A bit worried about Apple – would like some feedback

[Peter Wiley]

You should print this and mail it to Apple.

[Hamdani Milas]

You’re not alone Jeremy and I think you might be onto something. I’ve commented in this and other forums about the bungled launch of FCPX as an indication that something is amiss with Apple’s management.

The unavoidable truth is that FCPX doesn’t replace its predecessor as a pro editing tool and should never have been marketed as such. Oh, but Apple’s FAQ says the fixes are coming, the plugins will provide what’s missing. No. Even as a first release FCPX should not have had such elementary functions missing. What was the business strategy in releasing it? Was there a strategy at all?

And the expectation that editors who have spent years honing their craft with FCP should re-learn their skills to meet Apple’s new “paradigm” in post-production? Was this arrogance or ignorance? Many editors can’t wait for Apple to complete its new paradigm in editing and they’ve switched to Adobe or AVID. This is a straightforward and obvious business decision. And even if they’re not experienced in either PP CS5 or MC it’s a relatively easy move, certainly a smoother transition than to FCPX.

Apple’s action in the unannounced extinction of FCS3 was brutal. No easy transition for you, says Apple to its 10 year user base. Learn to do it our way. Did Apple do any market research with FCPX? Doesn’t look like it.

(I’m not denying FCPX’s potential, but it’s simply not ready for pro use NOW.)

I too have been a loyal Apple user/fan/supporter since the early 90’s and a staunch promoter of all things Apple. But now I feel I’m all Appled out. Don’t need an iPad. Don’t want Lion, it’s got the letter “i” all over it. Couldn’t care less about iCloud, it’s marketing hype. I want my stuff on my drives, not on Apple’s server. I’m getting the feeling that Apple wants a piece of me, wants me signed up. Wants me as an iConsumer. Has Apple moved on? Or have I?

I’ll be continuing to use Final Cut Pro 7 in the meantime as it more than meets my requirements. I’ve also been playing with my copy of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, imported one of my FCP projects via an XML export, it’s all there bar some of the plugin filters/effects and I soon grasped the layout and basic functions. So I suggest if you wish to upgrade your webinar productions you might like to consider Premiere Pro CS5 especially with their 50% discount offer to Final Cut users. (does it also apply to FCE users?)

Good luck.

(film-maker of 40 years experience – TV docos, corporates, TV commercials, aerials specialist, fashion, tourism promos etc. One-time 16mm film editor in the 1970’s and now happy NLE user cutting self-produced video productions with FCP7 and Motion)

Independent producer, director, cinematographer, writer, editor
Milas Film Productions, Hong Kong
http://www.milasfilm.com

[Gary Pollard]

Actually if you can’t trust Apple with Final Cut, how can you trust it with iCloud?

I totally distrust cloud computing, no matter who is doing it.

____

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

[James Mortner]

Key phrase there is “bungled” . Apple bungled the launch, then tried to play it like there were special features that pro’s “didnt underdstand”. Reminds me of the shuffle launch “Look there’s no screen ! Isnt life random and wonderful!”

Imagine if we delivered to clients or television stations with missing audio or black holes in the video. Wouldnt really get paid would we ?

[Chris Kenny]

[Jeremy Whaley] “The truth about FCPx, as I see it, is probably that this is a great software that will help a lot of wanna be video producers have a lot of fun doing videos and take their videos to the next level. Eventually it may even be an amazing pro application. BUT IT’S NOT FINAL CUT! Where Apple went wrong here, and why the outrage is so intense, is they promised “an amazing new Final Cut Pro”. And like some many have said, what they delivered is the end of their actual FCP application that could do something powerful, and replaced it with imovie deluxe. “

They did not. They replaced it with an application that is, in broad strokes, a very worthy successor to FCP 7… but that is, in its first iteration, missing a handful of features film/broadcast folks need. Some of those folks, as a consequence of those missing features, some superficial similarities with the iMovie interface, and a whole lot of preexisting paranoia, have completely freaked out.

What people need to understand is that developers have different priorities at different stages in an app’s lifecycle. Apple’s priority with the initial release of FCP X was to get a solid foundation in place, and deliver a feature set sufficient to make the app useful to the median FCP user (who is not a film/broadcast editor). They have done this. This required a huge amount of work: creating a new media framework and rendering engine, working through all the details of the new metadata-based footage organization system and connection-oritend timeline, etc.

Now they can turn their attention to adding features for the film/broadcast market (what everyone keeps calling the “pro” market, though it’s only a small fraction of the people who get paid to edit video). And the FAQ, while light on details, indicates that they’re doing precisely this.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Jim Glickert]

Thank you very much, Jeremy, for your post. It was extremely well-written and on-target. I have not commented on the Cow regarding the FCP X debacle, but I’ve been wanting to. My post would have been very much like yours, particularly the idea of naming the new software something other than Final Cut Pro.

What’s been eating at me in recent years is Apple’s growing arrogance. I don’t know if it’s a consequence of growing so fast in so few years, or a corporate culture change. It’s the perceived attitude of, “We know what product features you should have, so don’t bothering telling us what you want.” That attitude may work for consumer products like iPods and iPads, but not for professional software products. A debacle like this would result in heads rolling at most corporations.

In the two weeks since FCP X was introduced and this firestorm erupted, I’ve been hoping that Apple would admit to some big mistakes and begin to try to repair the damage. So far, they’ve done virtually nothing. Quite arrogant, in my opinion.

