a broader but less savvy audience. In my mind, it is frustrating, and it is the same kind of thought that brought Microsoft to came up with Clippy... Whatever is the case, because of this (and the constant 100MB 'updates' for that repugnant abobination iTunes has become) , I am seriously considering going back to Linux for my next computer, after years of using OS X...
Unless you were contractually required to keep the raw there is no screwing. You won't get some free cash just by tweaking, but it rather might just be time to create a new spot.
When I worked in the broadcast industry we typically kept the raw footage, a backup of the project file and components and the final work. The final work would be in numerous locations beyond the production environment if it was a current production spot. In that case it would be loaded in playout systems and stored in the backup systems as well.
While we did try to keep some older NLEs kicking around in case we wanted to quickly revamp a spot it wasn't unheard of to ingest the raw footage or pull the clips from the project file backup. There was an instance where someone wanted their REALLLY old spot brought back to life and there was only one extremely long raw beta tape sitting around. I kid you not... when the material was shot it was on BETA. Someone actually found the old finished spot on beta in storage and there was much rejoicing.
In summary, if you are reasonably prepared and work in a commercial environment it isn't difficult to not be bitten by the upgrade bug. In our case, upgrades were the least of our worries most of the time. Really, the people this impacts are those who are utilizing poor recovery strategies.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Yes. Yes. Yes.
you don't seem to understand the Apple way at all.
Every proper Apple fan magically purchased the new version the instant it was released, some lining up days in advance to be sure to consume the latest product as quickly as possible. They then proceeded to install new version, some recording the "experience" on video so it could be shared with less fortunate iDiots. Never did they consider the ramifications of doing so.. thinking independently is discouraged in the Apple community and questioning Apple is strictly forbidden.
-Lod
No but you can't get licenses for the previous version anymore...
They should have forked the product.
Judging from the reactions, they forked it up quite thoroughly.
J.H.C. mods. What's with the incessant downmodding of humorous posts? Windows update screw up again? You find something else you can't do under iOS? Upset that Facebook is still around? Still haven't gotten laid?
Crack a smile. Smoke 'em if you got em.
BUSH ISN'T IN THE WHITE HOUSE ANY MORE. Things are looking up.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...will be rich. How much would you pay to be able to safely round trip your projects between the two formats? The only question is, when it appears in the Mac app store, will it be sold by Apple, merely made by Apple, or be a true third party app?
Yes, it will render about as near as perfect as most people would want. Which is literally (used in the correct sense) infinitely better than this Apple bullshit.
Well, it worked for *you*, and that's great.
As I say you're completely justified in feeling 100% satisfied with Word's backward compatibility. But other people have clearly experienced compatibility issues with Word, and they're equally justified in being unsatisfied. That makes this a YMMV situation, which is *not* good enough for backward compatibility in something like a word processor, even though I don't dispute that you, and many like you, and probably even *most* people have never had a problem.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Did you read David Pogue's questions to the FCPX product manager? It sounds like video monitoring is a matter of driver support, with AJA cards having beta drivers. Possibly that will come in conjunction with Lion...
EDL support will be coming soon it seems like once Apple releases the API docs for FCPX... they seem to want to promote better interchange formats than EDL though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
literally (used in the correct sense)
Congratulations, you've been nominated for Dumbass of the Year.
I love the double adverbs, by the way. You must be an English professor.
Word processors like Word have never rendered documents consistently. Often the same version will produce different outputs on different computers simply because of different fonts being installed. The primary purpose of a word processor is to assist you in getting text into a computer file, and editing them. Things like pagination, indentation, page number consistency, etc. are frills added on which are secondary to the word processor's primary purpose. If those things are your primary concern, you should be using a page layout program like Illustrator.
WYSIWYG caused many people to assume that WYS will always and forever be WYG when it comes to word processors. It is not. WYSIWYG merely means what you see on your screen at that moment is what you'll get if you hit the print button. If you want WYSWAAFBWYG, you need to be converting completed word docs into PDF, or copy/pasting the text into a page layout program.
Ideally a page layout program would have sufficient text processing tools to function as a word processor, and we could combine the two into one. But as it turns out, the vast majority of people using a word processor only need WYSIWYG, and not WYSWAAFBWYG. They're using it to compose term papers, letters, and monthly reports. Stuff that'll be printed and viewed once, and nobody cares if it'll look exactly the same if they have to review it 2 years later. So it makes little sense for them to pay extra for the page layout features. There simply isn't a large enough market for a hybrid app - there simply aren't enough people like you who want page layout features, but don't want to learn to use a page layout program.
But will it *render* the same.
Does it matter? Word 97 did not render the same as Word 97 from one PC to another all-too-often.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I know how iWork compares to other tools. I'll keep my estimation of their utility to myself.
How does FCP compare to other vendors' tools?
Is FCP a class leader, unlike iWork?
I remember the cash injection.
But they've been doing really well with the customer experience thang. Thoughtful. Media. Video. Thinking it through brought lots of people in. This is thoughtless. It's like Porsche putting an ugly engine in their Carerra.
Oh, wait.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Where the X means they used to be, were at some point, and now are MicroShaft 2.0 done wrong (if there could be a right).
Give it up dude....
You can't think of another major piece of software that broke backward compatibility. How about iMovie?
Amen to that, brotha! Firefox 4 & 5 (being absolutely identical... so why the version increment? why keep numbers in sync with other losers???) are still good browsers as far as the bit inside the GUI is concerned, but the menus, etc, around it are just ridiculous. What's wrong with a menu bar and a toolbar/location bar? It's simple. It works. You don't need to scratch your head to figure out how to use it. This disease you speak of where designers unleash their fantasies on unsuspecting users twice yearly is ridiculous. It's why I've stuck with 10.04 Ubuntu. The writing is on the wall: look for another distro when this one seems to be a bit old. There was a time where I at least respected Apple for their philosophy of not re-inventing stuff every few years, but it now looks like Steve Jobs is no longer satisfied anymore and is beginner to tinker way too much.
