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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.
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?
So, loading a file you created last month using the previous version is a "high end feature"?
... 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...
You could continue using FCP 7 but...
- You'll be stuck with an application which hasn't seen serious updates in over 2 years, it won't continue to support the latest codec updates for things like Red footage and get the features.
- You won't be able to open your projects in FCP-X once it does reach feature maturity.
- You can't buy copies of FCP 7 so if you need another license you're SOL.
- You could be using an application *now* which has everything that FCP-X promises in the future.
- You may never see some features return and Apple isn't providing any roadmaps like other companies on what and when they intend to release.
- You are now waiting on a company which has made through action and lack of communication perfectly clear that they aren't targeting your market sector anymore. Motion is evidently a perfectly reasonable replacement for Shake according to Apple. If you disagree with Apple on that point... I wouldn't stick around waiting for pro features to find their way back into FCP-X... ever.
It would have been like if Vista had been released and Microsoft had stopped supporting XP that same day.
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.
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.
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 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.
And somehow this situation is tremendously different from a week or so ago before the release of Final Cut X?
I'm actually not a FCP user, I switched years ago when it started stagnating and everyone else continued to innovate but I have many professional FCP editors for friends and I think I can repeat pretty well why they've stuck around until now unlike me.
1) Last week you could buy more seats of your software as you hire more freelancers, staff up or buy more workstations.
2) Last week you could hold out hope that FCP-X was going to "Revolutionize Editing" for the better.
3) They are Apple fans, they love Apple's products and they believe Apple it committed to the professional market and hold some sort of 'loyalty' to the professional industry which kept Apple afloat in the 'dark times' when everyone else switched to PC.
Essentially last week you could hold out hope that you were a week away from a FCP Renaissance that would reaffirm Apple's commitment to its pro-user customer base and make up for the years of neglect. This week you know exactly what you're getting and you now know it's incompatible with the previous version.
For years people have been saying.
"You just have to give Apple time, the reason the pro-apps division has been so slow and inattentive isn't because of a shift in focus to consumers instead of professionals. It's the calm before the storm, soon you'll see that Apple has been working secretly behind the scenes to rebuild FCP from the ground up. And then all you doubters will see the error in your ways."
2 years later...
"Introducing iMoviePro!"
Apple is getting slapped by the "I told you so." crowd and all of the loyal followers who had been defending Apple for years insisting that Apple was still serious about its professional software division.
I certainly fall into the 'I told you so' crowd. Why? Because I was a Shake user. Apple buys shake. Apple stops supporting Shake but all of the murmurs are "oh but just you wait for Phenomenon. They're rewriting shake from the ground up to blow your socks off." We got a few updates to Motion.
Apple isn't interested in serving the high-end market. There is nothing wrong with that. But the sooner people accept that, the sooner they'll stop being continually disappointed by Apple not serving their needs.
Last week people thought Apple was still serious about the pro-division. This week everyone is pretty much on the same page that Apple is sending not-so-subtle hints that they would rather add Facebook Integration than add the features that Pro users are wanting.
Also Apple's secrecy is killing their good will with the industry. They evidently never brought in 3rd party developers during development to start writing their tools. None of the developers who have to fill in the holes were given a chance start working with FCP-X months ago to have their solutions ready for release. Again, that kind of thing just doesn't fly in the professional industry. You provide roadmaps, you bring in your partners early and on your ship date everybody is ready. We don't like to be surprised be when we're surprised we can't prepare.
They've brought this upon themselves and a vocal official commitment to professional users is what's needed. This won't happen though since that would be antithetical to Apple's culture of secrecy and surprise announcements. Professional users need to not just be told through a NYT blogger that XYZ feature is coming. They need estimates of when and in what form it'll be delivered.
Shouldn't they be saying: "I'm going to use the old FCP until all of these specific issues are resolved to my satisfaction.If that never happens I will have to look at other options."
No. Because professional users shouldn't expect to ever see those updates--especially since there is no official promise on Apple's part to introduce them... ever.
People are *ASSUMING* that Apple will re-introduce these missing features. But Apple hasn't said that. And before FCP-X was announced people *ASSUMED* that it would be a professional app that reaffirmed Apple's commitment to its professional users. Instead they got iMoviePro.
That destroys people's trust in a company when you wait patiently for years holding onto increasingly outdated tech only to have the replacement end up being even less impressive.
There are excellent and superior alternatives...and there have been for some time. It was only loyalty to Apple that kept a lot of these people around. Loyalty and the *assumption* that Apple wouldn't let them down when they finally delivered.
Apple finally showed its hand and it had evidently been bluffing for the last 2 years. When you're betrayed like that your reaction shouldn't be to keep using the old junker--hoping you don't get screwed again, you should switch at the earliest convenience.