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Alex 4d on the FCP X development cycle…
My friend in London, Alex Gollner wrote a fascinating blog post last week about how the FCP X development cycle may operate – and some of the back story that might be in play as the reason that some features and issues take so long to be reflected in software updates.
This is far outside my area of expertise, but I found the story very interesting none the less.
I thought some here who like to discuss features and software progress might enjoy the read.
Here’s a link:
https://alex4d.com/notes/item/apple-os-development-and-fcpx
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39 Replies
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Interesting read, thank you for sharing. Loved the reference of the tent poles, kind of how I feel about FCP and Motion. Both great tools but tent needs more work to be “complete”.
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I have worked with companies developing software features for mostly audio DAWs and so this is not an unfamiliar cycle that all development goes through. To me the significant thing is how a company defines priority. Is it led by user feedback or code writers or salesmen?
Obviously there should be a reasonable balance of all of those things but the degree to which decisions are made by those respective areas determines the usefulness of those developments to the end user. Personally I don’t have to care much about how difficult it might be to code or whether it is easy to sell. As an end user I make judgments about how software develops for my usage.
Of course a company like Apple is limited in what it can achieve. Big companies are often less able to develop than lots of small companies. I think the faster turnover of OS is going to limit Apple more than Microsoft as it impacts on those smaller developers. I suspect the salesmen are driving that cycle and for stability of other software that will slow the dev cycle of user demanded features.
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Interesting read. To me it sounds like a yearly release cykle harms more than it helps for the end product. Maintenance should of course be kept up though-out a given version but major release say every two years sounds more resonable.
Looking at for example DaVincie Resolve they pump out features like crazy folks in a very impressive way. Then they spend a year bug-fixing before massive update hit again and rince and repeat.
The link also shedds light on why major features take so long to be implemented. At least on the OS-level. I could beilive FCPX suffers due to other factors, primarily as it’s not very prioritized with-in Apple anymore. If another media-related project requires crunch time I wouldn’t be suspired if FCPX takes the hit.
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FCPX suffers because it is a low earner in the Apple multiverse. Plain and simple.
Tim
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It did make me buy a very expensive Mac Pro though!
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[Michael Gissing] “To me the significant thing is how a company defines priority. Is it led by user feedback or code writers or salesmen? “
If Ron Brinkmann’s experience is still valid then features that demo easily usually get green light first. I’d assume this is the norm at any big company. One reason why, from what I’ve read, people at Adobe like that they aren’t slaves to the ‘big demo’ anymore, and are able to address less sexy (though user requested) feature upgrades.
“See, here’s the thing with how features happen at Apple to a great extent – product development is often driven by how well things can be demoed. Maybe not explicitly – nobody ever told me to only design features that demoed well – but the nature of the organization effectively makes it work out that way. Because a lot of decisions about product direction make their way very far up the management hierarchy (often to Steve himself). And so the first question that comes up is ‘how are we going to show this feature within the company?’ All the mid-level managers know that they’re going to have a limited window of time to convey what makes a product or a feature special to their bosses. So they either 1) make a sexy demo or 2) spend a lot of time trying to explain why some customer feels that some obscure feature is worth implementing. Guess which strategy works best?”
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[TImothy Auld] “FCPX suffers because it is a low earner in the Apple multiverse. Plain and simple.”
I don’t believe that applies here. To my knowledge, Apple doesn’t run P&Ls by department or product, but rather a single balance across the whole company. Therefore, if X causes more Mac Pro tubes to be sold or iMac Retinas, then it’s earned its keep.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Andrew Kimery] “If Ron Brinkmann’s experience is still valid then features that demo easily usually get green light first.”
Not sure that’s valid with X, since Apple has taken the approach to do very little demoing of X to the general public. They’ve left that to others, like FCPworks and occasionally show up at regional or market-specific events. Therefore, more “geeky” features can be demoed because the crowd understands their value. After all, why would Apple have added MXF support? There’s no demo value in that.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Not sure that’s valid with X, since Apple has taken the approach to do very little demoing of X to the general public. “
Ron was talking internal demos. From Ron’s quote in my previous post, “…And so the first question that comes up is ‘how are we going to show this feature within the company?’… All the mid-level managers know that they’re going to have a limited window of time to convey what makes a product or a feature special to their bosses. So they either 1) make a sexy demo or 2) spend a lot of time trying to explain why some customer feels that some obscure feature is worth implementing. Guess which strategy works best?”
After all, why would Apple have added MXF support? There’s no demo value in that.
Again from Ron’s quote in my previous post, “… product development is often driven by how well things can be demoed.” Often, not always.
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Editing and playing back 6K Dragon footage without transcoding to a 4K monitor and having it look sharp and stunning demos extremely well.
It’s worth mentioning that Apple doesn’t show up at any trade shows and hold public events for any of their software, not for ten years or so.
It makes sense that FCP X exists only as a motivator to buy Macs. If they didn’t offer a pro video app that pushes the limits of their top end machines, they would be depending on 3rd party companies to make their pro hardware products shine.
Does Avid still not have GPU acceleration yet after the 8.3 release? I don’t think so. Premiere is getting good, but it is still far behind FCP 7 in many ways.
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