BTW, why does that "Working..." spinner at the bottom of slashdot constantly spin? It's annoying, damnit! Get off my lawn, while yer at it :-)
Lets be clear about this: FinalCut Pro 7 and FinalCut Pro X can live side-by-side on the same machine. If you have work you did last year you can still use FinalCut Pro 7 (since you did it there) to re-work those projects. That idea there negates your first two scenarios.
The third is really fuzzy thinking: it does not matter which version you have on your computer if it is the raw footage the TV channel wants to work on. You just take the raw footage and import it into whatever system you have decided to work on this new project on. And since FinalCut Pro X is much faster at importing, and even better lets you work while you are still importing clips, it is a better soltion there. If you had talked about the lack of FinalCut Server, then that might have an impact since it is going to become increasingly difficult to find copies of FinalCut Pro 7 to add new workstations with, but that is a problem down the road.
And if you are in film school and people want to see the work you have done recentely, they want to see the final render, not the production files. Are you saying you deleted those? That is the worst example in your bunch.
There are legitimate reasons why professionals may want to avoid FinalCut Pro X, at least untill they get the kinks worked out for the really high-end needs. But most of the gripes there have already been accnoledged by the FinalCut Pro project managers and they have already said that they will be comming in future updates. Importing old work does not seem to be one of those points, but old work still can be done by the software you already have. Apple is obviously aiming this software at future work.
This is silly the professional video market has gone through many transitions like this. The real question is will Apple succeed in redefining the metaphor of video production not weather existing users find it difficult because it is different. The issues with missing features is also nothing new, and most will be fixed by Apple or third parties. Many of the complaints are simply mis understandings. People have a short memory most pro editors hated Final Cut when it first came out, and everyone said it was not a pro applications and fully native NLE would never replace hardware based systems - and they were wrong.
Does the newly released software disable old FCP installations if one does not elect to upgrade?
Keep using what you're using now, screw the new version if it doesn't meet your needs and good luck finding something better to use going forward.
I'm not aware that Apple is forcing its high end customers to upgrade their FCP installations.
I love how Apple cultists ritually denounce anyone who dares to want to do something that Apple doesn't allow them to do.
When I bought my MacBook Pro a couple years ago, only a few weeks after Apple stopped shipping them with S-video ports, I was surprised, to say the least. The new video-out port was something I'd never heard of (MiniDisplayPort), that only Apple was using. I bought a $30 MiniDisplayPort-to-VGA adapter (from Apple, of course)... but it turned out that this wouldn't work with most VGA devices, because it wasn't actually converting the digital signal to analog. So I had to buy an actual powered converter box to get my video output into a format I could use with any monitor, TV, or projector that I had access to.
The attitude of the "Geniuses" at the Apple Store was completely arrogant. "No one uses S-video any more -- it's out of date. Why would you want to use an obsolete standard?" It wasn't obsolete a few weeks earlier, apparently -- but when Apple declares it so, it instantly becomes so.
BS. Apple has always equally prioritized design and engineering; that's the primary thing that's always differentiated their products. But even disregarding that, you're ignoring that these buffoon artists and designers are the ones that actually USE software like FCP, and are in fact the ones most vehemently complaining about this new release.
i speak for plate glass windows everywhere when I say, thank god MS conspires to stop it from having drivers and peripheral support.
He definitely helped Apple out of their slump, but for the past few years, he's been driving the company away from graphics and video professionals towards kids with disposable incomes and wealthier people who see Apple as a status symbol like the car they drive and the clothes they wear. I'm hoping his successor will find a way to justify pleasing the professionals again, not just the easy customers. I'm honestly a bit worried if he stays around for much longer, he's going try to make iOS the main OS for laptops and their iMacs as they have far more control over the user with it than they do with OS X and I imagine are making tons more off of software sales on it than they ever did on OS X.
At my (fortune 500) shop, we have several versions deployed, and nobody on Studio 2 is clamoring for an upgrade to X. We have no plans to force them to spend money or force them to upgrade. This is the real world. We just replaced a grass valley deck that had been in use for about 20 years. We only replace stuff that needs replacing, no need to interrupt valuable billable hours to muck about with upgrades.
music lover since 1969
So in your hypothetical examples is Apple also forcing you to upgrade or disabling prior versions of the software?
Hey, how's it going?
allows those apple users to ignore rational arguments and say 'but high end video editing is done on apple computers'.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but you somehow managed to get modded up so I feel like burning some karma to reply.
1997 called and it wants its stereotype of Mac users back, please. Seriously, I haven't heard anybody use the "Macs are for graphic designers, film editors and TEH GHEYS" trope with a straight face since at least 2003. There was a time for Mac users - circa 1996-2000 - when the only quantitative advantage you could point out for Macs vs. Wintel PCs was the availability of certain graphic design software/plugins. As a result, Mac users clung to "well, So-and-So uses Macs" as a last-ditch rationale fighting Windows-centric business IT shops trying to squeeze them out.
But in case you haven't been reading the news over the last 10 years, the demographics of Mac computer users have changed dramatically. After some terrible early versions, Mac OS X ended up attracting lots of new converts... including not just the inevitable "ooh shiny iPod" crowd but many computer science luminaries who have a great deal more credibility in discussing operating system evaluation than you or me. So you may want to update your trolling bait as well.
"95% of all Slashdot
Adobe managed to completely rewrite all their OS X apps in Cocoa, and support the newest codecs and technologies during that time frame, whats Apple's excuse?
You actually want Apple to write their software like Adobe writes theirs - worse, like their Mac software? Have you ever asked yourself why FCP is outselling Adobe Premiere?
Fandroids hate facts.
What does a software developer know about editing movies?
i would HOPE that there were designers laying out what the developers would then implement
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
They would probably be sued ... in short order.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Bundle current and prior version together. That'll buy Apple time to improve it for the next version.
Table-ized A.I.
I think (hope!) dumbing down of interfaces is a fad. For all the simplicity of interfaces these days (let's take OS X as an example), I hate to think about all the times I had to search the net about how to do something from the command-line because the UI didn't allow it, or to look up some magic keypress that isn't discoverable. Or that simple functionality like Refresh isn't available in Finder. A lot of Apple products are like that. Browsers are starting to go that way, too. Seems the ultimate state might be to leave the computer turned off - doesn't accomplish what I want but is very simple.
