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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.'"
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?
especially Linux netbooks - no consumers will want windows once they've seen ubuntu...
..or .Mac, Mobile Me, Apple TV etc All stellar successes.
Oh this is stupid fanboy stuff... Sure there have been the naysayers, but to say that Apple can't make mistakes is just plain lunacy!
Apple makes plenty of mistakes, but what they excel in is burying it quick. For example the iPhone 4 antenna problems. Or how about we talk about how they caved in on the 30% cut for inapp purchases? Nobody talks about that? Or how about how that Swiss newspapers are shifting away from iPad apps to HTML 5 apps... No that you don't hear about. But it does not mean that it did not happen. It is just that the fanboys keep yelling and screaming louder...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
But there is a difference between calling a brand new product a potential failure, and an update on established software getting slammed by people that use the previous versions and loved it.
Sounds like a lot of issues are related to licenses, go figure. licensing is the bane of our world.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So, loading a file you created last month using the previous version is a "high end feature"?
Unlike your examples, you're not dealing with mindless fanboys that will buy anything with an Apple sticker on it, you're dealing with professionals that need to get their work done.
Normally, it's non-users who make nasty comments about Apple products, but these comments are by loyal users. That's significant.
... 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
When version 1.0 of your product has no "Cut & Paste", you can only go up.
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
Apple TV is actually pretty good.
If they open it up to App development, then it is going to rock the crap out of any of the devices in that space.
Oh... and .mac/Mobile Me are the same product and have morphed into the iCloud services which, according to everyone who has looked at them... are pretty damn good.
Ask the MS Word team
What?
Considering it makes sense for a newspaper to use a development model that does not support Push Notification and deep integration with the OS... how is moving from apps to HTML 5 a ding on the Apple development system?
No, the majority of issues centers around the fact that existing FC7 stuff simply can't be used by FCX.
It's forcing us to redo all of our work.
Well, not me. I don't use Apple software or hardware (for this very reason.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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 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.
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.
I use everything under the sun. But professionals would be foolish *TO* use this one in their toolbox. Why? Because you can't use it WITH ANY OTHER TOOL.
I've bent over backwards before to integrate some nifty little tool into my kit. But FCP X is overtly attempting to be incompatible with everything else. It isn't even compatible with FCP.
Stand alone, walled gardens are great if you can do everything in the garden. But professionals have to collaborate with lots of other tools, workflows, clients, hardware and applications. If you're editing in FCP 7 and the color or sound tools are insufficient you can just export your project and finish in another app. If you get stuck and FCP-X doesn't cut it-- you're stuck with data you can't get out and finish on something else.
Add to that its new media management system which is antagonistic to the standard SAN/Shared Drive workflow and you're left with an application which doesn't want to play nice with other computers or even copies of itself.
When there are other superior and ready competitors who don't make you guess when and if they'll support your work available TODAY you would be a fool to not switch to the ready and willing competitors.
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/
I don't think you understand. Even when manufacturers do use underhand tricks to get you to upgrade, the inability to actually move your projects to the new version is not one of those tactics.
What I find amazing is the number of people here who will rip into companies for never spending time improving the quality of their software rather than adding features, turning great products into bloat, etc.
Here we have a company taking a product that was getting on the bloat side, and completely rewriting from stage 1. Making something much more efficient and easy to work with (though admittedly lacking some features), and saying "hey, we'll add the crucial features in the next few months as we figure out what you guys are really missing", and suddenly everyone goes "oh my god, biggest mistake ever".
I'm sorry, but what... Good on apple for taking the brave move and de-bloating their app.
For example the iPhone 4 antenna problems.
The truth wasn't "buried." The antenna problem was simply so blown out of proportion to begin with, mostly by anti-Apple zealots. People stopped talking about it because most realized realized it was a non-issue that didn't affect their day-to-day usage of the phone.
how about how that Swiss newspapers are shifting away from iPad apps to HTML 5 apps... No that you don't hear about.
Seriously? Now you're really reaching...
don't the make the new stuff unusable in the old? and give some way to convert from old to new?
In other words, Apple is treating professionals who live and die by their product as if they were kids doing throw-away projects on a free web-based ap. Um... not a very smart way to treat professionals -- and, BTW, not the best way to treat the customers that buy your most expensive software and most expensive hardware.
The support lifetime for a software product is directly related to *who* uses it, *how* they use it, and the value of *their* end product. At least, when I was in the business of creating electronic design automation software that sold for $50K to $150K *per* *seat*, that's the way we treated it. Customers doing multi-million dollar projects, and who forked over $250K to us for software, didn't have to take updates if they didn't want to. And if they were smart, they sure as hell didn't take updates in the middle of a critical project -- better the bugs that you know and have worked around than the bugs that your vendor just put in last month and hasn't found yet.
