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FcpX 10.5?
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NAB as an event seems to be a deadline for a lot of new releases and updates. I’m sure that’s why Adobe just released Productions, because they had timed it for NAB. Blackmagic should, by all previous history, have launched resolve 17b1 by today and maybe something about their camera range. The fact they went early with the ATEM Pro suggests the focus changed with the cancellation of NAB and they have held back and pushed things that are more strategically important at the moment.
Indeed a point release of Resolve was dropped yesterday 16.2.1 so my guess is they put a few improvements from the impending 17beta back into 16 and are going slower with the next release. Not a bad thing.
I see no significance in whether Apple offer any X updates right now. I think we have become so used to the big NAB drops that we are left wondering why not much has happened this week. It’s a bit like Christmas has been canceled. It must be frustrating for X users but Apple must be much more concerned about getting their new iPhone made and distributed.
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[Tim Wilson] “Honestly, even the message that you CAN run FCPX on an iPad would be enough to move the needle, I think. Doesn’t matter if anyone actually DOES. The point is to get NEW people buying NEW seats of FCPX.”
Or they could say “hey guys, pretty sure you’ve all had a lot of value out of that £299 FCPX license now, here’s FCPXI it’s faster, packed with loads of new features and we’d like another £299 for it please”
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I have no desire to edit on an iPad let alone MacBook these days.
I guess its the luxury and that I’m forced to stay at home half the days.
At both ends of my workday, I have access to Apple Cinema 30s and Dell 4K displays.
My old tired eyes thank me for that ☺On another note, I want to thank Apple for the best bang for our buck offering.
Best $350 CAD we have ever spent back in 2011 ????
I say we since it’s on five different workstations. -
[Steve Connor] “Or they could say “hey guys, pretty sure you’ve all had a lot of value out of that £299 FCPX license now, here’s FCPXI it’s faster, packed with loads of new features and we’d like another £299 for it please””
They could, but I don’t think they would. They’ve had nearly a decade to kick that idea around, and it hasn’t bubbled up yet, I think because the downside would be higher than the upside. Every headline would be negative, to say the least. “Doubled the price for early adopters” or some such.
They also can’t do it for at least the next year. Imagine the squawking about the insensitivity of asking for more money when nearly the entire production community is curtailed if not shut down altogether “when they haven’t even fixed basic issues in the original.”
Where they could maybe get away with it is an iOS-only version, but they’d hang themselves with that too. Any price more than a pittance would freeze the potential to sell new, muscular iPads to current FCPX users who can imagine the usefulness of some remote-production features with an iPad.
No, the only way they sell either new seats of FCPX and new iPads is to keep the message the same as it has been: one price, all in.
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[Tim Wilson] “They could, but I don’t think they would. They’ve had nearly a decade to kick that idea around, and it hasn’t bubbled up yet, I think because the downside would be higher than the upside. Every headline would be negative, to say the least. “Doubled the price for early adopters” or some such.”
I think one thing that skews this argument is Apple itself. You are using metrics that make sense for a normal company. I really doubt Apple cares much whether or not their applications make a profit.
I’m sure they do, but for Apple, selling applications is a marketing expense, based on their unified accounting system across all sections of the company. I could be wrong (and I have no inside information), but from everything that’s been written about Apple, I highly doubt that ProApps runs its own P&L accounting.
Whatever decisions are made are solely based on what makes sense for Apple as a whole. That’s why FCPX on an iPad Pro makes a lot of sense. It improves the posture of iPad Pro as a “computer.”
That’s why ProApps is not like Filemaker, which to my knowledge is Apple’s only branded applications subsidiary.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Oliver Peters] “I think one thing that skews this argument is Apple itself. You are using metrics that make sense for a normal company. I really doubt Apple cares much whether or not their applications make a profit.
I’m sure they do, but for Apple, selling applications is a marketing expense, based on their unified accounting system across all sections of the company.”
I agree with that in general. My point is that the ONLY reason to prime the pump and say “Pay us” is if they want to be paid. And if they want to be paid, a substantial shift in their “pay once, you have it all” strategy is exactly the wrong one.
It’s not that they care about the noise from the yammerocracy, per se, but they do to the extent that it affects their ability to do business. Never forget that the most aggressively anti-customer CEO in history, the guy who proclaimed from the rooftops to anyone who would listen that only idiots listen to their customers, was forced to concede that “You’re holding it wrong” was an insufficient reply to the yammerocracy. WE MADE HIM take a billion dollars out of Apple’s pockets and pay for iPhone bumpers that he was adamant that we didn’t need.
Then proved he was right when he didn’t spend a penny to fix the very obviously malfunctioning antenna on the next release, and indeed, nobody screamed for a bumper or case. Of course, by that point, we’d been sufficiently trained by Apple not to expect an iPhone capable of making or holding a call, and that anyone who bought an iPhone needed to expect to use it in a case for even the substandard level of service of iPhones at their best.
