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Apple are hilarious
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[Oliver Peters] “The claim by Apple is that there are now more installed users of X than legacy. Why doubt that? Plenty of new users (amateurs and students) have been added to the fold. “
I certainly don’t. But for me, that’s where the humor comes in. Its all in the way its phrased: “the company owns 52 percent of the market when it comes to new seats. Additionally, Apple notes that there are now more editors working with FCP X that with Final Cut Pro 7.”
52 percent of the market? Maybe of people who’ve bought things to cut video with, but not of target audience for NAB. Very different markets, with some overlap. Also, are editors now simply defined as “anyone who owns a $300 piece of editing software?”
Seats? That’s the way you count installed business users, not folks that want to do stuff with video. I mean, how many “seats” does iLife have? I’m betting the product and term have never met until this last sentence. Its just your average BS corporate propaganda, and I always find that funny. From my POV, that kind of fluffery signals a near-worthless report.
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Welcome back, Chris!
[Chris Kenny] “The real takeaway from this isn’t the specific number, it’s the illustration that number provides of how out of touch a lot of the discussions here are. People in these forums are mostly focused on a couple of specific segments of the professional video editing market — and not even very large segments. There’s a much wider world of editing out there, and if history is any guide, what happens in that world is very likely to significantly impact high-end market segments in the long run — possibly the not-so-long run, given how fast Apple is adding higher-end features.”
I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at here. You’re suggesting there are lessons to be learned from the “wider world of editing,” right? What are they?
It seems to me that FCPX is continuing a trend that goes back at least to the dawn of the desktop video revolution twenty years ago (and I’d argue even further): more people are getting access to greater quality tools at lower prices. The tools are getting vastly easier to use. Schedules are getting tighter and budgets are getting smaller. The Good Enough Revolution suggests that what we are interested in delivering and what customers are interested in receiving (and willing to pay for) are diverging. Video and IT are converging.
That’s all pretty much common knowledge. What are we missing?
I understand that there are many editors that don’t care about the features and workflows that we discuss here. Even among us on this forum, we all have very different workflows and concerns. For example, I know that multicam post for broadcast is everything to Herb, but it’s not even a speck on my radar. Likewise, I don’t think he’d care all that much about design for blended projection systems, but I do it every day. I’d guess that neither Herb nor myself spend much time thinking about feature workflow for RED cameras, but you know it inside and out.
To anyone who would argue that the workflows we’re discussing are exceptional — well, I’d agree. Isn’t doing something exceptional critical to building a business or making a career of this?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Chris,
I think you are inferring and combining things that weren’t necessarily presented in that context. The number of users was presented simply on the basis of numbers without any definition to who the users are. I extrapolated that X may include more non-pros in the mix than “legacy”. As far as the 52%, that’s based on SCRI’s study, which is supposedly based on polling professional commercial and film editors and shops. The two numbers are not connected nor are they contradictory. Also that 52% is based on new purchases. It doesn’t mean they quit using what they already had.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Chris,
I think you are inferring and combining things that weren’t necessarily presented in that context. The number of users was presented simply on the basis of numbers without any definition to who the users are. I extrapolated that X may include more non-pros in the mix than “legacy”. As far as the 52%, that’s based on SCRI’s study, which is supposedly based on polling professional commercial and film editors and shops. The two numbers are not connected nor are they contradictory. Also that 52% is based on new purchases. It doesn’t mean they quit using what they already had.”
You might be right. I’m just going off the quote from “Post.” I’m sure there is more to it. “Apple also pointed out a recent SCRI report on broadcast and post NLE purchases that suggests the company owns 52 percent of the market when it comes to new seats. Additionally, Apple notes that there are now more editors working with FCP X that with Final Cut Pro 7.”
But what are “new seats?” Since January? Six months? A year? Three years? And how do you define editors? I find it very, very difficult to believe that there are more paid editors working with FCP X than with 7. I have absolutely no problem believing that more people are using X than 7, but editors “working” with it is an entirely different matter.
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[Walter Soyka] ” design for blended projection systems”
Actually, that sounds kind of cool.
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“But what are “new seats?” Since January? Six months? A year? Three years? And how do you define editors? I find it very, very difficult to believe that there are more paid editors working with FCP X than with 7. I have absolutely no problem believing that more people are using X than 7, but editors “working” with it is an entirely different matter.”
