Henry Ford on FCP X

[Richard Herd]

Well said. You need to broaden your position, Aindreas. In epochs past, societies moved from speech to script, from script to press, from press to typewriter. Where are we now? From zoetrope to motion film, from film to video, from video to YouTube/vimeo/instagram?

This is a real question.

[Richard Herd]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “(In less politicized times, they may have been called “professionals” – I think their referred to as “niche specialists” now.)
“

Standing ovation.
Thunderous applause.

You’re one smart dude, Franz — pithy too.

[Richard Herd]

And one should also research how long it took them to stop saying “horseless carriage.”

Seriously.

Why am I calling this iPhone a phone?

(Bill, I’d like to read your screenplay(s).)

[Richard Herd]

[Joseph W. Bourke] “FCP8”

I didn’t 8. I needed 7.5.

I needed:
*Optical Flow
*Magnetism(^1)
*Compound Clips

I didn’t know it at the time.

1. By magnetism I mean video and audio embedded in the same GUI representation.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “Yeah, but if you have the choice between the horse and a tractor – you lose – and if you try to compete with the guy with a tractor with a horse, you’re likely to lose everything.”
Unless you are some place where fuel and/or spare parts are prohibitively expensive then draft animals still rule the fields. My point, which you partially reiterated, remains the same though. It’s not a one size fits all world like apparently misappropriated quips lead us to believe.

I agree with Michael Gissing that FCPX’s primary demographic was servered starting with the initial release and since then Apple has been spending time tending to it’s secondary market.

[Walter Soyka]

[Bill Davis] “If, in fact, Apple – largely due to their success and resulting access to actionable intellegence in critical areas like processor architecture, global marketing, computer science etc. etc. etc – has a view of the future of visual data processing that’s MORE likely to come to fruition than the visions of their competitors – then not tracking the value of their work will put EVERY editor at a disadvantage.”

The so-called democratization aside, how would you characterize the difference between the views of Apple and their competitors?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Chris Harlan]

[Andrew Kimery] “I agree with Michael Gissing that FCPX’s primary demographic was servered starting with the initial release and since then Apple has been spending time tending to it’s secondary market.
“

Me too. I think they hit their target audience running, and everything else is an afterthought.

[Bill Davis]

[Walter Soyka] “The so-called democratization aside, how would you characterize the difference between the views of Apple and their competitors?”

Fair question.

When I see the current products of Apple’s competitors products I think they fall into two general categories.

Either they look like the same companies products from 5-7 years ago (productivity software, computer form-factors, etc)

Or, increasingly, they look like the other companies “take” on recent Apple design standards.

Of can someone show me an example of another companies devices or services that have spawned a global rush to copy the Apple forms on the same scale as the iPhone, the iPad and App store models?

At least since Jony Ive came on board thats pretty much been the way it’s been to my eye.

I’m happy to entertain examples of how other tech companies have re-set the worlds design expectations similarly.

There are probably some in areas like video game design that I’m not aware of. But not so much in consumer electronics that I’ve seen.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Kimery] ” agree with Michael Gissing that FCPX’s primary demographic was servered starting with the initial release and since then Apple has been spending time tending to it’s secondary market.”

Well, I just see it differently.

I see it as Apple stripping down everything and rebuilding it from the foundation. They released it as soon as it was “serviceable” since only in the markeplace could they shake out all the issues in real world use. Since that time they’ve shored it up, filled it out, fixed lots of issues and bugs, and generally continued to work their way through the implementation of a whole list of capabilities that the new architecture made fundamentally possible.

I don’t think they EVER actually thought in terms of Primary and Secondary users except in the sense that they needed to bring primary functions on line before they tweaked the important but less critical elements that appeal to smaller segments of the market. Witness basic audio capabilities in V1 – verses Roles coming along later.

All the foundational stuff like AV Foundation, Core Video, Core Graphics, and the switch to a full on metadata approach to all of the programs essential operations was a massive undertaking. And that investment is just now beginning to enable new approaches vis a vis X Multicam.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to underestimate both the cost and the potential of the core teardown as a bold move.

The new architecture is precisely what I suspect has let it evolve more quickly in terms of features and operations than Legacy ever did.

But it was also all too easy to perceive that process as “dumbing down” pro features rather than just replacing the underpinnings and building up from there.

We’ll eventually know based on IF they stop adding back pro level features. But stuff like direct RED camera support in 10.06 tends to belie that they didn’t always have rebuilding firmly toward pro users in mind from the get go.

FWIW.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Michael Gissing]

Once again the discussion drifts into the usual self serving entrenched opinions. The original claim of this thread was that Apple blazed new trails by not listening to customers.

Firstly the trail blazing is overblown, a common problem here. More important is that I can’t see an argument that supports the idea that Apple are not listening and reacting to customers. Clearly they are. I just wanted to point out that some people on the Cow think they are at the center of that customer focus but I think that is a smug, self congratulatory bubble, something that many of us were in two years ago when we were all so sure Apple were about to make an awesome NLE just for us.

Few of us are that important to Apple. They are tossing some tasty bones and like faithfully puppies we follow, keenly hoping for more scraps from the great table.