What is wrong with the UI for Firefox? I currently have FF 5 installed and I see no issues at all with the UI. There is one main menu which is opened via the button top left. It has the most used items within that main menu (although having the open in a submenu isn't what I would have done), submenus from that menu with the least used useful options. Bookmarks are easy to get to with a click of a button on the location bar.
Why I like it? Less realestate used for menu bars which are not used very often. How often do you go into the menus on FF2 while browsing the web? I have hidden the bookmark bar because I never used it which gains me more realestate and tidies up the window some more.
The only thing I would like on FF5 is a option to close all tabs to the right of the current tab. This is really handy for when you have opened a bunch of tabs and decided that the one you are on is the one you wanted and the rest can go...
1997 called and it wants its stereotype of Mac users back, please. Seriously, I haven't heard anybody use the "Macs are for graphic designers, film editors and TEH GHEYS" trope with a straight face since at least 2003. There was a time for Mac users - circa 1996-2000 - when the only quantitative advantage you could point out for Macs vs. Wintel PCs was the availability of certain graphic design software/plugins. As a result, Mac users clung to "well, So-and-So uses Macs" as a last-ditch rationale fighting Windows-centric business IT shops trying to squeeze them out.
Circa 2006-7 (may have been earlier but don't think so) there was an apple ad where some 'chick' said she is able to use the same program as the movie pros use (i assume FCP), and i have seen some bullshit animation on an ipad two ad where a doctor could touch navigated though a MRI scan. The image that apple products are good enough or the best for professional to use is very important to their image. That's the problem, one of the kinds of stereotypical apple users (or at least one some of us would like to apply to them) is that they are content consumers who buy their device because it has an apple on it and is therefore better than all competitors without needing to compare them. Having professional uses for their product prevents this stereotype from being applied to all apple users. (My impression was that the Macbooks came back into society though young (College) students buying a capable first laptop, if it becomes known that these are not capable of doing productive high quality work then it becomes bad to have one.)
P.S. Though i was last year i heard from someone who has owned macs since well before 1997.
So shocked that Apple is not acting their customer's interests. Just unbelievable.
This looks like the same garbage they pulled with iMovie several year back. They stripped out a bunch of features which drew so many complaints that Apple offered the older, more powerful version for free to anyone stuck with the new iMovie.
Of course, the design industry brings this sort of thing on themselves, the way they compulsively jump to the latest version of every app the second it's released. You'd think they'd be a bit more cautious given how mission critical this stuff is.
They really do not care much about the enterprise, professional users, etc. They are big on doing whatever they decide is the new thing, and they don't worry about what was there in the past.
Now you have to say, this has worked pretty well for them in the consumer arena. However that isn't so much what pro/enterprise users want.
My personal thought is use Apple for electronics toys if you like them (like phones and tablets) but avoid them for work because they are not focused on that market anymore.
I've had the formatting of old Word files end up so mangled as to be unreadable. Of course, Word has never been all that reliable in rendering its own files even when they are current.
Apple did something similar with iMovie before. Remember iMovie '08?
Fair enough and a reasonable response... my apologies for calling you a troll. I don't recall the ads you're referring to but I certainly agree that over the years Apple has often tried to fight the tired old "Macs are shiny toys" argument from anti-Mac IT staff by showing that professionals use them.
From my perspective though, that was much much more prevalent when Apple was fighting for its life in the PC market - and clinging to any justification they could find - than today when in many (certainly not all) environments you don't need to fight desperately with anything you can find to get or keep a Mac computer. I don't think that argumentum ad verecundiam is a big part of Apple's marketing any more and hence isn't a big deal here.
"95% of all Slashdot
No smartass, but what happens when you continue using FCP7 for your project and you get a new hire or for whatever reason need another license? You're shit out of luck.
It's like the C libraries on Linux... and Perl... to mention only two. Each time a new version comes out, then all the old stuff made with old version doesn't work anymore.
I liked Final Cut Pro X better than the previous version. Combine it with Motion 5 and Compressor and you have a GREAT piece of software. And about compatibility with old version projects, Apple will launch a converter soon, so stop blaming and screaming and get a job.
Sorry but professional users are not a big part of Apple's market these days. They really aren't the Apple you once knew, they are a consumer electronics company. First and foremost they make money on iToys: Phones, MP3 players, tablets, etc and related services (don't believe the hype, they make plenty on iTunes). Their computer division could go away entirely and they'd still be doing great because that is where the majority of their profit is now.
In terms of computers, their big market is laptops for people who want something shiny. They've really struck a chord with the hipster crowd in college and it is the one and only laptop for many of them, even when they are in programs that require Windows to run the software (they just use bootcamp/VMware).
The pro market? Very small in comparison. It isn't zero, but it is nothing compared to their big consumer markets. Hence they really don't have to care if they don't want to.
Also another thing Apple has going for them is they are very high margin on all their devices. In some industries, they like the high end users because those are high margin, though low volume. Apple on the other hand has good margins on all their devices, that is part of the reason they are so extremely profitable. Again, that means the pro world just isn't that important.
Just understand where Apple's money is, what their market is these days. Also understand that Apple's success lately has been on not listening to people and just kinda doing their own thing. As such I think they'll continue to do that, and continue to have a consumer focus.
This happened with art as well. Being an artist during Michelangelos time was considered undesirable / blue collar work. The artist had to create art pieces to consumer spec, and was paid on his ability to deliver precisely. Now an artist is considered to have some un-interpretable genius. As if it is the fault (or lack of genius) of the consumer for not seeing the genius in the work. I was at an art show where, literally, a pile of trash was on display. Next to it was a pamphlet explaining how it was not trash?? .
If a painting sucks - it sucks. If an application is trash, I'm going to have a hard time believing the pamphlet next to it....
This has been Apple's MO for a long time. They decide something should happen, and they do it, who cares what the users thing.
The one I remember well was the discontinuation of ADB and floppies. I worked at a newspaper at the time which was all Macs in the newsroom and production (just us web guys used PCs). It was a major problem when this happened. USB flash sticks didn't exist as a normal item. CD-Rs were way too expensive, never mind write once and not something the cheap iMacs shipped with. So what happened? Tons of USB floppies had to be bought and attached to the Macs to allow for disk storage to be used.
