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FCS 3 is back on sale through Apple – via telesales only
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But something could have changed where Apple came full circle. Make the world in his bubble, which I never really doubted left him, and take the types of products to where he wanted them to go. Conform to his thinking. Don’t leave it flowery. Make the tool pretty, even at the cost of functionality….Apple is all about window dressing now. I can’t tell you how many conversations with network nerds I have on the iphone trapping you, the ipad bubble, el al. Products that while small, still could have an open port for assimilation and inclusiveness…so they trumpet the Androids and google products…even in disdain but repeatedly I hear “at least I can do this, with Apple now..ha!”….this from guys who own mac mini’s and had a ball modding them….blackberry users that moved to the iphone and are now going to Samsung Galaxy…the circle is complete
Allowing the 3rd parties to have at it doesn’t really change the dynamic he was, or Randy, driving this turd X…it still won’t change the majority of the fundamental roadblocks. FCP7 felt like total freedom. And now it looks like they viewed that as a mistake, and a place Apple should never have gone to in the first place…and their dominance, now, can only feed that
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[Herb Sevush] “What does this do to your theory about licensing issues causing the sudden demise of FCP7?”
Actually I think it continues to support it. Apple said at the London meeting they were looking into making FCS available but had to look into licensing issues. Apparently they can sell some limited stock directly. It’s not available in the online store and the release is apparently very limited so facilities can buy more seats. At B&H it went from In Stock to Discontinued in a matter of hours.
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“Apple said at the London meeting they were looking into making FCS available but had to look into licensing issues.”
Your theory is they had years to look into these licensing issues before the initial release, then decided that because of these issues they had to EOL and pull the product from distribution by June 22, then after a month found out that they could overcome these licensing issues by only selling the product over the phone.
This is a little like the “magic bullet” theory of the Kennedy assassination.
How about a much simpler theory. There are no major licensing issues. They pulled FCP7 because they right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. They are re-instituting it now, in a behind the scenes kind of way, in an attempt to calm the waters without publicly announcing what a bunch of buffoons they’ve been.
Your theory has the advantage of a kind of crazy house logic that is loved by conspiracy theorists everywhere, my theory has the advantage of being based on the historical adage that most actions can best be explained by acknowledging there is nothing more prevalent on this earth than the stupidity of man.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
[Herb Sevush] “Your theory is they had years to look into these licensing issues before the initial release, then decided that because of these issues they had to EOL and pull the product from distribution by June 22, then after a month found out that they could overcome these licensing issues by only selling the product over the phone.”
[Herb Sevush] “my theory has the advantage of being based on the historical adage that most actions can best be explained by acknowledging there is nothing more prevalent on this earth than the stupidity of man.”
The assumption that Apple is stupid doesn’t jive with any of the past marketing. Apple may do things to P.O. customers but they’ve never been “stupid” about it. They’ve always made business decisions to their benefit.
There’s no reason they’d market a product to higher end pros at NAB knowing that it couldn’t meet their needs and, at the same time pull, the product FCS that was selling MacPros to these people. If Apple’s intent was a “prosumer/consumer” tool they would have marketed it as such and just pulled the plug on the “pro” market.
It makes much more sense that they were hitting a deadline, had to pull FCS and release FCPX in an unfinished state. Given that Apple did no further FCPX marketing after NAB, they may have seen the wall they had coming at them and released FCPX without any event or any Apple home page splash.
There is one thing Apple is consistently good at and it’s marketing. The marketing even tends to surmount product deficiencies. Apple but the breaks on the marketing because there may have been problems internally. Apple has certainly had product misfires but even when the product misfires the marketing doesn’t.
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“The assumption that Apple is stupid doesn’t jive with any of the past marketing. Apple may do things to P.O. customers but they’ve never been “stupid” about it. They’ve always made business decisions to their benefit.”
I assume your talking about Apple since Jobs came back, because they definitely made a lot of stupid decisions before that. As far as the 2nd Jobs era, I’ll take your word for it, you follow it much more closely than I do. Although I bet if you put your mind to it, you could find something moronic they’ve done – or else why was Jobs so pissed at the mobile me roll out.
“It makes much more sense that they were hitting a deadline, had to pull FCS and release FCPX in an unfinished state.”
It definitely looks like they had a deadline set, it’s just that your original argument that it was a licensing issue doesn’t make sense now that a month later they are able to sell copies of FCP7 in a limited fashion.
“There is one thing Apple is consistently good at and it’s marketing. The marketing even tends to surmount product deficiencies. Apple but the breaks on the marketing because there may have been problems internally. Apple has certainly had product misfires but even when the product misfires the marketing doesn’t.”
If you don’t think this is a definition of a marketing misfire I’d like to know what you think a misfire looks like. Silence is a marketing decision, getting publicly reamed on late night TV is a marketing nightmare, having your product get so hammered that you have to pull the reviews off your own web site is not exactly a marketing triumph.
I’ll still go with my stupidity argument, it’s never let me down before. As for Apple being above that sort of thing, well that’s what they said about Napoleon before he went to Russia.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
[Ray Wang] “Tim the benevolent ruler?”
Benevolent?!? I will not tolerate this kind of character assassination! I have NEVER been called benevolent. I am not now, nor will I ever be. I’m appalled. This is the kind of personal attack that people are getting tired of.
Benevolent. Hmph. I am so not benevolent. The nerve of some people! Next you’re probably going to say my hairline is receding.