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
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.
Why do people keep bringing up the AppleTV? Jobs has said numerous times that it's more of a hobby device that they're hoping to take somewhere. They never had lofty expectations for it.
$99/year? What the hell are you smoking? Is the AppleTV now a subscription device or are you talking about the now-defunct MobileMe? In either case you're quite out of the loop. iCloud costs NOTHING unless you want to use the iTunes Match service.
FCPX is very young. Apple has outright said that there are more features to be implemented. I'd wager the reason they released it this soon was because FCP7 uses the old Quicktime engine, something Apple likely didn't bring along for 10.7.
THIS. It wasn't so much bloat as aging code. FCP7 was still running on the old Quicktime engine and couldn't use more than two cores for a lot of things. No 64-bit support. FCPX fixes that and is EASILY several times faster on an i7 than FCP7. Final Cut has been in desperate need of a rewrite for quite some time now and they finally made it happen. I can understand some professionals getting upset, but I'll wager that within six months, the bulk of the complaints will be addressed and people will really dig into it.
...pro machine at the instant FCPX was released?
Damn Apple, that's some cold-ass shit.
I have to go back a ways but I can point to Apple mistakes that they didn't even acknowledge quick:
One button mouse. Cooperative multitasking. Emulated 68K code in the network stack and file systems. Gil Amelio. Frog boy the manager (whatever the fuck his name was). System 7. System 8 (not the failed project, what they shipped as 8). etc etc etc
Remember the phrase 'not invented here'? Says volumes.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Because if anyone in the world doesn't use an Apple product in every facet of their life: Apple has failed. Duh.
Message sent on Safari on my iToilet.
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.
I said, "All Apple needs to do..." As in something they NEED TO DO. Try reading for comprehension before jumping down someone's throat...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If Apple wanted to support cut and paste, they would add a right mouse button.
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.
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.
Why not just keep using the old version?
I mean, if New Version B can't do stuff that Old Version A does... why the hell would you upgrade to New Version B? On a personal level, Windows Vista was crap, so I stayed with XP. I know that a lot of the time you have to upgrade (i.e. a client will send you files in a 2011 format which you can't read with 2010 software), but since the new version seems so universally hated this seems to be a practically nonexistant problem.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I don't get it... Apple likes HTML 5 apps. At least, they say they do. And they developed a pretty good runtime environment for them, so I'm inclined to believe them. Why do people think otherwise?
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.
One button mouse.
ugh. Can we please stop with the one button mouse thing? That wasn't a mistake. It was a conscious design decision that you disagreed with. Macintosh users were perfectly happy with it. You might as well say that the 2 button mouse was a mistake because it didn't have a scroll wheel. Now, the hockey puck mouse... That was a mistake (which Apple acknowledged, none-too-quickly, with the famous "apology mouse")
Sure, I could go tapeless, but I can shoot an hour or more of HDV on a tape that costs a buck or two, and keep the tape forever. No backup needed.
If I shot that on a flash card, it would cost ten or twenty bucks for that much flash, and suddenly I'm forced to copy it to a hard drive not just while working with it, but also for permanent storage, which means two permanent hard drive copies of the content.
That's not a small amount of overhead, both in terms of maintenance (periodically making sure the drives spin up) and ease of retrieval (each hard drive would hold ten or twenty projects, versus each project having its own small cluster of tapes).
So don't give me that "tape is the past" bullshit. There's still no better acquisition format for folks who keep all their raw footage and aren't big enough to have an IT department to support them.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It's forcing us to redo all of our work.
no, it's not. It's forcing you to continue using a familiar product instead of buying a newer, cheaper product with a similar name that doesn't have the same capabilities. FCP7 still works. Nobody is being forced to "upgrade". Especially not you, because you don't use Apple products.
It's their own damn fault for doing it so sudden.
Can't they ruin their cash cows more gradually? Just look at Autodesk!
Because Apple has pulled the software from the shelves
This is one area where the difference between MSFT and Apple is pretty jarring. MSFT will sell you shit for fricking ages as long as folks are buying, hell they quit selling licenses to Win 3.1 embedded in what....2005? Whereas Apple decides "You WILL use the new hotness, you dirty heathen!" and that is that.
Frankly I see this as Apple quietly killing off their pro creative dept, since what they released can in no way be called pro. Looking at the screen caps and what they've omitted the new FCP is more an updated iMovie than a professional video editing suite. Personally I believe the long term roadmap involves Apple pulling out of the creative market and becoming strictly a consumer electronics company.