While I don't think anyone who uses computers today will mourn the passing of the floppy, Apple killed it way before their users were ready. They didn't introduce a new solution, ship both as the new better solution caught on, then discontinue the old one. They just killed off floppies and said "Have fun."
Same shit with ADB. The recording studio I hand out at had all sorts of fun getting all the dongles that license their professional software to work with USB to ADB converters. Even had they been willing and able to spend the money to just rebuy all of it, most of it hadn't been updated so the ADB dongle was all you could use.
This is how Apple operates and they really don't much have to care about pros now that their consumer electronics division is so successful. If you are ok with that, then that's fine. I don't presume to tell people what they should want in their devices. However anyone who has been an Apple fan for a long time and is surprised by their actions, well they are just being blind. Apple has been this way for a long, long time.
While I am not, at all, a Sony fan they seem to have left the Sonic Foundry team they purchased alone and that is who makes Vegas. It is a very good NLE with tons of features and it DOES support loading older files, no problem :).
Also it is all native editing based. What that means is you directly load AVCHD, HDV, Redcode and so on in to Vegas and edit. No converting to something like ProRes first. This leads to higher quality and a hell of a lot less disk usage. It is a really nice way of doing things (if you really want to use an intermediate format you can buy Neoscene and use that).
I'd tell FCP users to check that out. No, sorry, it won't run on a Mac, but load Windows up and give it a shot. As a bonus if you decide you like it you have a lot more options in terms of systems you can buy to use it on.
well the problem seems that they didn't fork the product. they made a new one. and called it with the old one's name to sell it. as long as thousands of youtube vids get created with it, they will not see it as a problem though.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...pro machine at the instant FCPX was released?
Damn Apple, that's some cold-ass shit.
And when you need to hire one more into the team, what is your solution to getting that person up and running wtih FCP 7?
This comes to mind. http://www.businessballs.com/images/treeswing/tree_swing_70s.jpeg
Both designers and developers often make bad UX (user experience, buzzword) choices... pure designers are as you mention... but developers left to their own devices will often leave out simple usability points, like linked labels for radio buttons and check boxes, or inconsistent look/feel and odd button and control placement that is backwards to typical user interaction. I think dramatically changing a loved application is usually a bad idea... "liked" sure, try to make it better..but when users already love your product and have moved almost in whole from a major competitor, don't rock the boat too much... it's not even like the office bar, where MS was losing ground and needed to shake things up a bit to remain competitive.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
The problem is of course that at the other end of the spectrum software is a tool to do a wide variety of things and is going to be used by experts who can be bothered to invest considerable time or effort (or have spend in the past consiberable time and effort) to adapt themselves to the tool. That is of course more difficult but also more powerful. But this is where your efficiency argument falls. You neglect the initial investment into learning the tools. FPC clearly falls into the category of software as a tool.
Your lament is mostly about that: Bloody designers make it easy to do easy things with the computer so that all those infidels can use them to put their pictures on their facebook without even knowing what a file extension is, while inconveniencing me when I use a computer properly! They hate usability and efficiency! Oh for the good old days when nobody who hadn't memorized at least a couple of hundred command line commands could use a computer! It was so much more efficient then. You just type what you want the computer to do! None of that silly clicking on things!
I also don't get the hating on Firefox and Mozilla. Overall their design has been a huge usability improvement over the years. Even if I didn't agree with every step the overall direction has been good. Perhaps the single most important innovation that changed my way of browsing and interacting with the web was the AwesomeBar. That was much maligned by lots and lots of people at the time for much of the reasons you speak of. In particular people who adapt themselves to their tools want those to behave deterministically of course. But for every ordinary person I have ever seen using the browser it works incredibly well.
No, they've been doing well with the consumer experience thing. Apple now has a large market of consumer users, who are much less demanding than professional or corporate customers. They buy iThings that work fine today and don't really care if they need to buy an iThing 2 in 2-3 years. Selling disposable gadgets is a lot easier than selling and maintaining software that people depend on.
Apple needed to focus on the pro market in the late '90s, because it was the only market where they still had a reasonable amount of market share. Now, they don't want to end up like SGI, with their high-margin market eroded by the cheap consumer products from their competitors. It's a sound business decision, it just sucks if you happen to be in the market that Apple no longer cares about.
A poster asked recently why people think small businesses are intrinsically better than big ones. Here is the answer. A small business can not afford to alienate a lot of customers, a big business can and often needs to as part of their long-term strategy.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The FCP X release is a screw-up the likes we have never seen from Apple since Steve Jobs arrived. Never. By Apples Standards, that is. And by these standards they will be measured, as it's the hard standards of media and software professionals from which Apple has gotten it's credit, ever since they did the switch to Unix.
I saw something like this coming.
Bertrand Serlet, lead of OS X. left in march. Check. ... or something like that. Check.
XCode 4 only available via AppStore or ADC Subscription. Check.
GNU CLI Toolkit only with XCode 4 and the hassles (see above). Check.
iPad Software Distribution only via AppStore and Apples distribution pipeline. Check.
FCP X a shoddy upgrade to an allready castrated iMovie
Looks as if this will continue.
Mark my words: There is an Apple disaster brewing, the likes we have never seen.
Mac Cube is a hiccup compared to this.
Vertical LockIn hidden as Mass Appeasement will be Apples downfall as the darling child of professionals. FCP practically owned the market the last few years. This release has video pros all over the planet gasping in disbelief - and no, it has *NOTHING* to do with 'Designers taking over' or some other kind of bullshit.
Good software has a well-designed UI and a good underpinning. This is just Apple forgetting where it got its huge success and releasing sub-standard software. A thing we are not used to from Apple. At least not in the professional media department.
This probably also has to do with Steve not being there full time anymore.
Whatever, I expect more of this in the future, and I wouldn't be suprised if my brand new MacBook Air turns out to be the last Apple device I bought.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If you think any brand ever appears in a movie accidentally, you are kidding yourself. It is called product placement, and it is big business. A company pays to have their products inserted in to a movie or TV show, with logos clearly visible. Apple loves doing that. They spend more on product placement as a percentage of their ad budget than most companies. I think it is because they want to create the image of it being a computer everyone uses.