Tim Wilson
Creative COW -
[Herb Sevush] “I bet if you put your mind to it, you could find something moronic they’ve done”
The hockey puck mouse comes to mind. That wasn’t a marketing problem so much as really stupid design. Some would argue the Cube which was way overpriced and also had design issues (cracks for example). The modern equivalent is the MacMini which is properly priced.
[Herb Sevush] “If you don’t think this is a definition of a marketing misfire I’d like to know what you think a misfire looks like. Silence is a marketing decision, getting publicly reamed on late night TV is a marketing nightmare, having your product get so hammered that you have to pull the reviews off your own web site is not exactly a marketing triumph. “
I think something backed the marketing department into a bad position. I don’t think the marketing was the problem. It was the result of a deeper problem. I think the lack of typical “big” Apple roll out was because the marketing dept didn’t have a program that could hit any market at all. That’s because FCPX is a good but incomplete program and it’s hard to market and unfinished product.
It would have been much easier to market FCPX if they didn’t kill FCS . . . which is why I don’t think killing FCS so suddenly was in the original plan. They have NEVER done anything like that before with any product undergoing a transition or being EOL’d.
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On June 2, I ordered an upgrade from my Final Cut Studio 1 (FCS) license to FCS 3, for 299.00 $, as well as a set of user guides for 29.95 $, from my Apple authorized retailer, the oldest in Quebec city, Canada.
On June 21, Final Cut Pro X was launched by Apple and at the same time FCS 3, Final Cut Server and XSan were removed from market and EOLed.
On July 7 and 8, I contacted my retail store to have an update on my order. On the latter, the store buyer reluctantly informed me Apple had cancelled my order on june 21 (a full two weeks after the fact!!!) and made a pass on me offering a full FCS 3 license for 999.95 $.
On July 9, I offered the store manager to buy the FCS 3 seat they had offered me for 328.95 $, which was the price of the order I had made through them. He refused, explaining that the profit they made from the 5000 $ I had bought in equipment from them during the last three years would not cover their loss and they would be better to send the package to Apple for a refund. I informed the retailer my relationship with them had just ended and that I would do business with their competitors in the future.
The same day, I found on the Internet an upgrade license for FCS 3 for sale at 300.00 $.
On July 10, I bought the FCS 3 license and installed it on my workstation.
On July 19, I received an email from my former Apple authorized retailer relaying an Apple offer for the FCS 3 update I had ordered seven weeks earlier.
I was very happy to tell them and Apple I had bought secondhand what both Apple and them had deemed I was not entitled to, and happy to deprive Apple from the 300 bucks they obviously did not care to get from me in the previous months.
As the BBC, Discovery Networks and many other production houses, VFX facilities of all sizes and individuals around the world have already done, I am about to purchase Adobe CS 5.5 Production Suite at the 50% discount with an Nvidia Quattro 4000 CUDA graphics card.
What I can say about my relationship with Apple is that there is no longer any, of any kind. The yearlong persisting rumors about Apple ditching the video professional market turned out to be true. The hooplah Apple put on at NAB, led by Randy Ubillos, telling the industry that Apple cared and that there would be other announcements regarding their professional software were very misleading, to put it mildly.
What strikes me most in the introduction of FCPX, along with my treatment as a customer, is the level of arrogance and disdain the decision makers at Apple have expressed to a longtime community of active supporters and evangelists, the professional video editors. Apple managers have just cut Apple from a very lucrative market in the most despicable fashion. Power corrupts. And the most visible exertion of power is in the absurd. These people have shown the extent of their power alright…
In my view, their latest announcement about the availability of FCS 3 licenses is the continuation of that inexcusable attitude, since Apple is not telling it will provide license for as long as their ACTUAL customers need them, only to get rid of their stock, and by not offering upgrades from FCS 1 or 2.
What Apple customers must now ask themselves is: “Who’s next?”
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I think the real reason they did this is because there is no
“dollar store” for EOL software. You have to put it in regular retail and sell it at full price.🙂
David
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The shortest answer is doing.
Lord Herbert
https://vimeo.com/battistella -
Actually, the same thing happened with Imovie.
Imovie HD was a great hobbyist/starter program. I used it in a beginner video production course for students and it was great but needed an update. We were looking forward to a couple more tracks of audio and video, a second viewer, different views in the browser, compatibility with apple pro res, JKL keyboard control, and get the bugs out of quartz effects. And it crashed too much even with external media drives.
The education market and hobbyist market were so upset at the new Imovie that Apple offered a free download of the old one — after a bunch of bad reviews and many protests from consumers. As the new one added features the protest died down but there are still folks that miss the old simple timeline interface.
When they EOLed the old Imovie the new one did not allow “extracting audio” from the video it was linked to.
It did not support all the plug-ins that third parties wrote for the old Imovie like effects and masking and keying and ken burns variations. The new one was a huge step backwards and folks were pissed.
Everything felt themed and for a teacher did not feel like kids would learn editing basics.Apple said (or did people just guess, not sure) that the new one was better cause many consumers couldn’t learn the old one easily and therefore didn’t use it. Funny cause I used FCP 3 but needed a cheaper program to install on underpowered school computers. A student helped me learn Imovie. I had kids editing within two lessons and being pretty independent within a week. Then I’d get kids who asked about features that Imovie didn’t have and I’d tell them about FCP.
Now, an industry was not at stake, but the pattern is surprisingly similar and in a dummied down way for the same reasons.
OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz MacPro4,1 2.66GHz 8 core 12gigs of ram. GPU: Nvidia Geoforce GT120 with Vram 512. OS X 10.6.x; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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