They obviously sorted this out later, and iPhones hold calls no better or worse than anyone else, but the point is that in the short term, Apple found that the drag on the business was more intolerable than the notion of a billion dollar set of shiny keys to distract us.
None of that is the case this time of course, and I completely agree with you about the relative insignificance of Pro Apps to Apple. I’ve gone even further than this of course, and argued that Pro Apps USERS don’t contribute to any meaningful part of Apple’s hardware sales, either. Apple gets far more business from everyone else by definition, because the universe of Mac users of other apps is so much bigger.
But Pro Apps does exist, and is responsible for SOMETHING. Obviously not a separate line on the P&L, but it’s not like the self-proclaimed “hobby” of the Apple TV device, where any revenue was treated as a happy surprise.
So we’re back to the starting place — what’s the most effective way for Pro Apps to fund the next round of development? I’m planting my flag on new users. It HAS to be new users. Not existing ones. Apple going back to current users with their hands out will not only piss off the large number of current users who aren’t [fill in mini rant of your choice here], but it will be the first time that many potential new users will hear, LOUDLY, “Oh, so THIS is what it’s like to buy Apple’s pro software. No thanks. I’ll stick with iMovie.”
Again, the only reason to ask for money is if you WANT money. And the only money Apple wants from its customers, other than the odd subscription here and there, is for NEW stuff. Not upgrades.
This is why, when they release the new version of IOS-enabled version of FCPX, it’s only going to run on the newest iPads. This is Apple’s par for the course with every update, of course, and the cornerstone of how they preserve “the Apple experience.” The big friction is almost always when you try to combine new software with old hardware (and software). See also: every Catalina thread at the COW and every forum, blog, and article across the web.
Apple wants NEW customers for FCPX, and they already know that no substantial number of new ones comes from new computer releases. The market isn’t growing organically as much for Apple anymore (no disrespect intended; just an observation that I trust is non-controversial, but VERY germane to this conversation), so what’s going to move the needle?
New ways of working, new locations for working, new devices in the mix, new attractiveness for people who would never have considered it, AND a reason for a few thousand people to buy new new iPad Pros.
Let’s do a back of the envelope calculation. One percent of 2.5 million FCPX users is 25,000, times the $1000 price of a mid-range iPad Pro, that’s $25 million gross. In the world of Apple’s overall revenue, that’s small, but I think that anything in the eight figure range enters the conversation at some point….
….especially when you try to imagine the last time that the universe of current FCPX users dropped $25 million cash in Apple’s pocket. And that’s if only 1% of FCPX users think, “Yeah, you know what, it’s been a while since I got a new iPad. I’ll use it for a bunch of other stuff, so might as well check it out.”
But they won’t get those iPad Pros if they’re annoyed at having to pay for basically only this new feature, or this plus some other new features that for the past nearly decade, they’ve been getting free.
Whatever else Apple has learned since the iPhone antenna debacle, it’s to avoid unnecessarily standing in the way of cash flow. Creating a brand new, udderly unique upgrade message NOW would do exactly that. They’d stop the software business dead in its tracks, would take the opportunity for new iPad Pro sales to those customers for nothing. Not one possible advantage.
The ONLY way FCPX grows is with a strong iPad Pro-enabled release. That’s it. There’s nothing else.
You may not want it on iPad. You may hate Apple for its i-focus when they’re ignoring what you need from them to do your job with your all-Apple office. Doesn’t matter. It’s FCPX on iPad Pro or bust.
I’m not casting a vote here. I’m not a customer, no matter what. I’m just looking at the business case, and everything you guys are telling me is only making me more certain I’m right. LOL
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[Tim Wilson] “The ONLY way FCPX grows is with a strong iPad Pro-enabled release. That’s it. There’s nothing else.
You may not want it on iPad. You may hate Apple for its i-focus when they’re ignoring what you need from them to do your job with your all-Apple office. Doesn’t matter. It’s FCPX on iPad Pro or bust.”I think we both agree on that. I would even venture to say that quite possibly this might even be free to people who already own FCPX. After all, it would only run on the newest iPad Pro, which you would have to buy anyway. But what would really seal the deal is a viable method of sharing – possibly only synced Libraries and proxy media via iCloud. Money comes in via an in-app purchase of more cloud space.
Clearly Apple sees the pro side of the iPad, which is why Adobe, Affinity, Pixelmator and others are being coaxed into bringing more heavy-weight apps to the iPadOS environment. So if you are Apple, do you want pro editing tools on iPadOS defined by Rush and LumaTouch?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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What bugs are you experiencing with FCPX?
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I wouldn’t shift to FCPX exclusively on an iPad Pro but definitely would purchase it to complement the desktop version…but this won’t happen(for me at least) until the iPad Pro has USB-C/Thunderbolt connectivity.
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