That's also why it isn't universal. For example in V For Vendetta, you'll notice the computers are Dells if you look carefully. Reason is, Dell paid for product placement. So Dells are used and the logo isn't covered. Had nobody paid, the computers would have no logos you could see.
So no, nothing would change. If Apple pays for product placement, you'll see their stuff. If they don't, you won't.
I disagree with your Firefox/Mozilla opinion. FF3 was the high water mark IMHO. The FF4 interface was a dismal step backwards, in an awful attempt to emulate Chrome, and they're continuing to go in that direction. You can undo the damage at the moment by installing a nice theme, but who knows how long until the FF UX team impose 16x16 icons on you and if you don't use a netbook, tough shit - you're not part of their target audience (ie. people like them).
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
No, that is inconceivable. Apple doesn't make mistakes, they make iMistakes.
You have it completely backwards. Software developers are terrible at creating interfaces that are intuitive to use. Bad designers are interested only in appearences, but good designers are interested primarily in workflow and helping the user get their job done with as little effort as possible.
Apple's software is generally much easier to use because it was designed to be easy to use. Because the people who make decisions understand design. Microsoft often appeared to have little contact with designers, and their software required you to think like a programmer to be able to use it.
The recent trend in focussing on appearances is more rooted in marketing than design. Please don't confuse the two, and please don't put programmers (non-designers) in charge of UI design.
They were just holding it wrong. crApple only release working products and every time you "say different" a fanboi dies!
Yet others of us work in an educational environment with large numbers of Final Cut installs, both express and pro, with a mixture of different hardware architectures. Soon, we'll no doubt end up in the unenviable position of having to run two completely incompatible versions of Final Cut side by side if we can't buy new copies of express and can't run the new version on all our existing architecture. In the middle of massive budget cuts from the UK government, no less.
Yeah, this has the potential to seriously screw things up.
I'm a prosumer, not a full-fledged professional, and even I won't touch FCP X. Nevermind every other mistake/missing feature/UI blunder mentioned in these threads, there's just one fatal flaw: I cannot set the scratch disks. FCP X leaves your render files where your project files go. Sorry, that's a non-starter for me. My render files live on a separate spindle, and are not backed up. I don't want them under Documents. I don't want to have to figure out if it's even possible to exclude them from Time Machine. Uh-uh. It will take the resurrection of that feature before I'll even consider plunking down the money to Apple.
Who cares about not being able to open your old files.
This software is made by Apple and looks very shiny and it's very hip. Whenever I want to make my friends jealous, I just open it up.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
In most of the software I've been part of, the actual changing of the UI - once everyone has had their say and some sort of decision has been made - has been relatively minor programming work. Move X to Y, resize that to this, put that on its own dialog page, change the color scheme and so on. Even the "Awesomebar" and removing the status line doesn't seem like that much work. I really doubt that's eaten up any serious developer time, the issues Firefox have I think are due to far deeper problems in the code base.
The challenge I've found with designers is that they're not very happy to make another boring run-of-the-mill design. They want something innovative and creative they can put in their portfolio, particularly if any are working freelance on Firefox. And that no matter the inconsistencies ("start" to stop a Windows machine anyone?) people get used to them. Anything that changes all the time is per definition bad, while to the designers it seems more like taking turns testing out their ideas.
Of course I sense I a little bit of those that continued to use typewriters and calculators after we got computers - this is the way it's always been and should forever be - but on the other hand we've had the steering wheel, gas and brake pedal on cars now for a century. Some things are simply the right way of doing it and there's no particular reason to change it. But designers get restless and so they keep wanting to try something new even when it's not requested or required.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
... these days is that even *BEFORE* you get accustomed to something (never mind restructuring your entire work flow and setup, like in this case not being able to put the temporary scratch - files in a temporary place, which would require you to change your storage setup), they will change it again.
Also, when you "have to spend time" with a new version before you can use it, you can NEVER install that new version while you are in the middle of a project with deadlines. Which is, like, pretty much all of the time, when you are good at what you do.
"What does a software developer know about editing movies?"
If he's spent years developing software for doing it - probably quite a lot. After I spent ten years developing software for a home health company, I knew at least as much about the industry and our specific approach to it as most of the managers who used the software that I developed.
The priorities and concerns of the software developers are much better aligned with those of the actual users. The applications may not look as pretty, but that's easily ignored if they work well.
That's not true in all cases; it could just as easily be a poor (from a design perspective) software developer creating design problems as a poor (from a usability perspective) designer. Proper design should take into account the user's expectations (including past experience) of the interface as well as what is good, optimal, or "trendy" design. There's nothing wrong with "trendy" design so long as you don't throw the old out completely.
I'm assuming you are tolling. Otherwise, this is one of the most developmentally immature comments I've seen in ages.
I run the gamut from specification through development. (Well, through testing and delivery as well...) I'll agree, the users typically think they know what they want, but don't understand how they actually work. The developer usually understands neither. In our work in specification, we spend a lot of time with users, understanding both what they do and what goals they are trying to accomplish. We craft specifications based upon what they need and how they get there. Invariably, from the storyboards and specifications produced, the user comes back with, "Yes, that will work well. I hadn't thought of some of the situations you have identified, and you integrate things well."
This also assists the developers. The users don't come back later with such statements as, "This is completely WRONG." The developer is free to architect the solution as they see fit, but it MUST MEET THE USER'S NEEDS.
Apple did not succeed because it tries to be trendy. This is the veneer. Apple succeeds especially in particular fields (iPods, phones, tablets) because the devices meet the users' needs very well and aren't hassles to use. Remember, pre-iPod, when every MP3 player had a different custom application to load music through proprietary interfaces, and in many, there was no structure to the libraries within? Easy for programmers, crappy for users.
Microsoft succeeds because they also meet the needs of their target audience: enterprise information. Email is structured at a solid enterprise solution, documents work and interact well, the other products target information integration.
Linux FAILS for most users as it still relies on the developer for design. ("Just bring up a shell and run the command sequence...") It has a solid foundation, but it has no designers.
> 1997 called and it wants its stereotype of Mac users back, please.
