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Apple Insider says FCP 8 was DONE when they killed it? WOW.
The Cow’s own Richard Harrington was quoted in an Apple Insider story today indicating that…
“There was a Final Cut Pro 8, and it was 64-bit and it was done,” Harrington said. “And they looked at it and said, ‘This is not what we want to do. This is evolutionary, this is not revolutionary.’ And they killed it.”
Don’t know about the dependability of the Apple Insider sources – but I bet it’s going to make a lot of folks here really, really grumpy if this is ever confirmed.
Yikes.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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49 Replies
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Hi
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/21564
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My comment is taken out of context. -
A personal experience:
This is not really quite the same but who knows, maybe it is similar. In my previous life (career) I designed integrated circuits. Those marvelous chips that go into all the gadgets we love to use. About 10 years into my career there was a major shift in how these were designed. Initially, chip designed mirrored the way an electronic circuit board was designed. The tools existed to do that task and they were simply adapted to the needs of chip design. As manufacturing kept doubling what we could put into a chip about every 18 months, we reached a point where there was simply too much information to deal with in the short amount of time required to do the task at had. A fundamental shift in tools and methods came about where chips ceased to be designed like circuit boards and the industry shifted to designing chips much in the same manner that software was designed. This removed the designer from the lower level tasks but allowed the designer to work at a much higher level of abstraction, which in turned, allows for much faster turn around in the design of large and complicated systems.We may be seeing the same type of fundamental shift in the video editing industry as a whole as, once again, technology has significantly lowered the barrier of entry to making your own movie, allowing a significantly larger user base of movie makers, who simply won’t follow the previous traditional methods used to create a movie. They want to work with more media, do it faster and do it cheaper.
I’m probably full of it, but time will tell.
……
and on a side note, as a designer and manager, I first resisted the change to the new “methodology” with amazingly similar arguments as presented here about FCPX. My company only needed to get it’s “Clock Cleaned” once by a competitor who used the new method to blow our doors off on a new product release and I rapidly saw the errors of my way.
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[Bill Davis] “Don’t know about the dependability of the Apple Insider sources – but I bet it’s going to make a lot of folks here really, really grumpy if this is ever confirmed.”
AppleInsider has a pretty spotty record. On one hand, they pretty much nailed the FCP rumors leading up to X (looking a lot like iMovie). On the other hand, they said Apple was going to kill the Mac mini. Besides, if this is the article you are referring to, they are just quoting Arrington’s comments from the now infamous video (now pulled) that fcp.co and Cult of Mac posted a few days ago.
This kind of thing can’t be confirmed, because it would take someone from the Pro Apps team like Richard Townhill or Steve Bayes or Pete Steinauer or whoever breaking ranks and airing that kind of dirty laundry. Not gonna happen unless one of those guys wants an easy exit from Apple.
I still like Philip Hodgetts’ hypothesis, that FCP7 was going to be the 64-bit FCP, but that had to be scrapped when Apple did a 180 on 64-bit Carbon back in 2007 prior to releasing Leopard. So FCP7 lost who-knows-what features that would have been in early development and the Pro Apps team were forced to look at rewriting everything from scratch. That also neatly explains the relatively thin new feature list of FCP7. If that is all true, one could reasonably picture a juicy morsel like “Apple had a 64-bit FCP and had to kill it” making its way through the game of telephone to become “Apple had a 64-bit FCP8 and decided to kill it”.
Best,
Andy -
[Phil Hoppes] “We may be seeing the same type of fundamental shift in the video editing industry as a whole as, once again, technology has significantly lowered the barrier of entry to making your own movie, allowing a significantly larger user base of movie makers, who simply won’t follow the previous traditional methods used to create a movie. “
This technological breakthrough happened in video post about 10 years ago. 64 bit is an upgrade, but hardly revolutionary. FCPX is different in it’s approach, but not enormously cheaper, faster or better (if at all better.) I don’t see any fundamental shift, unless you too think shooting movies with an Iphone is the way to go.
It’s been many years since the barrier to making movies has been the cost of cameras or NLE’s.
[Phil Hoppes] “They want to work with more media, do it faster and do it cheaper. “
As the old saying goes “faster, better, cheaper – you can have any two out of the three.”
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Bill Davis] “I bet it’s going to make a lot of folks here really, really grumpy if this is ever confirmed.”
As one of the grumpier grumps around, I can tell you that it means nothing to me at all. Whether they completed a 64 bit FCP8 or not isn’t the issue, what they chose to release is the issue.
Even if the story is totally bogus does that mean they couldn’t build a 64bit FCP8 tomorrow if they wanted too? It’s Apple’s strategy and marketing approach that pisses me off, I could care less what they might have done and when they might have almost done it.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Andrew Richards] “So FCP7 lost who-knows-what features that would have been in early development and the Pro Apps team were forced to look at rewriting everything from scratch.”
Didn’t they face something like this when they moved from OS9 to OSX?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
MacRumors picked it up, with lots of angry comments.
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[Herb Sevush] “Didn’t they face something like this when they moved from OS9 to OSX?”
Yeah, you’d think they would know how to handle a transition smoothly…
I don’t think there is any disagreement anywhere that they really botched that aspect.
Best,
Andy -
[Herb Sevush] “This technological breakthrough happened in video post about 10 years ago. 64 bit is an upgrade, but hardly revolutionary. FCPX is different in it’s approach, but not enormously cheaper, faster or better (if at all better.) I don’t see any fundamental shift, unless you too think shooting movies with an Iphone is the way to go.
It’s been many years since the barrier to making movies has been the cost of cameras or NLE’s. “
Herb,
You keep saying this over and over again, but it’s missing the point. It didn’t matter if there were technological changes 10 years ago or 50 years ago. What matters is the one happening right now.
If, 10 years ago, desktop tools had supplanted professional video editing processes in such a way that the work migrated en masse away from traditionally skilled editors and to a new class of young digital professional – then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
The truth is that 10 years ago the new digital production tools replaced the traditional tools in the hands of the traditional editors.
Today, that transition has happened down at the casual user level.
You didn’t have a generation of kids with BetaCams, or even DSR series cameras running around. You DO have a generation of kids today with 5dMkIIs or the like. And a laptop. And editing software.
That’s why, respectfully, today is NOT 10 years ago no matter how many times you’d like to re-cycle that particular argument.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Andrew Richards] “I don’t think there is any disagreement anywhere that they really botched that aspect.”
Not so sure about this.
I heard more than one source I know on the west coast say things like “pulling the band-aid off fast” when describing the idea that once the strategic decision was made, there was no real benefit to Apple spending much time trying to smooth the feathers of those who weren’t going to like it.
I’m not actually sure there was EVER a way to soften the blow to so many at the rarified pro end of the spectrum who so gleefully bought into the value proposition of FCP-Legacy – most often later, rather than earlier – and were knocked then off stride when it was EOL’ed.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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