Thanks again.

Jim

[John Chay]

I think you’d be pretty safe going with Adobe products. Adobe’s life blood are artists. Their focus is on creating software that manipulates pixels while Apple’s main focus is selling hardware. Adobe cannot survive without serving the professional artists while Apple could drop FCPX all together and not skip a beat.

Many fear that Apple will also discontinue Mac Pro. This would definitely end the relationship between Apple and professional editors for good.

Good luck.

http://www.john-chay.com

Editor/Videographer

[Chris Kenny]

[Jim Glickert] “Thank you very much, Jeremy, for your post. It was extremely well-written and on-target. I have not commented on the Cow regarding the FCP X debacle, but I’ve been wanting to. My post would have been very much like yours, particularly the idea of naming the new software something other than Final Cut Pro. “

Giving it a different name wouldn’t have made much sense. First, the app is, in fact, targeted at the median Final Cut Pro user. Folks doing feature film or broadcast work, like most of us on this forum, just have a very unclear picture or who the median FCP user is.

Second, having shipped an app that targets the median user, Apple is immediately proceeding to fill in feature gaps necessary for our niche markets as well.

Apple should have come out and said, explicitly, from the first day “For this first release we were focusing on foundational issues; we’re working on adding support for film/broadcast users now”. It would have saved a lot of trouble. But it is now fairly clear that this is what Apple is doing despite the lack of such an explicit statement. And there’s nothing especially objectionable about this approach.

[Jim Glickert] “What’s been eating at me in recent years is Apple’s growing arrogance. I don’t know if it’s a consequence of growing so fast in so few years, or a corporate culture change. It’s the perceived attitude of, “We know what product features you should have, so don’t bothering telling us what you want.” That attitude may work for consumer products like iPods and iPads, but not for professional software products. “

Apple is very good at understanding what features are necessary for an initial release, and what features can be left for later minor/major releases. They often make very aggressive decisions about what features to leave out of initial releases, and it’s not uncommon for them to take harsh criticism as a consequence, and then go on to huge success anyway. In fact, it this happens with virtually every new Apple product release these days. You say this market is different, but that is not at all clear to me.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[James Poll]

Unfortunately, Apple’s arrogance and culture of silence has been around for a while, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon.

Does anyone remember way back when OS X first came out? Apple released a firmware update the was required in order to install OS X. This firmware update had a nasty habit of deactivating any third party RAM that didn’t meet the specs necessary for stability in OS X. Now, that isn’t a bad thing per se, but *they didn’t tell anyone* that they may lose some or all of their RAM by installing this firmware! One user had all his RAM disabled, and his computer wouldn’t start up any more. People were freaking out, Apple weren’t saying anything,and it wasn’t until one lone programmer figured out what was going on, and wrote a small application to check your RAM before applying the firmware update, that Apple bothered to (rather sheepishly it seems) come out and admit what exactly was going on. That whole situation was handled so poorly, and that was the first time I felt Apple really dropped the PR ball.

Since then, the shine has continually been eroded away with other poorly-handled launches. Remember when Snow Leopard came out? All the great changes to the core code… but now half the Mac community had to go out and buy new printers and scanners, because all their old ones were suddenly made obsolete by a re-write of the I/O routines (which seemed to be working just fine beforehand). Again, Apple said nothing and gave no warning that this might happen. Of course, it’s all the fault of the third parties for not updating their drivers… nevermind that Apple was the one who forced that particular situation upon everyone – users and developers alike!

More recently we have the Rosetta issue. Unless you are a Mac geek who frequents Mac forums, you aren’t going to know that PowerPC support is being flushed down the toilet, because Apple isn’t sharing that information with anyone. I can hardly wait until Lion comes out and people like my elderly parents upgrade to Lion, only to find that that old copy of Office 2004 and PowerPC Quicken need to be re-purchased for the new Intel-only world. Suddenly, that $29.99 Lion upgrade is going to cost hundreds of dollars in software upgrades, just like the Snow Leopard upgrade cost hundreds of dollars in printer/scanner re-purchases, just as the OS X firmware update meant buying new RAM for many people.

All this without any warning, no notice, and no response (until the bad PR starts to get to them, of course).

I’m really starting to worry about Apple’s direction with OS X as well. You can see how they are turning it into “iOS Pro”, and for the first time, I’m really starting to feel like I’m losing control over my computer/digital life. I *like* having a file system that I can control, I *like* being able to manage things myself. By all means, add these great time-saving and ease-of-use features… just give us a freaking override button!! And be more open about what’s going to happen when you upgrade your software!

These last couple of weeks have been tough. I’ve been an Apple pusher since the mid-90s, and have converted pretty much everyone in my family, my girlfriend’s family, and many friends to Macs over the years. After the event of the last several years – and the last couple of weeks in particular – I’m starting to wonder if that was all a mistake.

In some ways, I’m really hoping that the Lion launch totally blows up in Apple’s face. Maybe then they might finally learn to be a little more open and supportive with their customer base, many of whom have been loyal devotees for many years, if not decades. Somehow, though, I doubt it. Sigh.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

[Paul Escamilla]

I’m with the OP 100%. I’ve been an Apple fanboy for 11-12 years, but no longer. I think their days are numbered and I’m considering selling my apple stock while its still worth something.