The stereotype is probably MORE true now than it was then.
PCs running Windows were still essentially running MS-DOS in those days. There was still lots of non-pnp hardware around. In those days Apple did actually offer something different both in terms of system software and a hardware platform.
Now a Mac is just an overpriced PC with an incompatible boot loader and partition table format. There is LESS real reason to use a Mac now.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What if my FC3 machine dies and I have to replace it with a new OSX Lion machine. Oops, FC3 doesn't work on Lion. So while I may have terabytes in archived FC3 projects, I am unable to use anything but the original raw footage. You, sir, fail to see the issue at hand.
Apple should have done that before they released FCP X. These features are not optional. Editors worked hard to get FCP into the middle of a workflow. Apple's hw and sw is a part of that but it is not the totality.
In addition having David Pogue relay these "answers" to annoyed editors is likely to be perceived as a further insult. Pogue is a great writer and all-round Mac fellow, but he's not an editor (as he acknowledges) and he is the wrong channel for Apple to be using for this.
Apple should have released this a a replacement for FCE to whet the appetite (and work out the bugs) with a release date for fcp x sometime in the next few months.
So were they prioritizing design and engineering when they released the iphone without several pieces of basic functionality like: folders, copy/paste, changing backgrounds, OTA updates, etc? Granted, they fixed it later, but it shows that Apple has come to prioritize design over functionality. Don't kid yourself.
What does a designer know about editing movies?
I'm a senior software developer and I previously worked editing on flatbeds and umatic machines. While I had moved on before the rise of Avid and NLE's, I'd say I understand professional editing and workflow requirements better than joe random "designer".
There is no previous version this is a 100% new program. The only thing that's the same is the name.
Truth be told I think there is nothing at all wrong with the program. But I do think Apple could have handled the release better say announcing that 7 would be retired in 6 months not the second x released. Apple has been amazing with transitions over the years but this one was way to harsh.
Just for the record OS X Lion server is going to be an App Store download to regular Lion. It looks like you can upgrade Lion to Lion server but you'll be charged for the extra pieces.
You make a good overall point though - the previous product was EOL'd too quickly and the target market was poorly communicated. I remember people were complaining about changes to iMovie at one stage and more recently missing features from a new version of iPhoto but those weren't pro products. You've got to get products to market and aren't software developers always being told the way to do this is by cutting features if you aren't going to make the schedule?
Really? Filename extensions are a dinosaur that should have been done away with in 1984.
Oh wait, they were... by the Mac.
They only integrated filename extensions on the Mac to be interoperable with all the old crap on the net. It is absolutely insane that in 2011, we still have to wrestle with things like filename extensions, different line break characters, and alternate character mappings.
It's time for software developers to make the decisions, rather than "designers".
Or maybe good designers, rather than bad ones.
There's nothing worse than an engineer who designs according to what he wants, rather than the customer's needs. Except for a designer who designs according to what he wants, rather than the customer's needs.
Sure, you can *open* it. But will it *render* the same.
That's one reason I use LaTeX. My dissertation from 1990 renders *exactly* the same now as it did then. :)
Best wishes,
Bob
Question: Is Steve Jobs to blame for all of this or is Randy Ubillos? In Steve's defense, a recently published article talks about him coming into a meeting about MobileMe and saying "Can someone explain to me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" After receiving a satisfactory explanation he said "So why the f*ck doesn't it do that?"
So, everyone likes to point the finger at (or give the finger to, as the case may be) Steve but Randy Ubillos heads up the video department in the company so IMHO, he's the one that should be held accountable. Right now, I'll bet Steve is tearing Randy a new a$$hole.
That being said, I have the same feelings for Intuit and Quickbooks/Quicken. These products aren't getting better. Case in point: I recently upgraded Quickbooks Premiere Manufacturing from 2008 to 2011. In three years, they still haven't implemented Bill of Materials features which I would consider a core capability to a Manufacturing version. Intuit seems hell-bent on running things in the cloud so they can bill people every month for their use.
The issues with Final Cut Pro X was a change in market focus, not a design problem. Apple is now a consumer electronics company through and through. If you want software for professionals you'll have to start looking elsewhere.
Sony Vegas will run on Intel-based Mac hardware, but you will need Boot Camp or Parallels and a copy of Windows.
I've been pleasantly surprised by Sony's handling of the Sonic Foundry acquisition. They have kept the team intact and continued the focus on professional-level editing products. They also do prosumer versions that are feature-reduced versions of the professional products, but they were doing that even before Sony came along.
As an interface designer, I have to take issue with your description of roles. A good interface designer focuses first on usability and then aesthetics. Generally we're given a rough skeleton framework of features / functions to work with (often from the developers or project leads) and we go from there.
Very rarely have I been involved in projects where I'm given a blank slate. It's even more rare when I'm allowed to overrule a decesion made by a developer unless it produces obvious usability or aesthetic concerns. That said we are hated by developers, so at least you've got that much right. The average developer doesn't understand why software needs to be "pretty" and they figure since they have no trouble using their creations, the average user shouldn't have any problems either.
Either way, unless designers and developers learn to properly understand one another, you're going to end up with beautiful software that doesn't work or amazing software that no one can use.
Apple were assisted in their marketing by having a loyal base of professional users in creative/media. Recording artists were exposed to apple via protools, reporters via their graphic designers and so on. As soon as Apple lose that market, they lose their cool (the lifestyle aspiration they rely on) and become just another dull brand name emblazened on useless consumer junk.
The AppStore isn't suitable for professional seats and FCPX isn't suitable for professional editing. If Apple are too arrogant to see what's wrong with their current direction, the market will educate them soon enough.
It IS like them. You obviously don't remember the late 80's and 90's when a *Microsoft* cash injection was the only thing keeping Apple going.
According to Apple's financial statements, they had $1.16B in cash at the time. I'd hardly call a $150M cash injection as "the only thing keeping Apple going."
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Programmers are responsible for the GIMP GUI. Fuck programmer-designed user interfaces.
Programmers designed the pre-Office 2007 GUI. Result? Microsoft fielded a hojilliion support calls with people making feature requests for features that were _already implemented_. But nobody could figure out where they were or how to work them!