Apple has never seemed to like products that are only mildly successful, they want huge success or nothing. So I believe in less than 5 years OSX will be out and iOS will be in, most likely on a range of devices where once Mac OSX reined, such as desktops and laptops. This will also fit in with Apple's control issues as I'm sure Steve wasn't happy to have to use older Intel chips because Intel decided to screw over Nvidia, and with ARM Steve controls the whole stack, from the design and features of the chips to the software that runs on them.
So I truly believe this is just the beginning, I believe the long term roadmap (which Apple is notorious for not sharing, another reason for businesses not to use Apple products for mission critical roles) is a complete exit from the professional markets and Apple becoming a pure consumer electronics business. This will kill their problem with bugs since everything will go through the app store, give them complete control of the stack, and as we have seen with the touch and iPad will also make them another mountain or two of money. Software developers will be given software which runs on Windows for doing the actual work, and Apple will sit back and enjoy the huge waves of money headed their way.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Apple is consistently brave for throwing in the towel and starting froms scratch when it is necessary.
It's only brave if Apple is facing unpleasant consequences. If its customers simply grouse then eat the cost and buy more Apple product, Apple isn't being brave. It's being indifferent to customer pain.
I haven't dealt with Apple hardware and software professionally in many years, but this kind of thing is an old, old story with Apple and customers for high end products. Apple makes some change that is in many ways wonderful and visionary, but leaves a bunch of people who invested at ton of money into high end Apple products high and dry. The customers scream bloody murder, but Apple ignores them. It won't even throw them a bone like letting them buy some old software sku so they don't have to change everything overnight. The customers make do, do without and fork over. Apple suffers *zero* consequences for inflicting pain it could easily have avoided. Life goes on in the Apple ecosystem.
I admire Apple's design prowess and creativity. I admire their audacity at trying things other companies wouldn't. But this kind of "put up AND shut up" attitude toward companies with high investments in Apple software is not a one-shot phenomenon. It's been that way for twenty years at least, so I can only assume it's part of the bargain you make when decide to rely upon Apple.
Personally, having been jerked around with A/UX and high end Appleshare servers as a consultant, then technologies almost too numerous to mention as a developer, I've chosen to avoid depending on Apple for anything where there was a reasonable alternative. Does that mean I don't like Apple products? Of course not. Does it mean I think anyone who makes a major business commitment to high end Apple products is a fool? Not necessarily. You're only a fool if you expect Apple to act like it cares that you're a great customer who's dropped a ton of dough on Apple products.
It's just one of those bizarre corporate culture things. Microsoft can't do anything halfway right until version 3.0, and Apple can't bring itself to act like it gives a shit about customers except as a bit player in the story of its design brilliance. Their customers should know what to expect, they deliver for the stockholders, and they're probably pretty good to work for if you don't have to deal with Steve Jobs. So I'd say Apple is a good company, but not one I'd rely upon as a customer or developer.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Unlike your examples, you're not dealing with mindless fanboys that will buy anything with an Apple sticker on it, you're dealing with professionals that need to get their work done.
Which is why they should deploy FCPX on one or two workstations, and let their editors play with it for awhile before deciding if it is a good thing for them.
But, if they are just going to nuke their FCP7 install and install FCPX on every machine, then they are hardly professionals. I isn't like people in that trade haven't been talking about it for a long time. Apple said it was going to be brand new. Surprise! They were telling the truth!
Just like with QuickTime X, there are some missing features; but those end up coming back. Fortunately, Apple's design for FCPX is much more modular internally; so the internal components can be updated and added much more quickly now.
So be patient, give Apple some constructive feedback. they do listen.
The old version is no longer available. They've also taken that down. So you better make sure you still have copies of the old one. It's also 32 bits, which FCP X is supposed to solve (and it is 64 bits). But due to the shocking lack of backward compatibility and the plain missing feature, most of the old users simply cannot go to the new version. At least, not if they actually want to get things done.
Fixed that for you
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
especially Linux netbooks - no consumers will want windows once they've seen ubuntu...
Yeah, but then you get into things like... Crysis 2 doesn't play on Linux...
and that makes me have to dual boot. And if I don't feel like shutting the
game down, to run another app... then I have to stay in Windows. Then
the whole thing kinda breaks down after that. Why dual boot at all,
since I'll hit another wall with another program I want to run soon enough.
My time is valuable and even at a super fast boot... I really don't want
to wait that long plus the time to launch the app and then back again.
Which leaves me in Windows most of the time.
I really want to see Linux succeed... but the drivers and Windows only
apps, kills it every single time.
Exactly the same issue when I try to explain to someone else why
they should switch over. It's always well what about this program or
this peripheral. And that typically kills it.
I even tried to run Ubuntu on most of my laptops, here's how that went.
