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Henry Ford on FCP X
I’d be amazed if someone hadn’t used this quote before in relation to FCP X but I heard it today for the first time:
“If I’d listened to what my customers wanted, I would have given them faster horses”
Sometimes you’ve got to make that leap of faith…
Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor -
81 Replies
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Previously:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/23810“The myth that customers cannot articulate their needs is perpetuated by innovation success stories such as the microwave, the Sony Walkman and (more recently) the Apple iPod and iPhone. The story goes something like this: “If you had asked customers, they couldn’t have told you they needed the iPhone. Therefore, it must be true that customers cannot articulate what they need.” But there’s the rub: However brilliant it may be, the iPhone is not a customer need. The iPhone – like the microwave and Walkman before it – is a solution to a customer need. When companies get solutions and customer needs confused, it confuses the role of the customer and the company in the innovation process. Customers articulate their needs; it is up to the company to create a solution. … When customer needs are defined in a manner that distinguishes them from solutions, not only can customers articulate their needs, but those needs become the valued foundation of the innovation process requires.”
Franz.
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[Michael Sanders] “I’d be amazed if someone hadn’t used this quote before in relation to FCP X “
Yes, people have been using that tired chestnut for a very long time.
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“it’s important to note that Apple seems to have approached both FCP and FCPX in terms of cost – they offer them as cheap alternatives to what is out there.”
quoting from within your link there.
I made this point a while ago, but I wonder at Apple’s pricing here, and whether the new 299 figure represents a realisation that they can take an amazon style approach to the market. In that they are engaged in market decimation through pricing, simply because they can.
Amazon are pretty rightly seen as highly destructive to publishing houses in the UK – they are pretty unbearable opposition given they don’t seem to need to turn a profit in the business of publishing. They are market players, they just don’t need to make any money. they want the market for their larger media goals. So they decimate it through pricing.
they have wrecked any number of small, valuable, and important publishing houses in the UK.
I would be curious if, hived off, the apple FCPX team could sustain itself off that 299 pricing in staffing, basic research and general carry on over the mid term – maybe yes, but unlikely given that FCPX is to some degree an expression of OSX (iOS really? at least the new video architecture?) components. The entire weight of apple is behind the architecture of the software.
But never mind the damage the pricing is doing to Avid say, what damage is it doing to potential market entrants? hardcore software in 3D, compositing, and video has a price tag – the go to market is limited and the research to produce breakthroughs in 3D visualisation, video processing etc is steep.
try the siggraph papers over the years, on say sub surface light scattering – the stuff doesn’t appear overnight. it’s not an iPhone app.
My question would be not whether Apple is Ford, but rather, is Apple, currently the largest corporation by market cap on earth, in effect a national basic research lab happily taking a buzz saw to the minnow that is the editing market?
Apple, if they wanted, could price FCPX at nineteen dollars and see a tiny hiccup in the third decimal point of their earnings.
No other current or future editing market entrant is in this position. Its the future part that would worry you.
they are not plucky young Ford – they are a behemoth looking to dominate, and to some degree, decimate, what is by nature a smallish open market software pool.
yes, they are broadening it, but they are using massive financial, research and marketing tools available to no other market entrant in order to do so.
At the very least you could argue that apple are, as giants playing in the puddle of editing, fundamentally distorting the market here.
And I’m really not sure its a great thing in the mid term.whatever is happening, it’s not a ford model-T comparison.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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Henry Ford also said in response to all those who said he would go broke when he doubled his employees wages to an unheard of five dollars an hour: No, I won’t. They will buy Fords.
Tim
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And then there was the Edsel..,
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Oops. FIve dollars a day. But the message remains the same.
Tim
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That statement denigrates the great work done by inventors and engineers…
The development of the microwave was basically an accident. Percy Spencer was standing in front of a magnetron, testing out his new efficient design for RADAR when he noticed his the chocolate bar in his pocket melted. He then put some popcorn in front of the microwave and saw it popped all over the room. These observations lead to the discovery that microwave are a) dangerous and b) good for cooking.
Visicalc was invented after its inventor saw his professor having to re-write an equation on a board and realised he could do it on a computer. He wasn’t responding to his professor saying “Oh could someone invent a computer progamme to do this for me”.
The point is, the customer doesn’t know what they want because the don’t know what’s possible. When it Edison created the lightbulb it was as a result of experimentation. It wasn’t the solution to a problem.
Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor -
And the Edsel came how many years after Ford being a ridiculously profitable company? 70 , 75 years? What precisely is your point here?
Tim
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My point is simply that companies that try to innovate by creating things that “the customer doesn’t even know they want” are not always successful in that endeavor. The Model T was a success- created by the same company that creates the Edsel. The jury is still out on X.
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[Michael Sanders] “The point is, the customer doesn’t know what they want because the don’t know what’s possible.”
Michael,
It seems to me in the examples you’ve cited that some clever people managed to apply some new technological knowledge to well articulated needs. Obfuscating those two things may lead to a pithy quote that feeds a hero narrative, but doesn’t do much else.
Not everyone is articulate or insightful about needs, but if you trace back through this forum there’s lots of good examples of people who are. (In less politicized times, they may have been called “professionals” – I think their referred to as “niche specialists” now.)
If you haven’t already, read the linked material.
Franz.
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