Functionality that people can't use and can't discover is absolutely useless. Let's hope for more designers and less developers.
You are not comparing like-for-like. Word can open a file made with a version issued 16 years ago and 90% of it will be right. If you open a Word 2007 document it will be 100% right, or with 2003 file it will be 99.9% right.
In the new Final Cut you can't open files from the 2009 version. Not a 16 year old version, the last one from a couple of years ago. The one that everyone is using, that they have vast amounts of current and valuable work in.
Nice attempt at a straw man.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And you will love me for it.
Once upon a time, a soon to be mommy and daddy loved each other very much (the lust was strong as well as the drinks)
Um, no, the iPhone lacked those features in order to get to market in a competitive fashion. Most the imitators also lacked copy and paste in v1.0. This is not a design priority, this is a business priority.
You couldn't load Word 2007 files into Word 2003 without going online and finding some cumbersome filter thingy. You STILL can't do it with 2010 without the same filter thingy, but at least they've made the filter thingy easier to get.
Interestingly enough for the 6 month period or so none of us could open our Word 2007 files without upgrading to 2007, my iPhone could open the 2007 file just fine. Interesting, that.
Apple licenses seem to be trust based. Just copy the damn thing; Apple clearly does not want your money. What are they going to say during an audit? "You should have purchased copies"? Well, "you should have sold me copies".
If they deprecated the format then why not open it up? They're not using it anymore. At least let people build their own tools to interpret their own data.
Twinstiq, game news
This is exactly the problem. It means that for me to move forward with my needed purchase of new computers for editing, I have to keep my old computer(s) loaded with FCP7 for some indefinite period when a client might want a remake or addition to this or that. There is no good solution. Apple simply abandoned the pro market in one fell swoop. In a year or two perhaps (or perhaps not) FCPX might be able to import FCP7 projects but that can't be counted on. It means Apple no longer has a pro video app, period. While some pro's can use FCPX, many/most can't unless their needs are very limited. Sure I can keep using 7 but I expect and want a pro video app that does whatever I need and continues to be updated. Apple no longer fits that bill. I so loathe Windows ( and I work in both worlds on a daily basis) but I have always told people to first choose what applications you need and then buy the OS/computer that works best for you. All of a sudden that answer is a PC with running avid or premiere because I certainly don't want to start a project in FCP7 knowing it has no support in the future. Lion could break it....any old thing could break it. And regardless of that I won't be buying any important pro app that I don't have a CD/DVD installer for. Period. Apple has said goodbye to the pro market here in a very big way. Very sad thing for many of us.
"Designers" tend to only care about appearances, even if the application isn't very usable.
Puh-lease.
For the really high end they likely use Avid hardware and don't even use macs to edit their content. But this will wind up sending all but the very high end over to adobe premiere/after effects.
Software should be lead by a designer. You just seem to be convinced that a designer should only be interested in pretty pretty, not functionality. Before embarking on this new version of FCP, somebody (a designer) should have produced a document saying what the piece of software will do. This should include the essential stuff from the deprecated version that focus groups wanted to keep, plus the fancy new stuff the re-architecture allows. After this point the designers job is to keep hitting the developers over the head until they produce something that matches the design doc. Just taking a wild stab in the dark (based upon personal experience) - As development slips, the choice is to ship with design points missing, or delay ship to get them in. I'm guessing somebody high-up said 'ship'
The Apple I? or the II? Or the Mac?
The "desktop" motif was conceived by an Engineer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush
This was taken further by another Engineer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart
The fact that so many software developers call themselves "Engineers" these days does not make them so. Engineering requires a disciplined approach only recently making it's way into CS curriculums. Most developers are NOT engineers.
These people were hackers with a formal engineering education (in the traditional sense of the word and not the current script-kiddie-vandal-broke-through-some-web-site's-laughable-security sense of the word)
Once you're using the latest high level languages, you've left most of the really clever bits to the compiler, libraries, and underlying OS.
I think the best tools come from a person who works in the field the tool is for. And has the skill necessary to craft a good tool for themselves. Is clever enough to look at existing tools and figure out how to make something better. It's that simple.
You must have an expert in the field who is also clever enough to become expert enough in software development. And passionate about both to do them well.
We manage two prestige advertising firms, one in Canberra and another down in Melbourne and the complaints are flowing, loud, and spitting from the mouth. But what's worse is, our customers are 100% right and they ain't shit all we can do.
What do you mean 'manage'? As in IT management? Surely, the concept of getting a couple new machines, trying the new version out for a while with a couple guinea-pig users, and then, providing that was successful, doing a staged roll-out was suggested to these clients?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
When you refer to people crying and complaining you seem to assume a couple of joe's got their interface changed and can't stop whining about it. We have over a hundred seats of FCP in our facility and have spend hundred's of thousands of dollars moving away from Avid in favor of Final Cut. What Apple did here is orphan projects that get used throughout the year by our clients and lose the ability to actually get the final product delivered so that people can see it on TV. This means we can no longer export to OMF for our Sound Designers, to tape for Air and archive, to AAF/EDL or XML for tape to tape color correction. They pulled the plug on features that we cannot do business without. There is no choice for our facility. We have to change away from Final Cut. This has nothing to do with the interface (which has issues as well as advantages.) The only question facing us is how long we can continue to use Final Cut 7. We upgrade every 12-18 months and will be doing so soon. I believe Apple will try to take some steps to reverse the damage but there is only so much they can do in that time frame.
They will suffer some because no one will be cutting Films on FCP anymore. Not for couple of years which is how long I believe it will take for the product to get its feet underneath it. That is going to leave pie on their face but not effect their bottom line. I believe they may end up with a larger but less prestigious user base. What I think is interesting is it seems they are abandoning the users that kept them going when times were toughest. The professional creative types. If they intent to do away with the Mac Pros as well they will lose a lot of their traditional user base IMO. I think they have found a bigger one to replace them though.