The two that only browse web... no problem. Home theatre lappy... no
go. Dual monitor support sucks, audio sucks. Great, back to Windows.
This laptop... 1 damn program that has no Linux analogue... great, back
to Windows.
Linux is almost ready for the desktop =) but everything else we need
to use... isn't ready for Linux for the desktop. And the adoption stagnates.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
90% of people DONT need multicam, DONT need XML, and DONT even need tape any more.
Another way to look at it is 100% of professional post houses need Multicam, XML and tape.
If Apple doesn't want to be a pro-tools vendor anymore, that's fine. They just need to stop stringing people along.
When version 1.0 of your product has no "Cut & Paste", you can only go up.
But they have it now... and isn't that all that matters?
=)
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
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
No but you can't get licenses for the previous version anymore...
Then it should have been released 6 months from now. I'm not blaming Apple on this one (for once), but the entire goddamned industry. Stop releasing your Beta as a consumer-ready product. RIM's Playbook, Apple's FCPX, and well, most tablets barring the iPad, really. Every single one wasn't completely ready for launch, either missing crucial features or getting tons of stability fixes within the first weeks of release. I know it's not a new phenomenon, but it seems to have gotten worse recently.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
I was wrong before when I said the poster told us everything we need to know about iCloud.
Now, I believe we know everything we need to know about iCloud.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...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.
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.
Yes, but they left iMovie HD 6 available for download - for free, if I remember correctly - until the new version of iMovie reached feature parity. The problem here isn't really that FCPX removed features, but that FCP7 is no longer available at all.
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
That's what God says about anophthalmia.
Christians don't believe anophthalmia is a mistake, either.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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 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).
ugh, that's the Apple problem. Function follows form. "We make it pretty, you get used to the limited functionality."
I read the article someone put together which was supposed to be based on a conversation with FCPX managers. Most of the issues were stated to either be non-issues or can be addressed via software/hardware add-ons or will be addressed in a future FCPX update. Great.
But they also stated they have no plans to allow for importing of old FCP projects.
That's not de-bloating. That's hosing over your clients. Yes, of course the old software still works (bugs aside) so yes you can still open those projects. But you also expect them to consider all the new fancies in FCPX? As compelling reasons to upgrade? Now they have to deal with swapping between two software packages with different interfaces and workflows? Importing of old projects should have been planned from the get-go. I'm not even talking the ability to re-save in the old format. Force an all out conversion if you must. But essentially requiring someone to keep an older revision of your software around in case they need to revisit old data just stinks.
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 :-)
What's next for Apple? I predict iCar, which only runs on 98 octane gas and drives on the left hand side of the road. "We can't just sit on our hands, we have to kick the marketplace if we want to progress," an Apple executive reported. The car retails for $48,990. $67,990 if you want to upgrade to the 5 gallon gastank, and a mere $88,990 for the 14 gallon gastank AND rear seats. It also only has one pedal. "Studies have shown that 99% of drivers only use one pedal at a time, and we think simplifying the user experience will be a net win. With iCarOS, you simply click and hold the left Apple modifier button on the dashboard, place both feet on the pedal and gesture downward if you want to stop.
..."just how much white privilege we all have, and how we don't even think twice when we see some black fellow or immigrant, constrained by society's norms to drive a *used* *Ford*. We never even think about how the patriarchy drugs the lower classes into submission with the narcotic of fully automatic turn signals. It is as if those fat cats think they aren't *smart* enough to manually signal. Ugh, don't get me started." Given that sort of feedback, we are confident that our customers will be pleased with themselves."
"We've also trimmed down and simplified the design of the vehicle. Our research suggests that most users don't change their own oil, and are confused by all the handles and levers in the vehicle that they never use. Not providing an operable hood streamlines the look of the vehicle. If the car needs any regular maintenance, it will email you with an appointment to bring the car in to one of our 7 convenient retail locations where one of our Lube Geniuses will service the car for an all-inclusive $395. Plus parts. Locations are: Manhattan North, Manhattan South, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland."
Next year's model is rumored to have Flash. [cough] Uh, flashing turn signals. Until iCarOS2 is released, drivers must use hand signals to communicate their turns and lane changes. "We have found that most of our research groups didn't see this as a problem. They found it to be, and I'm quoting here, "nostalgic", "steampunk", and "delightfully gay and twee." One user even said that it helped him remember
iCarOS2 is also rumored to be changing the octane requirements to 58 octane.
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.
Find my iPhone has been free for months and it just helped me find my stolen phone a few days ago.
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.
they quit selling licenses to Win 3.1 embedded in what....2005?
