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Apple out of NAB… What say you, Ron?
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With Premiere again running on Macs, there is less point in pushing FCP. Sure each additional sale of FCP is almost 100% incremental gross profit, but if that were such a good thing, they would let it run on a vanilla PC – and sell boat loads more. No, Apple is about pushing Apple boxes. Not sure what percent of Macs are bought just for FCP and how many came out of that show alone, ( big iron, high profit Macs to be sure ) but I would guess, subject to a bit more research, not THAT many.
Might this be the beginning of the end of the line for FCP all together?
George Socka
BeachDigital
http://www.beachdigital.com -
[George Socka] “Might this be the beginning of the end of the line for FCP all together?”
I don’t think it’s the end of FCP, but certainly could be the end of Apple’s ownership of the product. I would like to see someone purchase it and take the entire package cross-platform. I think that would improve the product and potentially make the user base that much larger.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow! -
I think writing off FCP is way premature, it’s value to Apple in terms of publicity and prestige helps them sell the boxes to consumers. “Own the same powerful software Hollywood studios use!”
Shake may be another story, there are rumblings for some time now that Apple hasn’t put much into further development of it, and nobody buys an Apple just to run Shake. Adobe has such a clamp on the compositor market, I worry because we own Combustion instead of AE and Autodiscreet has not exactly been blazing with updates or announcements past the addition of the color warping tool.
Also, Motion keeps getting more and more capable, so Apple may be looking to thin the herd there a little bit, but FCP is a flagship software product that absolutely sells macs, so I think that’s likely to stay strong for some time yet.
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Perhaps Apple believes it can add a broadcast component to Mac World…. invite the vendors it partners with and save money by consolidating it’s effort into one show? At this point they’ve penetrated the broadcast/production market enough, they may feel they don’t need NAB to be a post production force moving forward?
Personally I’m dissapointed they’re not going to be at the show, since they always seem to have something new to offer and I always learn something from the guys on the floor. I guess I’ll have to go to Mac World now….. that’s not all bad considering the it’s not held in Las Vegas.
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[Bill Paris] “I guess I’ll have to go to Mac World now….. that’s not all bad considering the it’s not held in Las Vegas.”
…yeah, I hear that.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
[George Socka] “Might this be the beginning of the end of the line for FCP all together?”
We were a Discreet house for many years. When it went away, we had to make a decision. Having seen AVid put the screws to their customers, we looked at FCp. We chose FCp because it was reasonably priced and everything came from one company. I can hire an FCp editor at any time. None of our decisions were based on a demo but rather on how wide spread the systems were in use. The quality was good and the workflow seemed reasonable. However, I may never call it Final Cut PRO. It lacks too many functions that were in D-Vision 3.5 over 10 years ago.
I guess what I’m saying is that we chose FCp because it is deeply embedded in the industry and that we can find qualified operators at every turn.
NAB has been a good place to go see what the latest upgrade is but that is only because some things are held back until they are released at the Big Show. Apple is better served by bringing the improvements to market sooner. Putting the word out on the Internet is the way it’s done now and the users can convince the rest of the world. As successful as Apple is, why should they spend NAB money when it doesn’t bleed black ink. America is wising up and starting to watch the bottom line a bit closer. It’s just good business.
Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1. -
A few years ago Digital Juice made the anouncement not to attend NAB. Instead, the entire week of NAB, they would be offering insane deals on a large swath of their products exclusively on their web site. People flocked to their site and in one week they put themselves at the top of the heap for stock footage, graphics, etc. It was a bold move that turned out to be highly successful. I think what DJ realized is, most people in the industry don’t attend NAB. Most people in the industry are small operations that simply can’t afford to take the time away from making money to attend. They don’t care about a fancy booth that will in the long run only cost them in the price they pay for the companies products. They just want the tools that help them make money at a reasonable price.
IMHO, this industry is simply going the way the pro audio industry went a few years back. Large post houses are not doing well, they have been supplanted by smaller, leaner operations like myself. I was on the receiving end of this with audio production and now I’m reaping the benefits in video production. My main competitor is a guy who is shooting full HDCAM and editing on a $75,000 Velocity system. He has a large fully equipped sound stage and a mobile truck. His main client is one of the largest poultry suppliers in the world. He handles alot of their corporate work but none of their broadcast work. Now there is nothing wrong with shooting corporate work with this kind of equipment, but it is overkill that costs the client. Fortunately for him the client has a huge ego that gets off on this sort of thing. Doubly fortunate for him I have no interest in persuing this client as I could give them a comparible product for much less. Interestingly, I just saw on this guys’ web site that he is now doing legal depositions and event work. HHMMMMMM
Point is, the industry is changing and I believe Apple is simply adapting to that change. No need to make a big deal about it. They didn’t get the deal they wanted at NAB and they’re quietly moving on. I seriously doubt they are getting out of post what with new codec development, the acquisition of Color, new versatility with FCP Studio 2. As a recent convert to Mac, I made my decision to switch after months of research and talking to many people in the industry. The conclusion I came to was, Apple is and will be for some time to come, the platform of choice for a large group of creatives. IMHO of course.
Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media -
When Apple started attending NAB they absolutely needed to have a presence there – to establish credibility. In 1999 the argument wasn’t how Apple was going to compete against Avid, it was “Does this Apple video editing program have the capability and stability that I need to stake my business on it?”
Having a booth at NAB during this past decade showed the broadcast industry that Apple was serious about development of Final Cut, and that they were aiming the product towards more than just hobbiest. From the beginning, they saw that going the software route would enable huge developmental strides from year to year – but they knew that as soon as they got the “Final Cut” technology from Macromedia, they needed to establish credibility with their target market.
They needed to get the product into professional Editor’s minds as a viable option to the Avid’s, Media 100’s, and other “professional” systems that were leading at the time. At that time NAB was the mechanism to lend that credibility to the software product line. (While their hardware had decent credibility since most Avid’s and Media 100s were running on Apple systems, Apple knew they were about to have a lag behind PC system speed for at least a few seasons, and having innovative software was a “flank” to the speed war with PCs.)
Flash forward a decade – Apple and Final Pro don’t have that issue of credibility. NAB simply doesn’t give them as much of what they need anymore. At this point, they had the same catch 22 that Avid did – if they didn’t have a huge booth that rivaled their competitor at NAB, customer might worry that they didn’t “care” about future development as much. With Avid pulling out, it didn’t make any since for Apple to pour their money into fighting Adobe at the show. (I’d argue that Final Cut already has as much credibility as Adobe Premier.)
I think this is simply a business decision. I think that Apple weighed most of the concerns that have been expressed in this thread and decided that at this point in time, the risk was worth the reward.
Do you think NAB would give Avid and Apple discounted rates next year? They will if they want them back. Sometimes you just have to call a bluff. By not having booths at NAB this year, those two companies will absolutely have the data they need next year to see if it’s worth going back. And I expect that if they do consider going back, it will be much closer to the terms that they want.
All told this decision doesn’t reflect on the health of Avid or Apple as it does for the health of the NAB convention.
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[Timothy J. Allen] “All told this decision doesn’t reflect on the health of Avid or Apple as it does for the health of the NAB convention.”
This is what we’ve been saying for months. NAB is less and less relevant to ANYONE, and certainly to our end of the industry, not at all.
(The exception remains that it’s a grand opportunity for face to face interaction with online pals. It also remains important for the heavy iron crowd who’ve been the bedrock of NAB the organization, rather than the expo.)
In fact, I threw up the “dead, bankrupt, lying” subject line to show the absurdity of any aspect of second-guessing either company. They’ve both been explicit, that they’ve backed out because NAB has nothing to offer them.
Timothy, you’re right about Apple, they’ve done all that they need to do at NAB.
For Avid, their best customers don’t go to NAB. In TV, they’re preparing for sweeps (both news and advertising), as well as working actively on season-ending reality shows, final stages of posting summer series, and prepping (and in some cases already shooting) fall series. April is a crazy time to think about taking a break.
In movies, the summer blockbuster season begins May 1, and in earnest by Memorial Day. Taking a break in April is unthinkable.
These are just a few reasons why Avid’s customers have been demanding for years that the news come to THEM — they can’t go see it, period. Not an option.
The bottom line for both: nothing to accomplish at NAB. No need to second-guess them to divine their motives. They’ve said that NAB isn’t useful for them.
Maybe because I’ve been at it too long and grateful to get out, but I’m head-slappingly mystified that anyone can imagine ANYTHING but that they’re skipping out for the reasons they say they are – variations on the theme that NAB has outlived its usefulness.
We here at the Cow couldn’t agree more, which is why we’ve been saying it so loudly for so long.
As for A&A, I’ll be shocked if either ever has a booth again.
Tim Wilson, Creative Cow
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Spoken like a true “roadshow” burnout. I can definitely say that the experience of attending NAB and the experience of “manning” a booth are quite different indeed! As someone who buys and uses film and video cameras, HD monitors, HD projectors, library music, all manner of production mics, lighting kits, lots of third party software, tripods etc. etc., there truly is no one place where one can go to get so much contact and information in so little time. I for one am glad both Avid and Apple won’t be there with their accompanying fan-boy circuses. My favorite part of NAB is getting to see and meet many third part software folks that I actually can have meaningful one to one dialogue with while in Lost Wages.
As far as having to pay for and man a booth for the onslaught of humanity that shows up every year, no wonder Tim and Ron want to flee and never look back!Dual 2.5 G5, IO, Kona LH, IO, Medea Raid, UL4D, NVidia 6800, 4Gig RAM
Octocore 8 GB Ram, Radeon card, MBP, MXO
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