I guess you have a serious misunderstanding of what designer is and does as it can be seen that you are under the same misconception that designers are only concerned with the look and feel or visual polishing. Design is about "problem solving" and interaction design to be specific has its roots in cognitive physchology as well as computer science. Architects try to understand the relationships between people, people and space, between spaces, tasks to be supported in space etc when building an apartment wheras civil engineer focuses on technical aspects of how to build a structure.. same applies for interaction designers who focus on users needs and software developers who finally build it. Hence design is gaining importance rapidly in product ,software as well as service compaines.
Wow, you are sad.
Word has worked for me 100% with old files. Perhaps there are some compatibility problems, but they are few and affect few.
FCP will not open old work. Period. Apple: Fail
many of the answers are just "you're wrong" or "buy moar sw", the rest are kludge ways to get old functionality back by knowing exactly how the program behaves. very innovative! it's almost like it would be better to go to vdub.
As a designer who works extremely closely with a team of skilled developers, let me say that you have no clue what you're talking about. Your relegation of the entire field of design to 'making things pretty' belies an ignorance of the processes involved that would be comparable to saying "developers just string libraries together."
Get a clue, and quit generalising. The increased appreciation of user-centered design practised in the software, mobile and even appliance industry is the very reason consumer technology is booming as it is: modern smartphones that can be used by two year olds and octogenarians alike, tablet computing for the masses, PVR's and DVR's that don't need a PhD to set, and myriad other examples in day-to-day life are the results of applied design.
You had it right up until you postulated that the 'latest trend' is about 'making everything hip.' Running with such a patently disprovable generalisation against an entire professional field simply undermines your credibility. Don't spout nonsense on the basis of a specific design example, even more so if that example has not yet been given the chance to stand the test of time.
I got tired of reading anti-Apple vs. pro-Apple arguments, so I pose this simple question(s)- If you don't like it, why use it? If you like some parts of it, but are missing things that it used to have, why not keep both versions? Is it really this fucking hard for people to understand? Same shit that happened with Microsoft's 'Ribbon.' Yeah, I get that complaining will get it fixed, but this Biscardi guy sounds like Apple killed his dog and banged his wife, probably in the same night.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
But that's a completely unwarranted assumption. For me the latest redesign opened up some screen space and changed defaults to something more closely aligned to how I was using the browser anyway. The key novelty was to make it possible to use the browser without the menu by adding the title bar button, an idea copied from Chrome. If you were among the people who used the menu it takes a grand total of three clicks to reenable it. Another three clicks disables tabs on top. Other than that the changes weren't exactly all that drastic.
OK, I'm a programmer and also a filmmaker, so hopefully I can offer a unique perspective for the Slashdot crowd.
The issue here isn't that the interface is different. The issue is that the new version of Final Cut Pro X lost tons of absolutely required features, and Apple simultaneously discontinued the previous version of Final Cut Pro and asked all of their resellers to send back the copies on the shelves.
Essentially, Final Cut Pro X is probably fine in isolation, but at the moment it can't import or export files to any other programs. You can't even use Final Cut Pro X for a good no-budget short film, because it can't export sound via OMF or AAF to send to ProTools or Logic.
Picture a theatrical dubbing stage with a 128 channel Harrison sound console, and not being able to get the sound from Final Cut Pro X to the supervising sound editor or anyone in the sound department, because it doesn't export sound anymore.
Picture a high end color grading suite, with four waveform monitors and vectorscopes, a calibrated broadcast HD monitor, and the colorist just sitting there because Final Cut Pro X can't export an EDL to the color grading suite.
Picture a professional editing facility with 10 edit suites, who wants to add edit suite number 11, but now they can't add another seat for the previous good version of Final Cut Pro because Apple discontinued it. Picture them using 11 credit cards and e-mail addresses to download 11 copies of Final Cut Pro X from the App Store, and then they still can't interface with the sound department or a colorist.
Picture a post-production facility completely unable to open any of their old projects in Final Cut Pro X, when Adobe Premiere CS 5 can open the old Final Cut Pro projects almost perfectly and is offering cross-grade discounts to previous Final Cut Pro users.
Picture someone who shot a live event with 7 cameras, that can't do multi-camera editing in Final Cut Pro X when they could in the previous version.
These aren't just interface redesign issues, they are basic features that should be in any professional or even prosumer editing system. You could easily use every single one of these features even on a no budget short film, just on a smaller scale.
Final Cut Pro X is so far removed from what professionals need that it almost seems like an April Fool's joke. Imagine if Microsoft released a new and improved version of ASP, but they left out the ability to connect to SQL databases! That's how bad this is, and why editors are so up in arms.
They're all going to migrate to Avid and Adobe in droves, and not look back. Final Cut Pro, which was previously used to edit Academy Award winning films, will now be exclusively the province of vacation videos and skateboarding videos. Even weddings need multi-camera support, and those people will probably go elsewhere too.
It got so bad that Conan O'Brien was mocking the new version of Final Cut Pro X, a piece of editing software, on late night TV!
This whole saga is probably going to be in business school textbooks as an example of a catastrophic product launch, alongside New Coke and the Edsel.
Real designers study UX design and perform comprehensive useability tests against a wide range of different customers. No software developer is going to have the time to do that level of inquiry.
I'd give it about 3-4 years before you can't purchase a new Mac that can run FCP 7, either because they've switched architectures again, or the new mac won't be able to boot the older version of OS X that FCP 7 requires to run.
Software developers build software based on an implementation model; i.e., what is the easiest and most efficient way to code the product. Maybe you've worked with the wrong designers or, as I suspect from your comment, you've been unable to work effectively with designers, but the good ones look at the product from the user's mental model. That is, understanding who the user is, what their goals are, how they will use the product, and how the product should reflect all of this. Your main point is not backed up by any reputable studies of software development and user satisfaction...and, in fact, typically results in much higher costs in terms of user support, capturing missing user requirements, and changing the functionality post-ship because it doesn't work as the user expects it to. Not to mention lower user satisfaction and lower productivity from having to "work around" the poor design that is implemented.
In this particular case the options are: Use FCP on Mac with the knowledge that they're screwing you and will screw you more in the future or use Avid on Windows (because Premier is an overpriced piece of junk) and put up with all that sucks in Microsoft land, or use nothing, because the OSS community has no interest in writing a professional non-linear video editor and none of the commercial products run on *nix.
All the choices are pretty bad.