I don't know what the difference is between embedded and non-embedded varieties of Win 3.1, but if you have MSDN subscription (which, I suppose, qualifies as a "buy"), Win 3.11 and WfW 3.11 are included in the OS section for some mysterious reason, along with MS-DOS 6.20 and 6.22 (but no Win95/98/ME nor NT/2K/XP). So it would seem that Microsoft is still selling it, technically speaking - albeit with no support etc.
Contrary to popular opinion, even rewriting from stage 1 does not have to mean "no backwards compatibility", especially when it comes to file formats.
And if crucial features are missing in time for the first release, then guess what? it's not yet time for that release.
Otherwise, you end up like Windows Phone.
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?
Then it should have been released 6 months from now. I'm not blaming Apple on this one (for once), but the entire goddamned industry. Stop releasing your Beta as a consumer-ready product.
Errm, the complaint is it's not professional-ready yet.
Fandroids hate facts.
WTF are you talking about? I don't care if it is iOS, Android, WebOS, or WP7... if I want to get persistence and notification on any of those platforms, then I have to have a native app for that platform... there is a reason gTalk on iOS sucks ass... it is a web app and can not push communications or availability status if it is not loaded in the foreground.
Sorry I didn't clarify. what I meant by embedded is that Win 3.11 is still quite popular for use in embedded systems. the driver model is trivial to write for, its very design of one app at a time is perfect for single use systems, it is insanely low resource (last I checked you could run it on a 30MHz with 4Mb of RAM and it will be snappy) and it is beyond trivial to completely strip and rebuild for whatever application you need. you'd be surprised how many kiosks that don't require net access are running Win 3.11 and MSFT has wisely continued to sell it because that is what the customer wants and that is the big difference between MSFT and Apple.
So frankly it doesn't surprise me in the least that you can still get Win 3.11 through MSDN and I bet my last dollar there are still programs being written that use Win 3.11 as a platform. You should check out the embedded Win9x site where if you have a license for Win9x (like say from MSDN) you can buy customized embedded versions of Win9x that run on insanely low memory, like 11Mb for a networked GUI. This makes it trivial for kiosks and devices like dedicated systems since all the RAM and CPU can concentrate on your program and not on OS overhead. I wouldn't want to let it loose on the net, but who cares if your device doesn't need net access?
But your post highlights while any company would frankly have to be insane to use Apple anything for a business critical application since with their notorious tight lipped attitude to roadmaps you have NO clue if the system you just paid a crazy amount of money for (like that huge multimillion dollar video editing studio built around FCP perhaps) will have the legs cut right out from under you like in TFA, whereas MSFT puts everything in B&W years in advance, anyone who wants to know how long they have support for can simply go to the EOL page and look. And lets face it: between mainstream and extended the length of support on MSFT products is frankly insane, your machine will long since be passed down to the secretaries or replaced outright long before it ever reaches EOL.
In case you haven't heard this is NOT just about Apple putting out a beta quality program severely lacking in features. If that were simply the case one could stick with the previous version, like how most businesses skipped Win Vista by going straight from XP to 7 once it was clear Win 7 was a stable and solid platform. No what we have here is Apple yanking copies off the shelves right before launch and refusing to sell licenses to the previous version now. If your production house needs more FCP licenses to grow your business and the new version simply won't cut it? Tough shit, you get to go on eBay and get ass raped as the price is gonna shoot through the roof as production houses that were stupid enough to build around FCP scramble to buy licenses to have the ability to deploy more workstations.
But if you think about it there is ONE reason and one reason only that I can see to purposely burn production houses and run them off like that, and that is if Apple is withdrawing from that market to become a pure consumer device manufacturer. This makes sense because as I said Apple has never been happy with a product that mearly sells well, they want insane sales or nothing. The simple fact is Macs as creative production stations has never been a truly huge market, more of a REALLY expensive niche really, and niches just don't fit into the new Apple way of walking in and owning a market.
so mark my words in 3 years, maybe less, Apple will be completely out of the PC business. All of their offerings will be iOS based devices, designed for Joe and Sally consumer to do simple tasks like edit videos for YouTube and of course to buy crap from the App store. This will make Apple crazy amounts of money and those that formerly counted on OSX will simply have to switch to Windows where there is plenty of pro production software like Premiere and Avid waiting for
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
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.
Except that anyone with FCP7 wouldn't be able to upgrade due to the old QT framework missing from 10.7. Apple rushed this out to mitigate that issue.
Stop being Steve's bitch for once in your life.
Stop being an Anonymous Coward for once in your life.
ugh. Can we please stop with the one button mouse thing?
No.
That wasn't a mistake. It was a conscious design decision that you disagreed with. Macintosh users were perfectly happy with it.