All I can say is that I saw the same Keynote slides and these numbers were not presented as tied together in a direct sense. So “more X users” means of all types. The 52% was for the year of 2011. 52% of market is purchases of new licenses made by professional users according to who SCRI polled.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Walter Soyka] “I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at here. You’re suggesting there are lessons to be learned from the “wider world of editing,” right? What are they?”
I was making a somewhat different point. The specific lesson of these numbers, I think, is “Just because a narrative (about e.g. FCP X’s failure) dominates Internet discussion of a subject doesn’t necessarily mean that narrative has any relationship to reality”.
But to sort of address your point, I think there’s massive value in FCP X being designed to encompass a wider market than pro NLEs might have traditionally targeted. There’s a notion commonly floated here that software designed primarily for high-end specialty markets is inherently going to be better for people in those markets. But the history of computing furnishes numerous examples of the opposite. Larger markets tend to generate more total revenue than specialty markets, allowing for investment of more developer resources. Larger markets tend to be more competitive, driving innovative new features. They tend to be more diverse, driving flexibility. And they tend to contain less expert users, driving usability.
There is, in fact, a very strong historical tendency (with hardware as well, actually) for mass-market products to annihilate specialty market products when they come into direct contact. Apple’s “mass market first” approach to FCP X is has been widely perceived as a weakness for the product, a reason for high-end users to avoid it and to mistrust its future. But I see a fairly recent analogy between FCP X and Avid (to a lesser extent even Premiere) that suggests precisely the opposite — iPhone vs. BlackBerrry in the enterprise.
Four years ago, the narrative about iPhone in the enterprise was much like the narrative about using FCP X for high-end work today. It was missing basic enterprise management features! It was a consumer toy! Meanwhile, off in the consumer market, the iPhone was winning over a lot of fans — people who’d never previously owned a smartphone of any kind. It was also building a massive ecosystem around itself. As Apple began to add enterprise features, a lot of the iPhone’s new fans started demanding to use them as work phones — and a lot of existing enterprise users saw that value in iPhone’s ecosystem.
The same is likely to happen with FCP X. Effective tools and workflows will likely develop around it simply because of how widely used it is. People who learn on FCP X now will want to take it with them if (when) they move upmarket later — and it’s already well on its way to building out a feature set that will let them do so. While Avid is off “focusing on the enterprise”, the army Apple is presently building in the mid-range market is going to be slowly marching toward the world’s post facilities.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Scott Shucher] “You gotta admit Tim, that for a product that needed a boost in professional credibility, it was a disappointing show.”
Not disappointing for me. 🙂
I was curious going in what its profile would be. Part of me assumed that people would be demonstrating it in quite a few contexts along with other solutions, or running on a couple of computers among several in a booth. Even on that limited level of expectation, the reality appears to have still been well short of that.
I do think that its profile is higher than that, even among “real” pros, who are increasingly coming out of the closet in this forum, to say nothing of the very-well trafficked forum next door to this one. That said, I gotta agree with you, Scott — this show certainly indicated something approaching a vote of non-confidence for many vendors….
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Oliver Peters] “All I can say is that I saw the same Keynote slides and these numbers were not presented as tied together in a direct sense. So “more X users” means of all types. “
I’m so confused. I thought we were talking about an article. But I’m sure you are right. I’m on 12 hour+ sizzle reel burnout. Very little is currently real to me.
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Well, aside from the fact that at the moment it is a buggy bit of software that has dispensed with an ‘editing paradigm’ used by the majority of the professional industry and it has been superseded by PP because its 10th incarnation needs ‘a bit of time’ whereas PP just evolves sensibly and that Avid still dominates in the ‘minds’ of a fair proportion of editors who ‘matter’ when it comes to giving a piece of software that ‘pro’ association and that that very industry that will give the ‘kiss of pro’ is generally fatigued with Apple’s hubris and cloak and dagger mentality and have tried and generally ignored FC10 and its adopters are fanboys who will, with all due respect, never make an impact on people’s perceptions of the apps ‘pro’ status when put on the front cover of Apple Monthly no matter whether they make a living from it.
So sure, make airy statements that there is no reason FC10 can get there too, but know you are wrong. There are reasons it can’t get there. Many many of them in fact. And instead of this constant almost religious belief in Faith of an unknown and unknowable future second coming, let’s start basing these discussions in the facts of now.
FC10 is a flawed buggy non-industry standard, non skill set transferable patchwork of a piece of software that appears to corrupt and destroy work rather capriciously giving its competition, who are already ahead of it, 3 to 5 more years head start to claim FCP7s market share and respect.
Yeah. My money is with the atheists on this one.
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