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Smart Business Model
Honestly this was probably a smart move by Apple because they were not making enough money off broadcast, feature film, and corporate video users. They have not abandoned all professional users though – wedding videographers are absolutely professional users if they are making their living off what they do, and ditching output to XDCAM and Betacam will probably not hurt their business model. Your average wedding videographer also does not need feet+frames timecode with EDL export for negative cutting, post conforming, etc….
Apple may be throwing the broadcast, feature film, and corporate customers away with the redesign but I guarantee that they will be making way more money off the new consumer “I shot this on my flip cam iPhone android” market.
I am sure the decisions to leave features out, add new ones, and the overall redesign of the program were motivated 100% by profit; Apple’s desire to shift their target market from the small broadcast, feature film, and corporate video communities to the ever expanding consumer universe. It is simple economics and I am sure the stockholders are loving it!!!
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5 Replies
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Personally, I’m not mad at Apple. I’ll always appreciate Apple because they introduced the first affordable NLE. Before FCP a NLE system cost around $40k. Apple made it possible to achieve professional standards comparable to Avid for $5k. Because of FCP, Avid had to create an affordable NLE system, Adobe had to step up it’s game and continue to improve Premiere which is now a viable option for most of us.
Apple created FCP for the masses. They’re doing it again with
FCPX. Apple is adapting to satisfy their stock holders. We’ll have to adapt as well.Editor/Videographer
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I seriously can’t believe how ignorant these hippy-dippy defenses of apple’s strategy sound. You are clueless.
Byrd McDonald
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I’m not defending Apple for what they did. I feel really bad for the production houses that have invested alot of money into their equipment. I own a Mac Pro with Final Cut 7 and I do not plan on buying Final Cut X. But I understand business. And obviously Apple has made a business decision. It impacts all of us who make a living using Final Cut but it’s clear that Apple does not care about us. Apple doesn’t care about alot of people including Facebook and Flash. Apple is going to do what they think is going to make the most money. If Apple starts losing money because of their decision then maybe they will reverse course. I doubt it. For $300 every kid in America will have Final Cut X and they will be able to edit their cool videos and post it to YouTube. As for the professional crowd, we’ll move on.
Editor/Videographer
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The target audience for FCPX are those who were kids or non-shooters when Apple first acquired FCP. A lot has changed since then and these noobs are now HD shooters who want to edit and post on the web. They don’t need all those pro features, so pros should move onto Avid or Adobe.
Avid screwed up too because their competitive upgrade sale for MC5.5 ended four days before FCPX was released. Imagine how many people would have taken advantage of that sale if it was still available June 21st. So many business mistakes!
I’m a production soundman so I don’t have loyalty to any NLE, but I get occasional post-gigs that I like to do in Pro Tools. Therefore I’m not a good candidate for FCPX and I didn’t plan to buy it right away anyway. Obviously I won’t be getting any post-gigs from FCPX users, especially noobs who don’t need advanced sonics processing.
I surmise that FCPX upgrades might become more complex when Lion’s released and that Apple might re-think its position on abandoning pros amid all the criticism.
Again I’m not loyal but can empathize with the pain that pro editors feel. It’s not easy to switch because of the learning curve and the downtime. But now seems appropriate to get the ball rolling.
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Apple seem to be focused on creating an ‘experience’ with their products, and that experience tends to have a certain vision and focus, anything outside of that is not important. They have done this with the iPhone, iPad and more and more so with OS X (think App Store). This is fine and it is their business, I still find it disappointing however that they are just happy to turn their back on people who have invested in Pro products.
I am a pro-am (I can hear the boos and hisses from the Pro galleries now), I have a day time job and do part time work as cameraman and assistant editor for a community TV show based on horses. There are three editors, when footage is shot someone captures it using a FCP project with set rules for sorting into bins and labelling footage. This footage is then sent to all three editors so we all have the raw footage and all we need to do is email FCP project files around, simple and easy. I don’t think we can do that with FCP X. We also need to output to tape (anyone who thinks tape is dead is out of their tree), don’t think we can do that with FCP X.
In short I am not a pro, yet I don’t think I can use FCP X. There must be plenty more people like me who now need to move elsewhere. I would have much preferred to see FCP 8 with 64Bit performance and some of the other changes in FCP X, not a different product. Still it is their business, and they clearly don’t think there is enough cash in professional products.
I wonder who they will get to endorse FCP X? Can’t see the Coen Brothers, Walter Murch, et al using this.
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