That's a silly premise. I don't know or care about conscious design decisions of the latest fighter jets because I don't use them. I used Apple computers alongside others (three button SGIs and two button beige boxes), and the one button mouse was a terrible abortion that required two hands (open-apple-click) to use to marginal effectiveness.
You might as well say that the 2 button mouse was a mistake because it didn't have a scroll wheel.
Only a fool would say that considering that 2 and 3 button mice came before scroll wheel mice. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that newer scroll wheels could act as 3 button mice, and that the newest Apple mice have a scroll ball and two buttons (despite appearing to be one).
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
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 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.
"It's forcing us to redo all of our work."
no it doesn't. FCP7 still works.
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
I fully agree with you, but Apple should continue to support and sell FCP7 for people who want to keep on using it. Microsoft sold XP while Vista was already out. And supported it well into the long term future.
The problem with quite a few /.ers here is a disconnect with the idea of a process. In most pro industries, people follow productions pipelines. That involves buying or reducing as may be licenses for a product as work comes and goes. And the fact that Apple now all of a sudden from point A to B stopped supporting or selling or licensing FCP7 is the issue. Also, companies have to think of middle to long-term upgrade paths for their tools, workstations. They have to think about training, about upgrading or replacing workstations and a lot of other things. Apple's sudden jump makes that sort of planning rather difficult.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
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
Not stupid at all. My aged parents get horribly confused with accidentally clicking the wrong mouse button. I'm extraordinarily pleased that I can configure OS X to ignore right click and then can continue to access all the features of the OS
Sorry - exactly which functions were you having difficulty access?
I doubt the source code would be much good. It's heavily integrated with QuickTime and some other legacy APIs that aren't 64-bit clean. This is part of the reason why Apple's discontinuing it: it needs a rewrite to work with modern systems. Unfortunately, the rewrite needs to be released in time for OS X 10.7 (next month), and at the moment it's nowhere near a complete rewrite.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
its also screwing the BBC who from my sources have fallen out with another video editing supplier.
Maybe you should suggest that the BBC develops something in-house and releases it as open source. With the amount that they must spend on video editing software, they could probably produce something quite competitive. If it's reasonable, other studios would probably pay to have the features that they need added.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
Jobs himself joked about this in the WWDC keynote: "Why should we trust these guys? They're the ones who brought us MobileMe. Not our finest hour." Still, if you look objectively at the record Apple has had a pretty phenomenal decade overall.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
You can still install QT7 in 10.7 if you want to.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
Yes, if you look at it from the point of view of stock price. If you own shares (which I do), you see that Apple has had a phenomenal decade.
If you care about the future of personal computing, and the use of computers to make things, to create (which I do), then Apple has gone straight into the shitter.
You are welcome on my lawn.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
No, for Apple, simplicity is a feature, and good aesthetics are also a feature. Seriously, featuritis is for geeks.
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
So they go from what, one button to five?
Sounds like they admitted their mistake.
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.
funny... kinda looks like you broke it
Hi PopeRatzo. I had to look it up anophthalmia. It's is the congenital absence of 1 or both eyes, right? I see your point (no pun intended). You could have omitted the superfluous anti-Christian stupidity, but given your name, I guess it's not too surprising. Anyway, I could just as easily say that polydactly or hermaphroditism is a "mistake", right? Sometimes it's just as bad to be born with too many of something.
The point is, Apple didn't make mice with places for 2 buttons. Apple didn't make mice with 2 buttons, but only 1 of them worked. Apple designed and manufactured a mouse with 1 button. Because Apple thought it made the device easier to use. And, having taught 3 of my grandparents to use the 2-button variety, I'd say that Apple had a point.
I used Apple computers alongside others (three button SGIs and two button beige boxes), and the one button mouse was a terrible abortion that required two hands (open-apple-click) to use to marginal effectiveness.
So terrible an abortion that it made you use both of your hands? At the same time. Well, I hadn't thought of that. Sounds awful. Tell me, what do you do with your off-hand when you're using a multi-button mouse? Wait, wait, wait... on second thought, please don't.
"your aged parents" aren't in any way representative of the majority of apple users who absolutely despise that godawful one button mouse. It wouldn't be so bad if apple left that design decision back in the 1980's, but they keep making these mice wih one button (or with a single button you can't even see) due to Jobs' anemic design aesthetic. Jobs has always been about 'form over function' and this is one example where he chose to make something less functional in order to satisfy his eyes, instead of consumer needs.
What makes this whole argument amazingly stupid is that you could have gone and bought a multi-button mouse for $10 and used it. It's not like the thing was hard-wired to the computer.
