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Interesting Opinion…
So I am playing golf with my pal the corporate attorney this morning (not my company’s attorney mind you…I could never afford this dude) and we’re talking about the sturm and drang over FCP X. His response was pretty straightforward (and I am paraphrasing)…
“Ask the people who are complaining or feel that they have been wronged to please produce the contract that they have with Apple to produce software to their precise specifications and I will be happy to represent them. Oh, No such contract? Good luck…See ya…dumbass”
He then went on to ask about why would anybody invest their entire company’s assets in one process (or software platform) with no back up plans or exit strategies. Though not likely, what if Apple just folded or was bought out and the buyer discontinued the platform…or whatever. What would you do then?
It is gross mismanagement to not have legal protection or recourse when you heavily invested in a single source resource. Absent that it is gross mismanagement to not have a back up plan that can be integrated immediately. There are plenty of other options (which also prevents any monopoly issues) why would you not be prepared to immediately go to a back up? If the production houses who invested in FCS/FCP exclusively without legal protection or an immediate exit strategy were publicly held, the stockholders would “rise up and slay management” for incompetence (I think he stole that one from Lewis Black)
I asked about implied contracts…moral obligations…promises by Apple to produce a pro level product…He basically just looked at me like I was a moron.
But hey…I shot an 82.
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15 Replies
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I appreciate opinions from all sides, but a lot of this wall of text stuff is really boiling down to cheap shots.
If we can’t work together on improving something that might be inevitable, maybe we could pick up the class in this joint…
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100% true Mike. If anyone thinks Apple cares about anyone other than their bottom line they are deluded.
I use FCP Studio 3 and AVID MC 5.5. When Studio is totally obsolete I will be full time AVID with ADOBE waining in the wings.
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So your attorney pal friend basically sais that whoever buys a product that is full of bugs and is proven to be falsely advertised and complains about this, is a dumbass? It’s people like this who make me angry and question the world.
For the following part, the base of his argument chain is completely wrong. If a company invests and builds a business on a technology that is proven to work (FCS) there is nothing wrong about it. Apple can’t decide to just kill all the existing solutions. They still work and continue to work.
I presume he wipes his butt with dollar bills, therefore I don’t believe he cares about moral obligations and similar unnecessary stuff.
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[Mike Chedwick] “If anyone thinks Apple cares about anyone other than their bottom line they are deluded.”
And Avid and Adobe don’t care about turning a profit? You think they work to lose money?
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I forgot to add his final comment (similar to your point)…”The only group Apple has any obligation to is their stockholders. Period”
Standard lawyer comment but, true.
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Business is business, of course.
Doesn’t mean we aren’t free to bitch about it. 🙂
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I think we can all agree that part of a lawyer’s job is to irritate people. That said…he was not remotely addressing whether Apple has made a good or bad product (and neither am I). He was saying that anybody who bet’s their proverbial ranch on one software platform without having some sort of legal protection is…imprudent.
Don’t you think that Ford, for example, has about a 10,000 page contract with the company that makes the software for their assembly lines? We all take a gamble with our businesses investing in retail software as the basis of our production. And since it is retail software we cannot have contract that specifies delivery of any given feature.
So that being the case his point is it is our obligation as business owners to have a back up plan, alternative software platform or exit strategy…which is true.
This release is proof of exactly that. If you cannot work with FCPX you better have had a back up plan or you are in big trouble.And as far as moral obligation…well that is a pretty nebulous concept in business. And back to the lawyer’s point. This is business.
I hesitated posting his comments because I knew a lot of people would get wound up…but you cannot argue with the accuracy of what he said.
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I wore the green for 3.5 years defending our right to do so! GBA.
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Well I do not believe that any company in the world has based it’s business on FCPX. If yes, then your pal is right, it’s dumb. I assumed he targeted anyone who based it’s business on one product, including well-established solutions like FCS.
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I agree with your attorney friend on this one. But you have to consider that even automakers are required by law to supply spare parts for the duration of a warranty which is itself a legal obligation. The real problem here is the lack of any warranty on software, Apple’s or anyone else for that matter. That’s quite absurd in itself. The idea that you should buy software to find out if you think it suits your needs is absurd. I suppose that $300 is not so bad when you consider what you’re getting but it still seems a bit like smoke and mirrors to me.
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