Apples Dev Announcement. What does it mean for the future of Final Cut Pro?

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Charles,

The bigger news is the Apple-Blackmagic tie up on the immersive camera, which naturally leads to Davinci for the grade. But the cost of the Apple Vision Pro headset makes the whole set-up a bit of a joke, unless the Blackmagic camera and NLE will allow you to publish to other platforms?

FCPX IMHO has been suffering a slow death for years, and the money seems on getting FCPX on to the iPad. So Apple can charge a monthly/annual subscription fee for it.

Too little, too late if you ask me. Apple has been forced to use outside partners, rather than develop their own camera (Blackmagic) or A.I. engine (ChatGPT, owned by OpenAI which has got Microsoft as a major shareholder).

Smacks of desperation from a company that has lost the innovative touch.

But it does raise concerns on privacy and A.I., so I might shortly swap my iPhone for a Nokia… 🤔😀

Atb
Mads

[Ben Balser]

Apple never did and never will be a broadcast hardware developer. Apple has partnered with other companies before, there not being ‘forced’ to do anything. There’s zero evidence of that. They’ve always had a very close relationship with BMD. Remember that when FCPX was first shown at NAB (I was there and filmed it), they said it was a DSLR model, you buy the camera body, then go to third parties for lenses, lights, etc. They’re still using that model today.

Remember that Apple said the workflow was the BMD camera (no one else is making one like it presently), Resolve, and Compressor. Which is odd that Compressor, which has been stagnant for decades, is suddenly the vehicle to encode the VisionPro video format.

As for a slow death to FCP, explain that. FCP never developed as fast as other NLEs, nor in the same direction as other NLEs. It is a whole different paradigm.vFinal Cut Pro on macOS isn’t going anywhere any time soon, as Apple said a few months ago they have a long term roadmap for it, so no worries there. And the past few updates had some significant new features. Not a lot, but some powerful ones.

Some very reliable “forecasters” I’ll call them, predict we’ll see an FCP 11 by end of the year, and it will be a significant upgrade. 10.8 will be coming soon with AI features. Apple has already announced a few, but not all of them. Why put that much development time and money into a product they planned to drop?

We won’t know anything until the new version is released. And I’d wait until the end of the year before reading doom and gloom into anything. There’s no solid evidence for any doom and gloom.

Wait for 10.8, then for 11 by year’s end.

Apple does have their own AI model, and will be integrating it more and more as it develops. ChatGPT is readily available, Apple is not paying OpenAI any money. They’ve use this model before in the past. So what smacks of desperation? What specific evidence is there of that? The most valuable company on the planet has nothing to be desperate about.

They’re super open about their privacy policies, more so than any other company, and are better at it than any other company. I’m not worried, I see no evidence do cause worry.

[Craig Seeman]

Least people forget Apple also announced:

An update to Final Cut Pro will enable creators to edit spatial videos on their Mac and add immersive titles and effects to their projects, and with the Vimeo app designed for Vision Pro, users will be able to upload and share spatial videos for others to discover and enjoy.

While:

Later this year, Blackmagic Design will launch the first-ever commercially available camera system, and an update to its post-production software DaVinci Resolve Studio, to support Apple Immersive Video,…

Apple is developing Final Cut Camera for iPhone which may lead to interesting equivalents for the iPhone.

While there’s some speculation Apple has always liked to have an ecosystem they can control. Apple isn’t always first but they do develop things their own way and I think we’re going to see some interesting things going on between FCP 10.8 and 11 and Final Cut Camera.

Also interesting that Apple mentions Vimeo which is going outside the YouTube/Google/Android ecosystem. While there’s stuff we see (stuff they announced) we might be seeing the tip of a much deeper iceberg.

When FCPX came out Apple referred to a 10-year roadmap which we’ve passed so we may be seeing just the beginning of the next 10-year plan.

More speculation but perhaps Apple learned from their FCP7 / FCPX mistake and rather than make a disruptive change FCP iPad may be the beginning of an overlap into the next FCP paradigm which may take a couple of years to go through. I wouldn’t doubt Apple’s own AI developments will play a significant roll in that.

[Ben Balser]

What does the YouTube/Google/Android ecosystem have to do with Apple? They have never focused on that ecosystem before.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Heya,

In all fairness “YouTube/Google/Android” is all Google, or Alphabet Inc. is an eco-system that Apple is invested in. You just have to go to the Google Play store to find the evidence of that:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple&hl=en_GB
And yes, you’ll find similar offerings in the Microsoft store.
I agree with Craig about the observation on Vimeo, as that is just one video service that has never really worked for me. Adding, that YouTube is about to, if not already, overtake Netflix as the most watched streamer on your smart TV – which is also a mystery, as I find the the longer adverts that Youtuber videos to get me to hit the YouTube exit button.

Ben, I have the outmost respect for you, and value your straight and head on comments.
But on this I topic I do not agree with you.
Apple has always been a hardware developer first, and cared for software, particularly by third party developers, as a distant second.

Although FCP no longer enjoy the same respect as it used to with some of my clients, it is still hardware first, and software second. The same goes for the development of FCPX – New iPad Pro gave Apple the genius idea that they could turn FCPX into a subscription software, as opposed to buy out. But it was still hardware first, and software second.

This may change with v 10.8, but my Mac is collecting dust, and PPro, Davinci and lately Avid, is taking the lead (on my PC).

For some bigger operations, they run those packages too, but on Apple Hardware.

Same with iPod, iPhone and iPad; hardware first, software was then developed/updated to match.

With regard to the Blackmagic camera – did they just “glue” a double lense onto an exisisting camera body 😉 Or is there something they know about Vision Pro that the rest of us do not know? Either way, as Vision Pro is not your everyday tool, there would need to have been some incentive for Blackmagic to get involved. Not least as us who remembers 3D stereo-scopic production, will know that enjoying entertainment is always more fun when you do it together.

Just an opinion. Which, yes, maybe be a bit more black and white than reality. But it is a valid viewpoint.

Atb
Mads

play.google.com

Android Apps by Apple on Google Play

Enjoy millions of the latest Android apps, games, music, movies, TV, books, magazines & more. Anytime, anywhere, across your devices.