If you want to point to a modern Apple design flaw, look no further than the iMac: the USB ports are on the back for some ungodly reason.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
And buried somewhere in all the complaining and misinformation that ensues, everyone forgets that it's not a car, but rather a teleportation device.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
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.
Please elaborate how App has gone in the shitter. They make the best OS on the market, in my and many others' opinions.
I recently changed jobs from a Dell/Windows stuffy business environment to a Mac and OSX only stuffy business environment, and the increased productivity with all Macs is indescribable. We don't even have an IT "department"...we have a few guys that can give us the passwords or privileges we need in order to administer whatever it is we need on our own machines.
I always had a sneaky suspicion that all Macs at work would be exponentially more productive, learning curve and retraining included, and boy was I more than right.
One button mouse was not a mistake, originally, but continuing to manufacture them even when their OS natively supported multi-buttons, was dumb. In the beginning, when computers were new and "hard", the one button made perfect since...until about 1990.
Gil wasn't the mistake, Sculley was. Gil was the Fall Guy.
I've been a Mac user since 1987 and have no idea what Frog boy is?
Sytem 7.6 was their best OS until X.1, so I'm not sure how that was a mistake.
My take on notorious Apple mistakes: Cube, hockey puck mouse, no mid range tower from early 2000s to present, and Final Cut Pro X.
STOP with the one button mouse garbage. Apple hasn't made a single button mouse since July of 2000. So NO, they don't "keep making these mice with one button". And even when they made one button mice, the OS supported multiple button third part mice since, I don't really remember, but probably OS 7.6?
If you are going to criticize something about a company's decision, make it relevant (i.e. something in the past couple of years, not something from 11 years ago) and make it something that doesn't have an easy work around (like buying a $20 USB third party mouse).
If I never see another one-button mouse post again, I'll die a happy person.
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.
No, the newest Apple mice have no scroll wheel, as the entire surface of the mouse can accept scrolling and gestures. It's a great feature but a terrible form factor (typical from Apple mouse design teams).
So again, the people bitching about Apple mice can't get their facts straight. No wonder they keep perpetuating myths about Apple products...they don't know what they are talking about for starters.
If you want to point to a modern Apple design flaw, look no further than the iMac: the USB ports are on the back for some ungodly reason.
Which is why their input devices are offered in wireless, and there are USB ports on the keyboard.
Which is why they should deploy FCPX on one or two workstations, and let their editors play with it for awhile before deciding if it is a good thing for them.
Or they can just read the feature list on the marketing page at Apple.com, or the reviews...just avoid the insanely polarizing commentary on slashdot when making a decision.
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
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.
Yeah, when you installed iLife '09 it kept the old iMovie around (just renamed) in addition to the newly installed iMovie HD.
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
No, that was Steve Jobs.
Along with a whole host of other things done wrong; the fixed one-size-fits-all menu bar; the failure to accommodate refreshes on shares; the bounding forward on new versions of the OS without fixing the problems they left behind (like the launchd to console constant error messages); the window resize from bottom right (finally getting fixed in Lion); the "first click does nothing feature" ; the horrific mushy chiclet keyboards; the "slide-off-the-table" power supply lumps; the dashboard widgets you can't normally see; the current implementation of modal apps for Lion (that's just ridiculous); the unfixed and horribly buggy treeview API; many issues with the mac app store; similar, but different, issues with the IOS app store; the iPad has its own entire list of design problems... the fact is, Apple has left a trail of really bad design decisions behind them. I use these machines every day for a full workday, and then use them for home applications as well. We've got ipod, ipad, mini, air, macbook pro, and mac pro hardware. I think I have a pretty good handle on what works well (quite a bit) and where the company has fallen on its face.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There are no USB ports on the Apple Wireless Keyboard. It also lacks a numerical pad, which is somewhat annoying. If it were only input devices I was trying to connect, I wouldn't care if the ports were on the back.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
There was nothing "anti-Christian" in my statement, stupid or not.
When you ask a Christian why a loving God would create the suffering of innocents, they will tell you that "His ways are not our ways" and that "God's reasons are his own". Very specifically, if you ask about birth defects, their belief is that God does everything for a purpose. There are no mistakes. I compared this dogma to Apple fans' belief in the One True Company. As a long-time Apple user, my disappointment with the direction of the company (though not their financial success) is that they appear to be moving away from making computers that are used for creating things (like documents, programs, music, art, video, etc) and are moving toward devices that are used for consumingprograms, music, art, video, etc. A year from now when iMacs are behind the same walled garden as iOS, the transformation will be complete. Maybe they continue to sell a high-end Mac Pro with something OSX-like, where you can run different operating systems or load your own programs, and maybe they won't.
We can disagree about Apple's mouse, but please don't try to smear me with being "anti-Christian" in my statement. My description of Christians belief in the infallibility of God and the mystery of His ways is merely factual, not derogatory in any way. My description of Apple fans' belief in the infallibility of Apple is also factual, and most definitely meant to be derogatory.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh bloody hell, the general meaning of "consumer" you twat. Mayhaps "Customer" if you will. Professionals are still customers. And since I was speaking in generalities of the market IN GENERAL, then GENERALLY I meant "stop releasing shit that isn't actually ready to be released."
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
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'
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)
...but I can't build the other eight Final Cut rooms that were in this year's budget nor replace the rest of the 14 Avid rooms. This changes everything - we have to stick with Avids for now. I love fixing things, but not that much.
Most of the stuff on
FCPX is great for creative editing but doesn't help at all with program packaging, 24 audio channels with surround mixes and language splits, captioning, external QC equipment, external Dolby-E encoders and decoders, the fact that we have thousands of DigiBeta SR masters we need to draw from. The latter is the bulk of our work and FCPX doesn't help... yet. If only Final Cut would continue until FCPX could mature a little first.
Most of the stuff on
touche'
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
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
If you care about the future of personal computing, and the use of computers to make things, to create (which I do), then Apple has gone straight into the shitter.
I care about those things too and my opinion on the matter is diametrically opposed to yours. Frankly I think all this worry is based on a gut feeling about possible implications of the technology rather than reality.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
The stats for customer satisfaction and return rates did not reflect a systemic antenna issue. The bumpers were offered to placate dumb people who were still stuck on the hype. Once Jobs went on stage and essentially chastised everyone by presenting stats and measurements you saw the hysteria die almost immediately. Reminds me a lot of the recent location tracking BS.
And just to be fair and finish out your story, people will slowly start buying them and then suddenly realize that the design decisions Apple made actually make the entire experience more enjoyable. They'll look back at the old cars and wonder why they ever thought that was right and why they settled for mediocre. Then these new iCar owners will be so happy with their purchase, maybe more happy than with any other purchase in their life, that they'll start telling their friends about how much they like their iCar. But their friends will resist. Their friends only know the old shitty car, or they'll have friends who are into IT, have never driven an iCar, but will offer stupid opinions about iCars that are factually wrong and they'll start calling people who own iCars fanbois in an obvious attempt to look cool to their other brain dead IT friends. So it soon becomes fashionable for brain dead IT people stuck with old cars to bash iCars and "fanbois". And the funny thing is the brain dead IT folks are making fun of fanbois because they mistakenly think they bought the iCar to try and look cool, but in reality the IT folks are trying SO SO hard to try and be cool by iCar bashing. In the ultimate twist of irony the IT fools spend their life trying to be cool by posting comments ripping on fanbois, when in reality the fanbois crowd (aka Satisfied Customers) don't really care because they are busy driving their iCar instead of constantly tearing apart and upgrading their car like the IT fools.
My first thought is to disagree. See if I'm a "pro" and I rely on my video editing software to make money to eat, then no WAY am I stupid enough to upgrade on day ONE of a brand new editor and risk having a product which brings my income to a halt. If I'm a pro I'd never be that stupid. And if someone actually does that I've got to question their brain capacity somewhat and their ability to make a coherent argument. Add to this the fact that Apple has addressed that this is an incomplete release and that rapid upgrades will follow, so aside from making valid comments about missing features, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is pure hysteria. Previous versions of FCP still function and so these "pros" are not dead in the water. Use your old version, wait for updates to fix issues, and migrate your workflow when you think it's ready.
These "pros" you're talking about seem a bit like petulant children who got the orange sucker instead of the red sucker. They're making a bit much out of this and they are losing credibility when they say the sky is falling.
My parents kept making typos, so I ripped off all the keys on their keyboard. Problem solved!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No, for Apple, simplicity is an excuse
FTFY
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
If Steve says we don't need those features, then we don't need those features.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Really? I thought I'd read somewhere that it wasn't coming, and that wouldn't surprise me at all. I'd still think that there were issues with FCP7 in Lion. Apple has officially EOL'ed FCP7, so I doubt there will be any official support under Lion.
I've got Quicktime 7 installed on Lion DP3 (I think it got carried over by Migration assistant, not sure because I did a few installs.) Good thing too because Quicktime X 10.1 is still a ways from feature parity with the old version. Hopefully for FCP users Apple will follow the same logic there: don't break anything for users who want to keep using the old version for certain features while the new one matures.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
That was the old Apple TV. This is the new Apple TV. It has a purpose. As ephemeral as the device's purpose is, only Jobs knows from day to day.
It won't for long. Do you forget Apple's forced upgrade path or what? Enjoying that reality distortion field?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.